HHS grads bike Wild West Route, raise money for nonprofit

Five Homewood High School graduates embarked on the trip of a lifetime in July: biking 2,700 miles from the Canadian to the Mexican borders over the course of 34 days.

The group consisted of Reed Whetstone, Adam Westfall, Ian Ross, Willis Wood and Thomas Gordon. They didn’t just go biking, though. They asked their friends and family to donate 1-10 cents per mile of the journey to raise money for The Crisis Center of Birmingham. In total, the trip raised more than $8,000.

“It’s cool to be able to hang out with your buddies from high school, but I think what’s really going to last for me is being able to give back,” Whetstone said. “It’s been really incredible, the amount of support we’ve seen.”

Their original goal was $5,000, and they surpassed that amount within two weeks of posting about the fundraiser. They have since raised their goal to $10,000 and still continue to see more money coming in.

The Crisis Center of Birmingham is a nonprofit organization that offers mental health services, sexual assault services and crisis intervention. Whetstone said the center has seen an increase of calls since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With everything going on right now, it’s fitting,” Whetstone said.

The five bike riders graduated from HHS in 2014. The older they get, though, the more difficult it becomes to plan get-togethers, Whetstone said.

Last year, Wood asked the guys if they would be interested in biking the Wild West Route. This is a well-established route that starts in Montana and ends in Arizona. Only 20% of the route is on paved roads, and most of the riding is on dirt roads. Limited resupply options also present a challenge — oftentimes, a rider will go 90 miles or more without encountering any towns.

Backpackers are typically told to plan for 40-60 days of riding, but the Homewood group planned to traverse the 2,700 mile route in 35 days. They finished one day early. One part of the route was closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the group also had to cut around some Navajo Nation lands. This made the route a little shorter and allowed the group to speed up a bit.

Dividing 2,700 miles by 34 days averages out to about 80 miles per day. But Whetstone said distance looked different each day for them.

“When you’re in Montana and Idaho, there is a tremendous amount of big mountain climbs and mountain passes,” he said. “If we had a day that was a climb that was going to be a few thousand feet or something like that, that would take a big chunk out of our day.”

Their endurance kicked up as they inched closer to the Mexican border, he said. A group also rides faster as people drop out, and the Homewood group lost two along the way.

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE

Ross remembers exactly what he was doing just before getting into a wreck that would dislocate his elbow. He was listening to a Harry Potter audiobook.

It was the 10th day of the trip, and Ross said they had fallen into a rhythm. Since quarantine began, he started relistening to the Harry Potter series. He was on the fifth book. The group had spent about five hours biking uphill and stopped for lunch at the top. Ross was the third to finish his lunch and began a descent that would last about 10 miles.

“I was really into it, and I was kind of biking alone,” he said. “At the very end of it, I really felt like I had done all of the hard stuff that it would have to do, so I got too relaxed.”

Before this trip, Ross had never been much of a biker, he said, unlike his friends. He completed the Appalachian Trail in 2018, so he brought to the table his experience in long-distance backpacking.

“So they’re all better than me, and I kind of felt bad about that because at the end of all these mountains we’d go down, they’d all be done and waiting for me at the bottom,” he said. “I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry guys,’ when I pull up five minutes later. … So I was pushing myself a little too much, and when I went down this hill, I let my ego get the best of me.”

At the bottom of the hill was a turn, and Ross said he hit the turn fine going around it. He was riding at a speed of about 25 to 35 mph.

“But then I stopped paying attention, and you need to always be paying attention when you’re riding like that,” he said.

The ground turned from hard-packed dirt to beach sand. When he hit the sand, his front tire locked up, and the back tire kept going.

Ross flew over the handlebars and dove like Superman into the ground, he said. The impact immediately dislocated his right elbow.

“You know how most crashes where you’re about to fall are in slow motion? And you have  this out-of-body experience? This crash wasn’t anything like that at all,” he said. “I was so checked out. It was like I was going and I was fine, and ‘Oh, look at this pretty scenery,’ and then I’m standing from the crash, and my arm is dangling.”

He was so frustrated that he kicked his bike. When Wood and Westfall caught up to Ross, they went into wilderness-survival mode, and Ross asked them to check on the bike.

“The adrenaline was extremely powerful,” he said. “When the guys got there, I was like, ‘I feel fine,’ but I knew the adrenaline was covering it.”

Over a 15-minute period, Ross went from being able to stand and talk to being completely immobile. If he moved his left foot at all, the pain was excruciating, he said. He was close to passing out, but Wood asked him concussion and shock protocol questions every few minutes.

