Another Photo Gallery

Here's a selection of photos to go with the last few photo free entries... enjoy!

Off-roading from Elko to Kikomun Creek in the hot, hot heat. Beautiful smelling open grassland forest, and not nearly enough water!


What we discovered when we arrived at Kikomun Creek Park. My poor broken rack!


That should be attached!


Mobile bike repair shop.


Eating what is left of our chocolate bar after a day in the heat. Spoon required.


Our campsite in Kikomun Creek, after the bike has been fixed and we've moved to a site with shade. Lovely place to spend a day off.


Wildlife on the road from Kikokun Creek to Wardner...or not-so-wild-life as the case may be (it's a horse).

Kikomun-Wardner Road. Totally lovely rural landscape.


Approaching Wardner. The Steeples mountains in the background overlook Cranbrook, where we're headed.


Watch out!


Riding our first rail trail (old railway bed) towards Cranbrook. Gorgeous.


My neice Halee and nephew Dylan showing us the best way to jump off the dock at Moyie Lake where we camped with their family.


Catching crayfish in Moyie Lake. Who knew there were mini-lobsters in the Rockies?


Got one!


Riding on the Cranbrook "Strip." Source of all fast-food options you could ever want. And some you'd never want.


Paved railtrail to Kimberley from Cranbrook.


My great friend from high school, Leah, who took us out for awesome burritos in Kimberley. Thanks Leah!


Grey Creek Pass begins.


Things get more serious on the road to Grey Creek Pass.


And yet more serious...


It's still lovely though.


And very, very steep. For a long time. It was basically like this for the last 11 km.


And that gets really, really tiring. Breaks were wherever we could find shade!


The summit. Don't I look so happy?


Celebratory beer in camp. Warm Kokanee at the end of a 10 hour day. What could be better?


Oliver Lake, where we camped just after Grey Creek Pass.


Downhill the next morning. I think the downhill was actually steeper than the up. It just didn't hurt as much.


Kootenay-Balfour Ferry.


Swimming in Kootenay Lake. Note the sweet leg tan developing from the bike shorts.


Arrival in Nelson. Guess I didn't really need to caption that one!


Visiting the brewing exhibit at the Nelson Museum. I love beer without drugs or poison.


Relaxation acheived, with aid of a cat.


I went a little overboard there, but hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. If a photo is worth a thousand words, this post is quite the literary accomplishment!

Cranbrook to Nelson

Hello everyone - thanks for your patience. Internet access is limited when you're riding your bikes across the backroads of the Kootenays.

To be honest, I haven't actually read the last blog entries, but I think Sheena filled you in on the trip as far as Cranbrook. We were there only about four days ago - no, three - but it already feels like we're in an entirely different world. We arrived in Cranbrook having ridden the dusty and blazing hot logging roads and rail trails of the East Kootenays for a couple of days. We were dehydrated and sunburnt. Now we're in humid, dark green Nelson, staying with a couple of dear friends from our time at Queen's, and I'm sitting inside on a comfortable couch. It's pretty nice. I think we earned it, too. The ride up from Cranbrook was brutal (but good, too).

Well, the first leg wasn't brutal. We set out from Cranbrook and rode to Kimberley along a newly paved rail trail. In the hierarchy of places one might choose to ride their bike, paved off-road trails are basically tops. And we had 25 kilometres of pavement to enjoy, with no more than a 2% grade (or so) to struggle against. As usual, it was blazing hot, but the smooth surface and complete absence of motor vehicles made up for that discomfort. After a pretty great Mexican dinner in Kimberley (a very nice place, that town) we continued on to a campground on the St. Mary River. The route indicated in the TCT guidebook, a ramble through dirt roads and trails in the Kimberley Nature Park, looked a bit circuitous for after dinner. We chose to follow pavement instead, and were very glad of our decision - it saved us several kilometres, and the traffic was nice and light anyway.

The next leg was the brutal one. After a pretty good sleep, we set out to cross Gray Creek Pass. This is one of those neat shortcuts you notice when you see a map of BC. The unpaved road over Gray Creek Pass connects the east shore of Kootenay Lake with the St. Mary Valley and Kimberley, saving you the long drive through Creston and Cranbrook. There's a cost, of course - it's incredibly steep, rising 1500 metres from the lakeshore to the pass in only eighteen kilometres. The rise isn't as bad when you go from east to west, but it's still gruelling. Thankfully, it's beautiful. And the worst of the elevation gain happened at the end of our ride. The first half of our 64-kilometre ride to the pass was more or less flat, with the road winding up past St. Mary's Lake and through the lush farmland of Meachen. Then we crossed the St. Mary River, and then the hard work began - 30-some kilometres of hard uphill, with grades of up to 16% in places. The road surface was mostly okay, though a few rocky sections made us struggle extra-hard. After the last ten kilometres, which took us something like four hours to complete, we arrived at the pass and wearily cruised downhill to our campsite at a Forest Service rec site a kilometre away.

