Every Labor Day weekend for the last five years, Ketchum has featured a bicycle race called Rebecca’s Private Idaho. The race is named after pro cyclist Rebecca Rusch, its creator and organizer. The 2017 RPI drew nearly 900 riders to the 60-mile and 100-mile courses which start in Ketchum and wind through the scenic backroads of Copper Basin.
This year, Rusch was promoting something in addition—her journey along the Ho Chi Minh Trail which famously bisects the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Once used as a transport road for North Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War, the Ho Chi Minh Trail remains a dense jungle trek, just as it was when Rusch’s father died there in 1972.
An Air Force weapon system operator, Stephen A Rusch along with pilot Carter Howell were engaged in bombing the Ho Chi Minh supply route when their plane was struck by anti-aircraft fire and crashed in Laos. Rebecca was only three years old when her father was declared missing in action. It would be 2007 before Steve Rusch’s remains were identified by teeth found at the crash site.
For thirty-five years, Rebecca imagined various endings for the father she barely knew as a child, including the possibility that he had survived the crash but had been taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. Once she was certain of his fate, her focus shifted to the letters and communications he sent to his family during the war, particularly his signature sign-off, which always included the admonition for Rebecca and her sister to “Be good.”
As a pro mountain biker, Rusch would eventually travel to and compete in Vietnam. The Ho Chi Minh Trail haunted her, as did the longing to understand her father’s memory. She approached her sponsors and pitched the idea of riding the 1200-mile route as a physically arduous adventure with emotional and spiritual buy-in. It would be a journey to find her father’s crash site, she explained.
Eventually Red Bull Media House agreed to back her. Rush found a qualified riding partner in South Vietnamese Olympic cyclist Huyen Nguyen, a widow with two children.
The bicycle journey of these two female athletes is captured in the moving documentary film “Blood Road,” a title taken from the nickname inspired by the trail’s high casualty rate during the war.
Naturally, the women riders would need support, so they enlisted the help of Don Duvall. According to Velonews magazine, Duvall is “An American cartographer, sailor, and adventurer who has made it his life’s mission to map the braided network of trails that comprise the Ho Chi Minh Trail.” Nicholas Schrunk, creative director of the project, would bring additional team members to support and film the ride. Without a capable and committed support team, Rusch and Nguyen would not have succeeded.
Even for the motorized film crew, the trip would be no casual undertaking. The Ho Chi Minh Trail has its patches of pavement, but most of it winds through rugged jungle landscapes where occasional bush-whacking and extreme heat and humidity make filming difficult. For much of the journey, the two women cyclists were out of sight and could only be accessed at certain locations by dirt bikes hauling cameras and gear. At one point on the trail, Rusch and Nguyen had to traverse Xe Bang Cave, which involved rafting an underground river and carrying the bikes over dry patches too rough to ride, an effort that took them nine hours.
When my husband and I saw this movie in Ketchum, I was reminded of the significance of having a transcendental quest like Rebecca’s. Hard things make us stronger when they don’t kill us, as the saying goes.
Still, history is strewn with figures who did not survive the hard things. Rusche was able to find her father’s final resting place, along with a trench plowed into the hillside where his plane went down—still visible after forty-five years. As luck would have it, she met the son of the former village chief who discovered the wreckage right after it happened. Rusch described the situation to Velonews: “I was saying to myself, ‘How is this happening? How did we find this person?’ He welcomed me into his home. My dad was dropping bombs on his family . . .It made me sad for what we’ve done in our wars, but it also made me realize how good humanity is, how forgiving they are.”
By the end of Rebecca’s pilgrimage, we see two tough female athletes—one American and one Vietnamese—at the height of their personal strength and emotional vulnerability, two strangers drawn together across decades of complicated international conflict and deep, personal loss. The entire support crew was altered by the experience, and Rebecca and Huyen developed an enduring friendship.
Rebecca Rusch has since taken on a new quest: ridding Laos of unexploded ordinance left over from the bombardment. Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, an estimated 60,000 people have been injured or killed by these UXO’s and landmines. Today she leads mountain bike rides and raises money to fund the removal effort. I purchased a bracelet in Ketchum after the screening which was made from a recovered shell and inscribed with Steve Rusch’s simple reminder, “Be good.” The proceeds go to the Mines Advisory Group that Rusch supports.
You can assist in these efforts by visiting www.bloodroadfilm.com. “Blood Road” is available for streaming on Amazon.com.
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