Great Divide Rally 2025

A few weekends ago E and Mitch (me) participated in the Noncours Great Divide Rally, a regularity rally in the mountains northwest of Helena. 

I only drove to get us there and back. E drove from the entire 103 miles of the rally itself. 

 Actually, E drove a good chunk of the way there as well.

The evening before the rally I took a walk on the flanks of Mount Helena, at a friend's suggestion. Helena is one of Montana's most nicely situated cities, I think. E wanted to be perfectly rested for driving the next day and stayed behind at the hotel.

The next morning I got the Wordle (tm) in two, which I took to be a very good sign.

This black Audi wagon is owned and was helmed by the L family, of whom RL alerted me to the existence of the rally. Thanks, RL!

And we're off!

This was either a bit before or a bit after going over a horrifying citizen-created speedbump (not sure how that's legal, but). The road book warned of its existence and E was appropriately cautious driving over it, but Ludwig's front license plate still scraped the ground. (The Ls said their car nearly high-centered on it.)

At the end of the first stage in Birdseye we got this obligatory artsy shot of the only other air-cooled, rear-engined participating vehicle: an orange (same orange as Ludwig) 1974 (same year as Ludwig) VW Type 181, aka 'Thing'. 

It is probably only a month or two newer than Ludwig (b. 10.24.1973). At least I think it's newer. I can't tell for sure from just the VIN.

The next stage climbed over the Great Divide at Flesher Pass on MT State Secondary 279.

The southern end of the Scapegoat Wilderness came into view as we coasted down the Pacific side of Flesher Pass.

In Lincoln the stage ended and lunch was had.

This is the entire field of competitors. Except for that white Dodge truck at left, which was a support vehicle. After Ludwig, the next two vehicles were, respectively, an RHD Toyota Land Cruiser and an RHD Toyota Prado SX5. Then an early-80s Volvo wagon.

Taking on the next stage, road book in hand.

It was all gravel to the top of Stemple Pass.

As we and the Thing were the slowest participants and the most likely to break down (humpf), we were always started last to eliminate the need for passing. 

Back down into the Atlantic watershed.

And back toward Helena. (Now there's a question: Is Helena the state capital closest to the Great Divide? It's gotta be, right? <checks> It is!)

E did an excellent job, especially given that Ludwig's accelerator cable is too long which means it doesn't allow for either full travel (that is, flooring it doesn't floor it) or precise control, both of which are kind of super-necessary for this type of rally. (At least it didn't break.) Also, his speedometer is off--way off--and I had to use Waze to report to her her speed, but in the mountains the signal was spotty. Anyway, on to next year!

49 > 8

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that Ludwig has new license plates. Well, new old plates. Different plates. 

A long time ago I bought a 1974 set from Fergus County (8) and jumped through the minor hoops required to get them legal. While we lived there I sporadically looked for some from Missoula County (4) and found a couple pairs, but being a much-desired county number they were out of our range...a couple hundred dollars a pair if I remember correctly.  When we lived in Deer Lodge County (30) I looked for tags with that number but never found any. 

I'd mostly given up but recently stumbled upon a Park County (49) pair and snatched them up toot suite. 

(By the way, if anyone has a line on a pair of 1971 Park County MT plates for Gertie, I'd love to hear about it. She sports Yellowstone County (3) plates currently.)

<pedantic text>
Like a few other states, the leading number on Montana's license plates denotes the county where they were issued. Like all but one* of those states, the county's number is determined by its population at the time they developed the system; in Montana's case they used the figures from the 1920 census. And here arises a minor mystery.

Why was Park County assigned 49? There are 56 counties in Montana and Park County was never anywhere near the bottom seven or even the bottom thirty in population. It should have been assigned 9, in fact. (If the numbers were reassigned according to the 2020 census it'd be 11.)

I asked the question on a facebook community page and, naturally, received mostly tinfoil hat-type answers. There were bribes involved (why?); someone on the license plate numbers commission was jilted by a lover from Livingston; the railroad did it for opaque reasons, blah blah blah. One person responded with what is almost certainly the correct answer: it was a simple transposition error. Powder River County got the 9 Park County shoulda gotten and vice versa.

Some year I'll delve into the newspaper and transportation department archives to confirm this, but until then I'm applying Occam's Razor.

*Wyoming has a bonkers scheme where the county numbers are assigned in order of the total value of each county's taxable property, as of 1930. 

Mallard's Rest

Mallard's Rest is a fishing access site south of us on US 89 with a good number of campsites. Being just off the road there's a fair amount of noise, and being an FAS it's really more about fishing boats than camping, but it's easy as hell to get to and there are actually a few pretty decent sites. It's a good place to just go and laze and throw rocks into a river. And it's fantastic place for observing alpenglow (not pictured).

Longtime readers of this blog may recognize Mallard's Rest as the campground where I (Mitch) lived during the week for three months during the summer of 2015. (Long story.) On this recent weekend the Smaller One and I picked my favorite site. It was just us.

Again: a good place to laze, throw rocks in a river, and have a campfire.

Except sometimes in fall it's pretty windy and when one gets up from one's campchair the wind blows it into the fire and melts it. Bye bye, campchair, and thank you for your decades of service.

Weekend in the Castles

We camped at Grasshopper Campground, east of White Sulphur Springs in the Castle Mountains, with another VW family. It's a bit less than two hours away. 

Lots of sitting around the fire b.s.ing, not many pictures. Sorry! 

Halfmoon in the Ominous Mountains

We drove about an hour and-a-half to Halfmoon Campground, in the Awaxaawippíia ("Ominous Mountains", aka the Crazy Mountains or just "The Crazies") north of Big Timber. It was pretty close to our anniversary so this counted as our (mostly) annual anniversary camping trip.

Our site was perched on the edge of a densely-wooded ravine.

Big Timber Peak 10,759 ft / 3,279 m

There was a short hike through vegetation to a waterfall. You can keep walking and find more waterfalls. 

Aspen fleabane Erigeron speciosus

Hemlock Water Parsnip, maybe?

Beebalm Monarda fistulosa

some species of Indian Paintbrush

Orange Hawkweed Hieracium aurantiacum (non-native)

Upper Big Timber Falls

The older child came along too (see first picture) but she was shy about being in photos. Hey, so was I!

It rained a little bit on the way home.