My plans for the new day were to ride through South Pass, the topographical feature beyond the village of South Pass, and take another BLM dirt road north-west approximating the line of Sublette’s Cut-off, a diversion from the main course of the Oregon-California Trail. Since there was no easy route through the Wyoming and Wasatch Ranges of the Rocky Mountains, a number of alternative trails had been blazed by the few hundred migrants who traipsed to California between 1841 and the start of the Gold Rush. None were available to me as they crossed private land, but my proposed detour via the town of Big Sandy was a good approximation. Enquiries at South Pass City, however, revealed the track was impassable. It was the first week of June, summer was here, but Big Sandy was sealed in. In the previous three days it had received two metres of snow.
At 2,301 metres high, South Pass is not exactly a mountain pass, unless you can envisage a pass twenty to thirty miles wide, but it is still probably the most famous landmark on the westward trail. The grade up was gentle and across an exposed plateau. I was now in the Rocky Mountains but, except for deep gulches in the Sweetwater Mining District, I had yet to ride through mountains. I hadn’t climbed a switchback or crawled along the edge of ravines. The pattern for crossing the Great Basin was shaped by the isolated ribs of unimpressive ranges protruding above a vast expanse of corrugated sagebrush. In prehistoric times, the cathedral spires of saw-toothed mountains might have dominated the area. Now the basin looked as if the hand of God had dribbled a stream of sand over the landscape, filling ravines to the midriff of mountains, wearing down sandstone peaks.
I crossed the Sweetwater River for the last time and cranked up the two-lane blacktop to the pass that wasn’t. Variously known by the overlanders as ‘Uncle Sam’s backbone’ or ‘the summit of the continent’, the significance of South Pass lay in its position on the Continental Divide. To the east, all rivers flowed into the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico. To the west, they flowed into the Pacific or Gulf of California. It marked the furthest limit of the buffalo ranges and, although the watershed was topographically unremarkable, it was the point at which travellers symbolically severed contact with the East. The ‘crossing over’ invariably called for a party, much like crossing the Equator. People left Star Spangled Banners thrust in the sand in celebration of their achievement. Where I crossed over, a simple road sign bolted to a rough wooden post marked the divide.
The long deserted road forged across an empty wasteland paralleling Pacific Creek, the line the Mormons and remaining pioneers picked up. By now, the wagon trains were strung out across a thousand miles. It was early August for those on schedule and early June for me, possibly behind schedule to meet up with my wife in California. Sandy and I had begun discussing the details of a reunion planned while I was back in the UK. Since she was unable to accompany me on the first leg of my journey, we had agreed she would join me in Sacramento for the last. By August, some Forty-Niners had already arrived in the self-proclaimed capital of the gold country. For those still out on the trail, alternative routes and the thinning traffic reduced pressure on the land to provide unpolluted water and fuel for animals and fires, but the intimidating landscape now induced deep loneliness, particularly in those travelling with only a backpack or mule for company. As I was to discover, it was a loneliness born out of heartache, vulnerability and fear.
Overhead, the firmament had been acting out a drama as compelling as any Shakespearean tragedy and was now poised for the battle scene. To the north were ranged the forces of good — a deep blue sky lined with battalions of white clouds galloping north-east to gain an advantageous position. To the south, beneath the mass of dark forces, the horizon blazed as one fusillade after another were fired from Heaven’s cannons. The front line of conflict was drawn up immediately above the line of the road, but it was moving quickly along the same angle the good guys were flanking round at. The rumble of hooves was the rumble of thunder sweeping across the plateau with increasing volume and speed. I bust a gut to pedal away from the battlefield, aiming for a thin wedge of blue which opened in the ranks of the enemy. For a moment, I thought I had ridden clear. An almighty explosion banged into my ear drums, deafening me. A second later, a jagged shaft of megavolts thumped into the ground maybe a mile away. Lightning zipped across the sky. More forks grounded, landing closer. I was the tallest element in the landscape and a sitting target.
