How Far is Too Far: Smoke & Fire 400

Editor’s note: Edyn sent in this writeup of his 2024 Smoke and Fire ride with friend Oliver Smith. Not many photos were supplied with this piece, so we’re including those, but Oliver and Edyn also described some lovely sleep deprived imagery in their own words, so their descriptions were fed into Midjourney to generate some fun and abstract renderings of what bike hallucinations can feel like sometimes. If you’ve never ridden We hope you enjoy!

The Smoke and Fire is a 400ish-mile bike race on the backroads of Idaho deep in the backcountry. I did this race in 2022 as my first ever bikepacking race, and I came back to take it on again in 2024, this time with a friend. Typically this route is a loop but in 2022 the route was an out-and-back on the north side due to fires. With more big fires in the area, it also looked like there would be a reroute this year. The course ended up being an out-and-back on the south side so I have never raced the full loop but I have raced both the north and south sides. I decided I was going to do the Smoke and Fire while I was racing the Tour Divide in June. I texted one of my friends and told him “we’re gonna set a fkn FKT on the Smoke and Fire”. I’m not sure why I decided I wanted to do more bikepack racing while I was on one of the biggest races in the world because typically after pushing your body like that you don’t want anything to do with it for a few weeks after until you forget all the bad parts and how hard it was. But my friend, Oliver, was down so once I got home from the Divide we started getting ready for the Smoke and Fire. 

The new route was even longer, totaling 450 miles, and because we wouldn’t have a chance to set a course record because it was not the original route our goal changed from going fast to simply seeing how far we could possibly push our bodies, meaning we would do it in one push with no sleep and carrying minimal gear. The race started at midnight Tuesday night so we made the two-hour drive to Boise Tuesday morning. We probably should have been resting the whole day before because it would be the last chance we got to for a long time however we got the grand plan to go river surfing and after getting exhausted from that we did our final shopping and drove to a friends house to set up our bikes and try to get at least an hour of sleep. 

I was able to get a little sleep and after stuffing down a cold burrito for breakfast we road to the start. It was a neutral rollout but after getting out of the city it was like a gun went off and people started pushing it hard. Knowing that no one could hold that pace for a long time Oliver and I just continued a relatively chill pace and soon enough we were passing people who had blown up. In the dark, we could feel the smoke from the wildfires stinging in our lungs and once the sun came up we could see how bad it really was. The sun came up slowly in a hazy red ball and we could barely see the outlines of the surrounding mountains covered in a dense blanket of smoke. Luckily as the day progressed the smoke gradually dissipated and soon enough we could breathe easily. We made it to the Smokey Bar, a small convenience store, around 10:30 where Oliver and I’s boss, at the bike shop we work at, had a tent set up with water and drink mix so we stopped here for a quick break and ate some food from the store.

We reached Ketchum, a town in our small valley we were both familiar with, in the late afternoon and got five burgers each. We were stopped for a little less than an hour and after getting some snacks at a gas station we were off again. Just outside of Ketchum was some fun singletrack where we gained time as we were riding mountain bikes. The start of the long night happened when we got to the base of the notorious Titas Lake climb, a two-mile section of trail with nearly 1500 feet of elevation gain. After pushing our bikes for what felt like hours we finally made it to the top where we passed a few people who were stopped to get some sleep. 

The turnaround for the out and back happened at Fisher Williams trail, another fun singletrack trail where we gained time on mountain bikes. However, being a little more than 24 hours in this is where the sleep deprivation started to hit. I was riding with Oliver close behind me when I heard him say “Edyn I think you broke a spoke, your wheel is wobbling a ton” or something along those lines, my heart sank thinking great not only are we freezing in the middle of nowhere but now we have to fix my bike. After stopping and checking my wheel it had no broken spokes and it was still true as ever so whether it was shadows from our bike lights or the double shot five-hour energy Oliver took half an hour before or a combination of both playing tricks with his eyes this was the first of many hallucinations and crazy dreams to come.

