Day 12 - Canmore to Stoney Nakoda Resort

Hello All,

We awoke this morning to coffee brewing and a delicious breakfast. Patrick and Camille certainly spoiled us. It was drizzling outside so we took our time getting ready. We said our goodbyes and headed out. At this point it was raining pretty good. It was raining our entire ride today so unfortunately we don't have any pictures. The rain made us really cold and there were no rest stops to go into to warm up. The best we could do was stop under highway overpasses to get warm.

It was becoming clear we weren't prepared for rain and cold at the same time. Our fingers and toes were the worst and we just couldn't get them warm. We did see a wolf eating a carcass on the side of the highway so that was pretty cool...again, no picture though. We eventually decided to stop at a hotel(the first one we saw). We unthawed with a warm shower and a soak in the hotel's hottub. We were due for a rest due in a day or two anyways so we didn't feel too bad about such a short day.

Now we have to decide whether we need to invest in better rain gear or if we just hope it warms up soon. Anyways, tomorrow we hope to at least get through Calgary -hopefully the weather clears up.

Hope everyone has a good long weekend and don't forget to give cyclists lots of room in your travels,

Chris & Patricia

Day 11 Field to Canmore, AB

Hello Again,

We had a fairly slow morning since the beds were so comfy in the hostel. I(Chris) let Patricia sleep in a bit while I got a bunch of stuff ready for the day. We then both split a box of fruit loops for breakfast. We ate those, drank tea, and watched the news - it was a fairly slow morning. While we were eating Craig, one of the hostel owners, came to talk to us for a bit. He gave us some good advice on different routes to take(other than the trans Canada). Eventually, we had the biked all packed up and ready to go.

Front of the hostel

Shot down one of the streets in Field

 The road out of field was flat for about 5km which was good for a warm up. The road follows the kicking horse river(it followed it all day yesterday too). The river still had almost a foot of ice on it which was pretty neat. Field is surrounded by mountains on just about all sides so the sun doesn't hit in the morning - it was a pretty cool ride out of town but nothing too bad and we warmed up quite quickly on the climb out of town. The sky was really clear all day today - we couldn't have asked for better weather.

River near Field

 Part way up the climb out of field is an attraction called the spiral tunnels. Originally the railway went up the kicking horse pass at the same grade as the trans Canada highway does now. This meant four engine cars were needed per 15 cars going up the hill. Also, trains frequently derailed because they got too much speed down the hill. The solution was to carve two big spirals in to the mountain - one of which you can see from a lookout point. The spirals are neat because the engine of the train passes over top of some of the last cars on the train. While we were here we met a bike tourist from Belguim who had started in Montreal and made it here. He said he had some really cold nights(-10)...brrr. We waited for about 20 minutes but no trains showed up so we eventually had to leave.

Model of the spiral trains

A Christopher in the tunnel!

The sign.

 Today's ride was beautiful and there were so many clear views of beautiful mountains. We could only take so many pictures of mountains though.

Made it to Alberta!

Another mountain

 The ride after the Alberta border was alot flatter and slightly downhill. We got rolling pretty good a few times.

 Eventually we made it to Canmore. Our first stop here was the information center and the second stop was Wendys for a spicy chicken and frosty. In Canmore we went to Patrick and Camille's house. We met them at the campground in Salmon Arm a few days ago and they invited us to set up our tent in the backyard. Well, when we arrived they offered much more then some space for our tent in their backyard. We had a delicious home cooked meal, hot showers and a comfy bed for the night! We couldn't have asked for more and we really appreciated all of the hospitality. We also woke up to coffee brewing and a delicious breakfast. 

Made it to Canmore

Picture of a mountain in Canmore

Thats all for today folks,

C&P

Day 10 - Golden to Field

Hello Everyone,

Last night we checked around for camping along our route and couldn't find much. Most campgrounds weren't open yet. We did some searching and we eventually found a hostel in the town of Field online we gave them a call and they were open for business. It wasn't too far away so we took our time this morning getting ready. We cleaned out the free breakfast at the motel and had a bunch of coffees.

On our way out of town we stopped at the grocery store to get some food. The road out of town was quite the climb. Part way up the climb was a nice view of the town...seen below.

Overlooking most of Golden.

