MT BDR

About this event

The Montana Backcountry Discovery Route is not an organised event but a mapped route you ride yourself — roughly nine hundred miles in eight sections, usually taking seven to nine days. It is the twenty-third route published by the non-profit Backcountry Discovery Routes and completes their western network. The line runs north from Island Park, Idaho to the Canadian border near Eureka, Montana, crossing more than thirteen mountain ranges on the way: the Gravelly Range, the Ruby River valley, the East Pioneers, the Highlands and the Cabinets. Surfaces run from gravel to rough two-track, with alpine ridgelines, dense pine forest, old mining towns and long stretches of open ranchland in between. Virginia City, Butte, Lincoln, Seeley Lake, Thompson Falls and Libby all sit on or near the route. Rated challenging, with optional harder sections. Much of it is above eight thousand feet, and the season is July to September — the Gravelly Range does not open until the first of July.