The route wasn’t a perfect out and back, as on the way back it was more direct avoiding some of the singletrack sections. One of these more direct options was a 16-mile section of highway right after Fisher Williams. Being around two in the morning we didn’t see a single car so we turned off all our lights and rode in complete darkness. It was the new moon making this darkness so utterly dark we couldn’t even see the faintest outline of the jagged peaks surrounding us. We rode with only the hint of where to go by the faint glow of starlight barely illuminating the dashed yellow line in the middle of the road. This is where my first hallucinations started, but they were very minor and actually pretty cool. When I looked up at the stars they were swirling like someone had stirred them up, like snowflakes when you lay on your back and watch them fall.

This is also where it started to get cold. Both Oliver and I’s kits were as minimal as could be, looking at our bikes you would think we were going on a long day ride at most, so lacking in the warm weather gear we had no choice, we couldn’t have stopped and slept if we wanted to, we had to keep pedaling to stay warm. Early in the grey morning light, we crossed paths with my dad, who was also doing the race and headed out to the turnaround. This was his first bikepacking race and he camped a little bit out of Ketchum at a place called Frostbite Flats, probably one of the coldest places he could have chosen, after giving him a quick high five we were riding again desperate to keep moving as to not get frostbite ourselves. We rolled back into Ketchum a little more than an hour later and quickly got sucked into the soft warm Starbucks chairs as we ate a hot breakfast and resupplied for the last leg of our trip. After wasting almost another hour trying to warm ourselves up we were once again back on our bikes. With the sun finally coming back up we both felt a second wind of energy, we made it through the night. However, we were far from the hardest part which we would find out that evening.

The hours blurred together. We finally made it to Featherville, less than 100 miles from the end, and though we felt oh so close we were still so agonizingly far. On the climb out of Featherville is where fatigue hit me like a wall. My legs felt like lead, and each pedal stroke required more willpower than strength. Sleep deprivation dulled my focus, making the simplest tasks like eating or even staying upright feel monumental

Mentally, it became a battle to convince myself to keep going, to ignore the pain and the overwhelming desire to stop. It was hot and the climb seemed to continue forever. Once we rounded the summit there was another second wind of energy we had about 80 miles left, mostly downhill. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a smooth downhill with the road covered in deep sand and washboards.

This is where the hallucinations really started to happen, Oliver saw artwork in the pine needles on the ground and in the rocks in the river, they came together to create words and pictures. I hadn’t had many hallucinations until the sun went down but once it was dark I started to have full-on dreams while riding my bike.

I woke up to Oliver yelling at me asking where I was going. While riding my bike I had fallen asleep enough to dream. I dreamt I was in an XC mountain bike race, I thought I had just crossed the finish line so I turned around to cheer on my teammates. In reality, I had turned around and started going back the wrong way, the way we had come from. After Oliver snapped me out of it we had to stop and look at the map just to confirm which way to go, our minds so beaten down that the simple task of following a line on the screen became difficult, even though the right way was clear. Apparently, at some time during the night, I started singing, I still have no recollection of this but Oliver says I sang many different songs. 

We were riding on the edge of a reservoir with at least a 100-foot drop to the water on our left side. Given the smoothest part of the road was that side I still think it is a miracle one of us didn’t ride off the cliff. My memory of this part of the race is in chunks, one hazy dream after the other. “What’s that!?” I heard Oliver yell, he was off his bike shining his light into darkness saying he saw a massive bird with a wingspan the size of a school bus. At this point, I was too tired to care and yelled back saying there’s nothing there, get back on your bike. He took a video and after looking at it with a more straight head he was looking at the back of the dam or a cliff and the screech of an eagle in the background convinced him he was seeing a huge bird. 

There was one final climb before the finish, a steep dirt road separating us from a warm bed. I started dreaming again, this time I was towing a car up the hill with my bike, it felt too easy so I turned around to make sure the car was still attached. Once again in reality I had turned around and started backtracking down the hill. Oliver yelled and snapped me out of it, and even though we knew the right way was clearly up the steep hill, we didn’t know which way was up, forcing us to consult the map, something we could barely do that took longer than five minutes every time we tried. Somewhere along this climb another rider passed us and I faintly remember him trying to start a conversation but I’m not sure either Oliver or I responded, we were zombies who could only do one thing, pedal our bikes. After getting to the top of this final climb it was truly downhill to the finish. There was one final piece of single track and with the route loaded on my Garmin, I was riding in front making sure we didn’t miss any turns. Oliver was no more than a few seconds behind me but somehow he missed when I took a sharp left. I realized he wasn’t behind me a few hundred feet later so I stopped and tried to call him, just as I pulled out my phone it died so I yelled his name hoping he would hear me. I could see his bike light less than a hundred feet away across a field and he could see me but somehow we couldn’t figure out how to find each other. Eventually, I gave up, I knew he had a phone and could make his way to the finish, which we were less than a mile from. I slowly rolled through Boise to the finish and Oliver showed up a few minutes later. 