Unfortunately it was overcast so we couldn't see too much of the mountains around us. A bit further down the road we spotted a whole bunch of female bighorn sheep on the hill beside the road. We stopped to take a few pictures.

Sheep on the hill.

Close up of one of them

As we were taking pictures and videos one of the bigger sheep started running down the cliff and was heading straight for us. We started biking like crazy since we weren't too sure if they would ram us. Turns out the sheep was trying to get across the road with all of his buddies and could have cared less about us. After we were clear we turned around and took the below picture. The whole herd crossed the road and a few cars had to stop.

After a successful road crossing.

Big horn sheep!

We saw a big horn sheep a little while later after a big climb.

Just relaxing.

We got drizzled and rained on a few times today but nothing too bad. But if you looked up at the tops of the mountains you could see that it was actually snowing up there. The snowline on the mountains looked really cool.

Snow on the peaks.

Made it to Yoho National Park

It was a really beautiful ride through Yoho National Park, the road winded around a couple large mountains and crossed several mountain streams. Since it was a national park there were no buildings or development in the park - just the road and the scenery.

Mountains.

We eventually made it to Field, BC and the first thing we saw were elk grazing on the baseball diamond. There was also a really beautiful stream running through town.

Made it.

Field was a tiny little town so we just biked around all of the streets until we found our hostel. We got all settled in and started cooking dinner! The hostel had a full kitchen available to use.

Mmmmm

The view from the balcony

Later in the night we did laundry, drank a bunch of tea, and played some board games by the fire. It was a pretty relaxing night and we, of course, went to bed early again because we were so tired.

-Chris & Patricia

Day 9 - Revelstoke to Golden

Hey Everyone,

We're pretty exhausted from today's ride so apologies in advance if this post isn't very coherent.

To start, we forgot a few details from yesterdays ride. Around 10 or 11 yesterday morning a guy pulled up beside on a touring bike and we talked for a minute. His name was Mark and he had biked from California to Vancouver and was biking across Canada. We finished talking and before we knew it he was out of sight...a very fast rider(he averages 180km a day!) . Anyways, when we made it to Revelstoke we just happened to run into Mark and JD(the tourer we saw once on Day 4 ) by chance when we took a weird way out of town. We then went our seperate ways for the night.

Which brings us to this morning. Around 3:30 am this morning I(Chris) swore I heard a bear outside of our tent and within seconds I was up with a flashlight and had the safety off the bear spray...it was all clear and was just the sleeping bag rustling. I fell back asleep and woke up around 4:30 and the sun was coming up(it comes up really early here) I asked Patricia if she wanted to get up...she declined(don't know why?). We slept until 5:30 and slowly got ready and were on the road by 7. At our first stretch/water break Mark and JD rolled up to us.

Getting ready this morning.

 All four of us biked together for most of the day. We all biked at different paces so whoever was ahead usually stopped to wait at the top of a hill or at a good rest spot. It definately made the day go a little faster with other bikers around and to know we weren't the only ones suffering.

Mark and JD coming up a hill.

 The first large climb of the day was at Albert Canyon. We could always tell a good climb was coming up because, there are lots of signs warning truckers to put chains on their tires. Oh, and today we also saw tons of no stopping avalanche area signs.

Checking out the sign.

 And, we also saw some devastation from an avalanche. It looks like an avalanche went right across the road a while back. It was amazing to see the power of them - trees were everywhere and full size trees were snapped like toothpicks. It was very surreal - just glad we weren't going through here in snow season.

Avalanche path.

Food and water break.

 Little later on we saw Mark up ahead with his camera out and pointing to the side of the road. When we caught up we saw what he was pointing at - a black bear walking along the train tracks. We took a bunch of pictures but the one below turned out the best. We watched the bear wander down the tracks and then we continued on our way.

We saw a bear!

 You know your gaining elevation when you can make a snowman on the side of the road.Oh, and I think it was somewhere around here that we saw a sign telling us to set our clocks one hour ahead. So now we are only two hours behind the time at home.

My super quick mini snowman.

 Finally, we saw the sign for Rogers pass...only 1km. Wooo hooo.

