Bruntjen hits 2,100-mile mark on Tour Divide

The 2,780-mile route of trails and rugged roads that make up the Tour Divide mountain bike race aren’t exactly the Yellow Brick Road, but the “lions, tigers and bears” refrain isn’t far off.

Eric Bruntjen

Three-quarters of the way through the race, Eric Bruntjen’s checklist of beasts he has seen that would have sent Dorothy’s “Wizard of Oz” friends into a frenzy goes like this:

Lions. Check. (A cougar is a mountain lion, after all. He surprised one Sunday morning while barreling up a mountain pass in southern Colorado.)

Tigers. Not yet.

Bears. Check. Black and grizzly.

Oh my.

If you’ve been following Bruntjen’s progress online on the Herald-Republic’s “Out There” outdoors blog (sports yakima.com/out-there) or on the Tour

Divide site (tourdivide.org),

you already know why he’s doing it — to generate enough financial pledges to buy a specialized all-terrain wheelchair for injured Iraq war veteran Evan Mettie. You also know that that he has proven to be a far stronger competitor than perhaps even his staunchest supporters expected.

He is, after all, a 38-year-old information technology specialist from Yakima, who stands 6-foot-6 and weighs 225 pounds — not exactly the tale-of-the-tape one might expect for a guy competing against top endurance athletes from around the world.

The 42 riders in this year’s Tour Divide field came from England, Germany, Italy, Austria, Canada and all over the United States; 14 have already dropped out, felled by mechanical issues, injuries, logistical nightmares, day after day of terrible weather or a simple failure of will.

Not Bruntjen.

This morning he will begin his 19th day on the trail, having already ridden about 2,100 miles — across parts of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, across Montana,

Wyoming and Colorado. He spent most of Monday climbing and descending from passes in the San Juan Mountains of northern New Mexico.

Yes: He is in New Mexico. One state to go.

Over the last week, his journey has taken him to great highs and terrible lows.

On Thursday night, he rode into Kremmling, Colo., in a torrential downpour. Not only had a day of rain and deep must cost him his bicycle’s rear brake pads — which he’d just had put on hours earlier in Steamboat Springs — he found that a snap on his rear rack had broken and his tent, sleeping bags and his only dry clothes were gone. They had fallen out somewhere on the road.

But a night motel clerk pretty much said, “Hey, here’s my car key, why don’t you drive back the way you came and see if you can find your stuff?”

And, remarkably, he did.

Then, on Saturday, he was slammed by a huge thunderstorm that made him seek refuge. He ended up going several miles off the route to try to find somebody that would put him up, and finally he pounded on the door of a rancher who gave him a place to stay for the night.

“For 40 wet and moldy and muddy dollars,” Bruntjen recalled in one of his semi-regular call-ins to the Herald-Republic, “I got a room, no lights, no water, no heat but a working roof and what I swear to God was a horse-hair mattress. It just felt like heaven, though, compared to the weather at night.”

And the next day, he charged up and over four mountain passes, including Indiana Pass (elev. 11,910 feet). That night, when he pulled into the tiny town of Platoro, Colo., he pulled his bicycle up in front of the local bar — “It’s a one-bar town,” he noted — there were three people on the deck actually awaiting his arrival.

The bar patrons had been following the race on the Internet and knew he was getting close, and he was welcomed in like an arriving dignitary and asked to sign the leaderboard printout they had hanging on the wall.

And, of course, the reason Bruntjen is doing the trip is to generate enough per-mile pledges to tourdechair@gmail.com to be able to purchase that specialized wheelchair for Evan Mettie. (You can write a check to the “Evan Mettie Donation” fund at any U.S. Bank.) While heading up Boreas Pass in Colorado, he had a nice little experience that touched him.

He happened to come along alongside a mountain-biking couple heading up the same pass, and because they were friendly, he rode along with them for a while. On the climb, he told them about the race and what he was doing.

At the top of the pass, before Bruntjen left them behind, the couple handed him a $20 bill.

“That’s for Evan,” the man told him.

So is Eric Bruntjen’s ride.