I’m not sure if finishing gave Oliver more energy but somehow he talked for longer than an hour with the rider who had passed us earlier as I was just trying to keep my eyes open while sitting on a park bench. Eventually, we made it back to the place we were staying and after a shower, I was instantly asleep. We finished early Friday morning, a little more than 51 hours after starting. We had done it. With no sleep. 

This race was however not my only focus for the fall riding season as I was racing in the  Idaho Nica league, and unfortunately one of the races was that Saturday, Oliver and I woke up at about four Friday afternoon. Both our phones were dead so we had no idea what time it was. We went outside and saw the sun was a little low on the horizon so we thought it was maybe late morning. After charging our phones we saw how late it really was so we packed the car fast and hit the road. We still had an eight-hour drive across Idaho ahead of us and I had a mountain bike race the next day. Miraculously we made it to the race venue in one piece around one in the morning Saturday. That morning, still barely aware of our reality both Oliver and I struggled to hold a conversation, and somehow I raced my bike. 

For the following week, I was delirious, replaying fragments of the race in my head like a fever dream. My body and brain ached, but we had done it. We had ridden our bikes for more than two days straight, pushing ourselves farther than I ever thought I could go. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t pretty, but we made it to the end, proving that sometimes dumb teenagers with an idea, some stubbornness, and a bike can do some pretty cool things.

Oliver’s Writeup: Smoke ‘n’ Fire 400. What a wild, wild ride. 

Once upon a time, Edyn texted me out of the blue while racing the Tour Divide at about 11 pm, somewhere in Montana. “Yo, you and me are doing SnF this yr.” Well shit, I guess I have to do it now. But being young and dumb, we naturally made the decision to do the race in one push with zero sleep. 

I’ll prefix this with I’m a noob in the ultra world. I race XC mtbs, with a big chunk of my training based around 1-4 minute power, not so much 48hr power. I’ve done two full centuries in my life, I had zero clue if my body or brain would hold up. The route is unforgiving, with massive temp swings and seemingly endless washboard roads, to gnarly remote singletrack with hike-a-biking. Our goals were ambitious and with a very skimpy gear selection, there was no plan b. At 12 am, we took off. 

Any bit of self-doubt quickly faded away as we rode further. Even with hundreds of miles remaining, we were in the moment, riding our bikes in beautiful Idaho.

After about 24 hours of riding, and almost 2 days awake, sleep deprivation kicked in, and I started hallucinating. By hour 36ish riding, just about everything I could see was morphed into something.

I saw a lot of nostalgic things. Things that made me happy. There were some weird things too. But most everything I saw was art. The roads, rivers and woods were littered with abstract patterns and sculptures. Entire deserty hillsides were transformed into living and breathing artwork.

Everything I saw and experienced was harmless if not beautiful. As time went on, the trip got intense. As I’d be admiring these crazy patterns my body would get sucked into them. People lived under the roads and as we would ride by, these people would emerge from the ground, decorated in abstract art across their bodies, thinking our bright night lights were the sun rising. I guess I also believed humans had replaceable canisters for lungs, and for whatever reason I was borrowing my dad’s lung canister and it was the reason I was coughing up mucus. There were far too many things I saw to explain. But It was awesome. 

The race almost felt easy. I was content, and simply happy to be riding my bike. My positive mindset massively influenced my ride and played a huge part in my equally positive hallucinations. 

There was something special about pushing our bodies so far into a hole where we could no longer remember how to talk or tell what was uphill or downhill, and be totally ok with it. Me and Edyn would look at each other while riding with cheeky smiles and say, “It’s chill.” We were gratified.

After over 50 hours of riding, we finished. At this point, I had been awake for nearly 3 days. My body and brain were beat, ass was raw, knees are very messed up,  and I can no longer feel my fingers, but we did it. And with a smile at that. 

Oliver Smith