Only one more km

 We had been nervous and scared of Rogers Pass all day and when we finally got to the top were thoroughly underwhelmed. I am not sure what we were expecting but, there was no welcoming committee at the top for us. We were underwhelmed too because, there was no big steep climb at the end...just a really long somewhat gradual climb all morning. We all stopped at the top to take a few pictures and JD set up the timer for his camera and all four of us got in the picture...he is going to email that picture to us so we'll update when we get it.

Patricia posing at the summit

 At the pass it started drizzling and was quite cold so we didn't spend much time up there. There was a gas station and an expensive motel so there wasn't much to do so we headed down the other side. Mark and JD stopped to tape their cameras to their handle bars to get video of going down the other side. It was definitely nice to not have to pedal for the few km down the other side. We went through a bunch of tunnels that protect the road from avalanches - some of which were covered in snow and mangled trees(so they definitely work!). We continued on and thought the worse was behind us - we were wrong. There was another pass or two and some huge climbs after rogers pass. On one of the climbs Patricia spotted a mountain goat so of course we stopped to take some pictures. We watched him graze on the side of the cliff for a few minutes - during this time he knocked a few rocks down while he was walking around the cliff. Eventually we had to continue up the hill and leave him behind.

Mountain goat.

A few minutes later we saw another mountain goat but none of our pictures of him turned out well - but he looked the same as the one above. Just after this Mark easily biked past us and yelled big showers coming. We still don't know how he knew but sure enough around the next corner it started pouring and didn't stop the rest of the day. And we never saw Mark again today...he must be at a motel somewhere in town.

The last 50km were supposed to be one of the most beautiful rides of the trip but we were soaking wet and freezing cold so didn't stop to take any pictures after the mountain goat. We somehow managed to grind out those last 50km and just as we got in to town we caught up to JD. We checked into the same motel - the first one we saw in Golden. It felt so good to get all of the cold wet clothes off and have a nice hot shower.

Patricia, JD and I went out for dinner at a restaurant right beside the motel...it was delicious and we had several coffees to warm up.

Thats about it for our day and I'm trying very hard to stay awake while typing this post out. Tomorrow's ride is looking pretty worrying since we can't find anywhere to camp between here and Banff(160km away). Hopefully we figure something out in the morning because I don't think our legs or butts are up for another huge day so soon.


Good night,

Chris and Patricia.

Day 8 - Salmon Arm to Revelstoke

Hey Everyone,

So, we have been on the road just over a week now and we're still trying to get into a groove. One of the guys at the campground last night said he's toured before and it takes about two weeks to get into a groove so I guess we're about half way there.

Last night I(Chris) slept pretty bad because I had a runny nose. My nose kept waking me up and I would get up to blow it which would in turn wake Patricia up. Nonetheless we still got up around 5:30. The first couple hours went great but then the wind picked up - and it was a headwind that lasted all day. The wind really drains your energy and kills your speed but we eventually made it to Revelstoke.

Traffic was fairly heavy at times today and seemed to come in bursts of about 10 cars/trucks/transports whizzing by us. Most vehicles give us plenty of room but a few don't which usually isn't too bad since the shoulders have been good on almost all of the roads we've biked on so far.

First rest of the day at Lake of the Shuswap. We ate a container of peaches...mmmm

All day today we've seen streams like this running down the mountains or flowing off of cliffs. They are really beautiful and there must have been hundreds of them. Some of the larger ones would give us goose bumps as we drove by. This is becuase the water is so cold it must lower the temperature of the surrounding air around them - just one of those things you'd never notice by car.

Stream over a cliff

Mountain in the background

Rest stop at Last Spike attraction. Thats Patricia in the middle.

Another mountain river.

I think he's stuck!

Finally made it.

Taken from the bridge just outside of Revelstoke.

We finally made it to Revelstoke and stopped at a tourist information center to get some info on camping tonight and the next few nights. Tonight we decided to stay at a KOA campground just outside of Revelstoke.

Tomorrow we finally get to tackle Rogers Pass. Wooo hooo! We are going to bed early tonight since there are no campgrounds and one motel between here and Golden - which is a 150km ride. We are slightly worried since we haven't had a 150km day yet and when we add in Rogers Pass to the mix thats alot of pedalling. Our other option is to stay at the only hotel along the route - at $170 a night. Thats not happening so we are just going to have to tough it out and make it to Golden. Cross your fingers and don't be surprised if tomorrows update is really late.

Thats all for now,

Chris and Patricia