The first wave of battle passed with only a splattering of rain, but the second attack charged in accompanied by a ferocious wind which stopped me dead. I edged forwards again, leaning into the gale. Without the warning of thunder, a blinding flash of lightning shot out of the clouds and thudded into the desert across the road from me. The earth shook, my ears popped, the wind was whacked out of my lungs and my brain fried as if a hot wire had been banged through my left temple and yanked out the right. I swerved uncontrollably across the road and came to a clumsy halt. Where the lightning had struck, a cloud of steam lingered.
Opening a sluice gate, the heavens rained down hailstones the size of gobstoppers. I dumped my bike, stumbled through the bouncing hail and assumed a crouching position beside the road, holding my hands over my head. There was nothing to shelter beneath, not even a bush. The best I could do was tuck myself into a ball and let my hands and back take the full force of the grapeshot. Close behind me, I heard another squib plunge to earth. The impact lifted me off my feet and threw me forwards. With bum higher than head, I knelt in a field of white gobstoppers, my brain reeling from another hot wire lobotomy. It started to bucket down with rain.
A shout came from the wound down window of a car which had pulled up on the opposite side of the road.
“Yo! Get in!”
A woman was beckoning me but I obviously wasn’t thinking straight.
“I’m going the other way,” I screamed. “Thanks.”
Still dazed but aware I was saturated, I leapt on the saddle and pedalled away as fast as zapped muscles could cut the wind. My body temperature had plummeted and I desperately needed to build up a sweat. I carved through a freezing monsoon, flood waters streaming down my body. After half an hour trying to outrun hypothermia, the rain fizzled out, the dark forces parted, and the sun shone through. I started to steam, and shake uncontrollably with delayed terror.
The overlanders’ diaries graphically describe being caught in storms which scattered their cattle and caused oxen to bolt and spill wagons. Backpackers were as alarmed and vulnerable as I was, holding their packs overhead for protection. Those who rode horseback shielded themselves from the fury of ‘descending ice’ by removing their saddles, hanging onto their mount and sheltering under the leather. Others ‘clung to the reaches of the wagons and allowed themselves to be drawn along under them’. When ‘the wrath of God passed over’, wagon covers were shredded and cattle were found bleeding, ‘cut through on the hips and back by the hail’. Thankfully I had been spared that much.
Ten miles further on, I climbed a low col. In the distance, a village was bathed in a warm glow which transformed the grey desert into a little Eden. It was a crossroads community of trashy trailer homes, junk strangled bungalows and ugly geodesic mishaps which stopped this side of the bisecting road. Down the other side flowed Sandy Creek, then more of the same grey desolation. The town sign said, ‘Farson, El. 6580, Pop. 325’. Cats and dogs must have featured prominently again, but hopefully there was enough human traffic to merit somewhere I could get something hot.
In the Oregon Café, I fought the shakes while the waitress stood over me administering black coffee like it was unpalatable medicine. Through the window the washed out car park steamed and the bridge across Sandy Creek glistened like fool’s gold. I apologised for spilling my drink.
“No problem,” the waitress said, pouring a fourth cup while her colleague set down hot soup and cut my bread for me. “You just ridden through that godawful storm? Man, you gotta be brave or plum horse crazy.”
“Er… Scottish,” I grunted, wringing out my baseball cap.
A handful of miles beyond the river crossing, I crossed a cattle grid and entered open range, which is to say the road wasn’t fenced in by barbed wire. A rush of wind and fanfare of thunder heralded a repeat of the empyrean drama. I thought to turn back but, in quick succession, rainstorm followed hailstorm followed fork lightning. I tried curling my body into a drainage ditch less than a metre deep, hoping the levee might provide some protection from the driving monsoon. It did, until a trickle of run-off grew into a tidal wave. I remounted and rode into the maelstrom. The road had disappeared, its course marked by hovering snow poles whose bottom metre was invisible under spray and water.