Out of all the places for Ross to crash, this crash happened in Bitterroot National Forest, which was one of the most remote locations in the lower 48 states. The nearest town, Elk City, was about 80 miles away — and “town” is defined loosely by Birmingham standards.

“That town was like a post office and a bar, so that was useless to us even if we could get to that, and I couldn’t move.”

The group had a few SOS beacons that could alert emergency responders of their exact location. Still, it took three hours for a helicopter to arrive. During this time, Ross said he continued to deteriorate. The pain kept increasing, and with every 30 minutes, he grew more and more exhausted. Finally it arrived, and the first responders gave Ross a fentanyl drip.

“I tried to say goodbye to the guys,” he said. “It was all happening very quickly, and I wish I was able to come up with something more elegant, meaningful and profound to say. I know they’re carrying on with this crazy adventure that requires an unbelievable amount of stamina and willpower and endurance.”

It was the worst physical pain he’s ever experienced, but the worst part was the sense of defeat and leaving the group, he said.

“I have completely now reconciled with it, ”he said. “There’s always success in failure, in part because to fail, you have to put yourself out there. You have to take a risk.”

He said he will always remember waiting on the helicopter, on the verge of tears, and Westfall saying to him, “If you’re guaranteed success, then you’re not adventuring.”

Ross wasn’t the only one to bow out of the adventure. Westfall was the last to commit to the trip because he was worried he wouldn’t have time. He received a phone call at the airport on his way to the starting point, and a company with which he interviewed offered him a job as a biomedical designer in Colorado. He was stoked to take the job, he said, but this meant he would need to start working within a few weeks.

Westfall rode about 1,400 miles of trail, and then he caught a ride with a friend and began his way back to Colorado.

“It was a really stressful deal,” he said. “It was funny — I didn’t have a place to move to until I came back, got off the bike, and in one day found a place to live.

“But I was psyched to get the time that I did and psyched to see the fundraising go so well. It was never about getting to Mexico for me. It was about spending time with my buddies and doing fundraising for the crisis center. I was happy with the trip overall.”

MAKING INTERESTING MEMORIES

Out of the 34-day trip, the group only spent a few nights in hotels. They carried tarps and sleeping systems on their bikes.

“As we got further down, there were less bugs, but the mosquitos were insane in Montana,” he said. “That was one of the main reasons we wanted to have tents.”

It only rained a couple of times throughout the trips. But when it rained, it poured, and Whetstone said he remembers how scary one of the flash floods felt to him.

“There was lightning going off, and we were in this valley, but it was purely exposed,” he said. “We were having to get off our bikes and carry our bikes through water that was almost up to my knees. I think we got a hotel after that one.”

They would stop at the small towns along the way every few days to resupply. A typical day’s breakfast would be instant oatmeal muffins or pastries from the gas station. For lunch, Whetstone said he would make tuna burritos or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Dinner was instant rice with protein or ramen noodles with instant mashed potatoes.

“The M.O. for the trip was to get the cheapest, highest calorie, easiest to pack thing you could find,” Whetstone said. “I was eating pretty well before this trip, healthy and everything, and then the diet was just horrible. It ruined me. A lot of sugar.”

All of the national forests were breathtaking, he said. Whetstone said he had no idea how beautiful Idaho would be. The remoteness of the route was also interesting but required some mechanical knowledge, he said.

“The areas where there had been wildfires were hauntingly beautiful — these popsicle sticks poking out of the ground that are all black,” he said.

Seeing the Grand Canyon was one of Whetstone’s trip highlights, he said. To bypass the Navajo Nations land, Whetstone and Wood had to hike their bikes through the Grand Canyon for 25 miles. There was an almost 5,000-feet elevation gain.

“That was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life,” Whetstone said. “We bought some rope and strapped our bikes on, and then we used our clothes as padding around our waists and shoulders. It was really uncomfortable.”

They didn’t bring any hiking shoes with them, and biking shoes which are neither lightweight nor flexible. For half of the walk, Whetstone walked in sandals, which he said destroyed his feet. It was nonetheless a really cool experience, he said.

One difficult thing about the trip was how long it was. “By the end of it, we were about ready to be done with it,” he said.

Ross is now back at the University of Alabama studying law and said he is almost fully recovered. Whetstone and Wood are living together in Colorado. Gordon is back at All Saints Episcopal in Homewood, where he works as a youth pastor, and Westfall is in Colorado working at his new job. Whetstone said he’s glad they were able to get together and make this trip happen.

“We did about 90% of the established route and did everything we could to stay on route,” Whetstone said. “So I’m pretty proud of that. It was a big accomplishment.”