Wait, did day four not end happy at Butts Cabin? Unfortunately not. The wildfire, of which we saw the smoke, would mess up our planned stay at Butts Cabin and force us to use an alternative road out of the Flathead area.
Riding statistics: on Thursday August 4, 2022, the 4th day on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route route, it took 01:24h (01:14h moving time), between 18:10 and 19:35, to cover 18 km (11 miles), including 206 m (676 ft) elevation gain, with an average speed of 15 km/h (9 mph). During today's ride the average temperature was 21 °C (72 °F) with a minimum of 18 °C (66 °F) and a maximum of 34 °C (98 °F).
Totals: So far, it took 0 days, 23 hours, 49 minutes and 30 seconds of cycling time to cover 318 km (197 miles), including 3720 m (12205 ft) elevation gain, with an average speed of 13.4 km/h (8.3 mph).
Wildfires
While talking with the persons on the ATV a pickup stopped as well. It was a guy from working for the government working in the area. He was told to evacuate and move out of the area. He was also instructed that (before an official evacuation statement is released) to inform people in the area to move north. Ideally (advice not mandatory) we should move back to Corbin (the place where we had our first break of the day). That would in fact mean we had to go all the way back to Sparwood, where we came from this morning. We shows him our maps and told him our plans. Then his advice was to go back 18 km (12 miles) to Harvey Campground which we have passed earlier this afternoon. All could be OK, but whenever there is a change in wind direction we could be in big trouble. Therefor we had no problem following his advice.
Back to Harvey campground
Long story short. After packing our gear and loading our bikes, we had to cycle back another 12 miles to a Campground and take a detour tomorrow so that we are not going as far south as we had planned to. This added some more miles to already a long day (but which we enjoyed a lot). When we arrived at the Harvey Campground there were already three guys. They were there for their work. They worked for the government (measuring and checking things in the area). They had tried to come to the campground via the same road as we had traveled earlier today using their two large 4×4 pickups and a small caravan. For the cars it was more-or-less OK, for the caravan not so. So they had to turn around (no idea how they did that on that road). So fortunately we were not alone when we had to sleep in our tents in bear country (the Grizzly Highway). Not only had we switched from a cozy cabin to our tents, we now also had to hang our food. Honestly, we did great. It did not look for a moment that we were starters. Proud on ourselves!