Ten minutes which felt like an hour later, the rain stopped and a shaft of sunlight struggled through. Behind the crack in the grey ceiling, another front was moving in, and another behind that. The landscape was flat with nothing remotely approaching a building or shelter. I was in for a cold, wet, miserable night under canvas, and turned off at a shallow draw to find a modicum of protection at the foot of its mean edge. The wind gradually dropped, the grey sky thinned, and a double rainbow appeared as if by way of an apology. Undressing to dry myself down and rub warmth into a numbed body, I discovered my shoulders and hands were a mass of blotches.
It had been a bruising day, but the air was crisp and spicy when I emerged early the next morning. The sun was a bent thumb from the horizon set in a clear blue sky, and the landscape sparkled under a heavy frost. Having been destroyed in the storms, millions of spider’s webs were being restrung between bushes thick with rime. I pissed on my bike to defrost the brakes and I struck out across the moribund plateau of the Green River Basin. Swelled by the conjunction of several streams near Farson, Sandy Creek had become Big Sandy River and etched a shallow valley to the south barely visible beneath the plateau. Beyond it, close to the horizon, the unexceptional contours of the Bad Lands Hills faded in and out through lingering mist. Peeking above the monotony, Pilot Rock was a pimple ten miles away which served as another waymark for the overlanders.
Along the highway, the only traffic was four-legged. Humorous billboards beside the blacktop featured an enormous elk (‘Caution: Heavy Traffic Conditions’), a charging antelope (‘Caution: Traffic Crossing at 55 mph’), and wild things zipping every which way (‘Caution: Traffic Entering from all Sides’). Every year in America, the human death toll from drivers colliding with beasts on the hoof (or visa versa) runs into several hundreds. Just one state (Michigan) chalks up over 65,000 deer-vehicle collisions per annum. I soon found out why.
The road kinked and dipped into the Big Sandy Valley. A line of bluffs layered in orange, yellow and white defended my right flank from the north-westerly gathering pace across the range. On my left, a bounding pronghorn stopped and watched me cycle by. She bounded some more, overtook me, then stopped to check me out again. Four times she repeated this performance, gradually angling closer to the road. A stone’s throw away and without warning, she made a dash for the tarmac, bisecting less than eight metres ahead of me before bouncing across the valley and up the steep sides of the bluff. Had I been in a car, one or both of us would now be pushing up sagebrush.
Highway 28 climbed back onto the plateau then swept off a ragged escarpment into the Green River Valley, site of many a fur trappers’ rendezvous which so excited me back in St. Louis. The banks of the torrid river were thick with reeds and cottonwoods, and hundreds of martins darted beneath the bridge in a dizzying display of aerobatics. On the far bank, three white pelicans preened themselves, basking in the sun. The ultra violets were full on and the frost had melted, but the wind chill could have frozen the nuts off a penguin.
Fifty metres downstream from the modern bridge, the Lombard Ferry was another Mormon enterprise invariably boycotted by the westward bound refusing to fork out $8 a wagon to cross. Such was the bottleneck in 1849, it took several days to get across. Meanwhile the encampments either side of the river vociferously debated the best route forwards. From the Green River, most pilgrims and gold seekers would cut south-east aiming for Fort Bridger, named after that trapper turned government peace broker Jim Bridger. There was nothing but an interstate for me to link with in the south, followed by several hundred miles of mind-numbing cycling to Salt Lake City. I bade farewell to the Mormon Trail for good and set off on a less popular line through the Rockies tracking the western leg of Sublette’s Cut-off.
I turned north-west into a full frontal. An hour earlier the ground had been frozen solid but now dust was everywhere — on the ground, in the air, gumming up my gears. Behind my bandana, I could taste it and feel it running down my face in streams of cold sweat. My panniers and clothing were impregnated with it, and my glasses had to be regularly wiped clean. I could sympathise with the Forty-Niner who wrote, ‘You may think that dust is a small matter… but it is one of the most serious difficulties on the route. I have eaten many a meal without daring to bring my teeth together on account of the sand. Sand wears away teeth and teeth are precious.’ For a month now, everything I ate had crunched.
For the remainder of the day I sparred with the predator and didn’t land a single blow, but then I couldn’t see much through the dust storm. I turned onto a ridge route running along the exposed southern edge of the Slate Creek Valley and the onslaught subsided to occasional flurries. Beyond the valley and angled due north, the snow capped peaks of Commissary Ridge bore out a curious snippet I had gleaned off the radio. The Rocky Mountains were cloaked in 138% more snow than was typical for this time of year. Should a heat wave hit the Great Basin, as was usual at the beginning of summer, the authorities were concerned about the sudden surge of meltwater and the danger of flash floods which could charge down a gulch, overwhelm the road, and wash away the traffic. The frame of mind I was in, it would have been a blessing.
For no apparent reason, barbed wire reappeared between the road and the lip of the escarpment on my right. Out of the haze, a couple of blokes emerged walking the wire, checking its tension. They leaned into the wind, staring and pointing at me like I shouldn’t have been there. Beyond a low rise, a team of labourers and a handful of plant were closing off the range on the opposite side of the road. Considering it is such a vast empty landscape, I had seen precious little open space in the Cowboy State. For hundreds of miles, barbed wire had hemmed me in as surely as brick walls, regardless that thousands of square miles of near empty desert lay the other side. It separated the public highway from public land in the shape of BLM land, and was erected by protectionist ranchers who had bought the grazing rights for herds I had yet to see.
Barbed wire similar to today’s was patented by Joseph Glidden of Illinois in 1874, after experiments using a converted coffee mill, but there were 101 different designs of spiked wire in the nineteenth century. On the walls of cafés, I had seen boards displaying Brigg’s Obvious, Brinkerhoff’s Riveted Splicer, Scutt’s Arrow Plate and god-knows-who else’s vicious contrivance. Historically a line of conflict between the romantic footloose cowboy and the prosaic grounded farmer, the desert was now penned in by the ‘Devil’s hatband’ while the fields of Illinois lay unfenced. The freedom to roam which cattlemen fought to preserve by tearing down fences was a thing of the past, thanks to cattlemen erecting fences.
The Panther hammered me from the side with 50 mph incursions as I crossed a spur of Commissary Ridge. Time and again I had to thrust out a foot to prevent being toppled. I considered giving up and trying Larry Donovan Smith’s trick of hitch-biking, but there was no traffic. I contemplated taking shelter and waiting for the evening lull, but there was nowhere to stick a tent this side of the shiny new wire. I was sick of cycling, sick of life, but my brain fixed on something my mother-in-law once said. Staggering into her kitchen after a particularly awful ride through a Lincolnshire snow storm, I commented that I was getting too old for this cycling malarkey. “You’ll never give up riding your bicycle,” Pauline observed. She hadn’t meant it the way I now mentally chanted it, but the mantra kept me pushing onwards.
Pauline’s words carried me out of the high desert, down through rounded hills chaperoning the furious floods of Fontenelle Creek and the Hams Fork River. In and out of the coal mining town of Kemmerer, the mantra prodded me to struggle up the side of the small mountain beyond, past open cast wounds. Finally, at day’s end, I found respite several thousand feet below the high desert in a dramatic slash through the tail end of the Wyoming Range. At last I was in the midst of real mountains, crossing the Rockies the way ranges should be. High rock buttes and steep alluvial fans penned in the thoroughfares, forcing road, rail and river to compete for space. Tomorrow I would enter Utah, a state where the wind didn’t blow, according to the Mormons from Logan I had shared a camp fire with. On the radio, the heat wave feared by those who measured the unseasonal snow cap was the late night headline. It had engulfed the east coast. Washington was wilting under 43°C and electricity companies were worried the rush to turn on air conditioning units would overload the system. A quarter of an hour later, in the wilds of the Cowboy State, hail scythed down and the temperature dropped below freezing.