Yesterday was great compensation for the grind over the pass. We began by gliding down to Gray Creek, barely having to pedal along the way. After coffee (the first good coffee in over a week!) in Crawford Bay, we caught the ferry across Kootenay Lake and had a good chat with a fellow touring cyclist - a history prof from Virginia Tech who says he's toured every summer for the last 23 years. Further along the road to Nelson, we ran into two Washingtonians, who were cycling the TCT from west to east. That makes three TCT cyclists we've encountered so far. Interestingly, they've all been American. C'mon, Canadians! Get on the trail! Anyhow, the road to Nelson was very pleasant to ride. It's paved, and there isn't much traffic. And now we're at our friends' place, enjoying the comforts of the great indoors. It's a lovely change. But it's temporary. On Monday, we're off to visit family in Winlaw, and then on Tuesday we leave for points west - Castlegar, Christina Lake, Grand Forks, Greenwood, Midway, Beaverdell, Naramata, Penticton, Summerland, Princeton, Tulameen, Brookmere - and further!

Thanks for following along. Sheena will put up some pictures in a few minutes!

Cranbrook!

One week into the trip, and 392km later, we have reach Cranbrook! Things are mostly going really well, with the exception of my bike rack (you know...the part that carries all my gear?) snapping in two. Oops. Fortunately we discovered when we had just arrived at Kikomun Creek campground where we were due to take a rest day anyway. We managed to get in touch with my step-sister Shona and niece Riley and they brought us out a new rack from Cranbrook and hung out with us for a little bit. Now we've ridden the 70km to their house, had showers and are about to take a vacation from our vacation...

Their whole family is camping out at a local lake so we're headed out there to camp with them for the night. Which means I have to keep the post short and sweet and not add any photos. Maybe tomorrow when we come back in to town, and before we leave for Kimberly, I'll add more.

But a few snippets to keep you interested:

Highlights since Nelson have been dry interior ponderosa forests that smell like vanilla, riding small trails through the forest and feeling like we're taking the secret back route, being VERY hot, jumping in Lake Koocanousa and eating lots of things that are bad for us and not feeling bad about it at all!

That's all for now! Off to camp!

Photos!

So, it turns out all the camping in Fernie was filled up, so we've ended up at the hostel here...which means meeting folks doing the same routes as us (one in the opposite direction, one diverging at this point to head south down the continental divide trail), showers, laundry, and a chance to post some photos.

Enjoy!

Doing doughnuts at the Banff Spring Hotel, where the trail begins.


Riding from Banff towards Canmore and the Smith-Dorrien Road.


Spray Lakes


Headed south towards Kananaskis


Rain....


Leaving for Elk Pass - The Continental Divide!


Up we go!


Made it to the top! BC/Alberta border and Continental Divide


Elk Lakes Provincial Park


Heading down into Elkford


Elkford to Fernie. Gorgeous riding...except for the headwind!


Fernie - post shower, feet in the river, life is good...

And one last photo with an important lesson for all of us, learned here in the Elk Valley:
Who knew?

Banff to Sparwood

Hello everyone! This is going to be a really short entry, and it'll be without pictures for the time being - that is, until we find a place where we can hang out for a while and download some of the jillions of images on the camera. Might not be for a week or so. Hope you can wait.

In the last four days we've ridden from Banff to Sparwood, which is a smallish town near the BC-Alberta border on Highway 3. You might know it as the home of the world's largest dump truck. You'll see pictures, I promise.

The riding has been exhausting and wonderful. Most of it has been on gravel - a few sections of bike trail and a lot of backroads. We left Banff along the Spray River Trail, and then took the Goat Creek Trail to connect us to the Smith-Dorrien Spray Lakes Road running south from Canmore. The Smith-Dorrien brought us through incredible mountain scenery - as good as the Icefields Parkway, I thought, but without the traffic. From Peter Lougheed Provincial Park we grunted over Elk Pass into BC, and from there, we rode the bone-shaking Elk Valley Forest Service Road down into Elkford. After Elkford it was a beautiful, smooth ride down Highway 43, with a gorgeous detour on the Lower Elk Valley Road through open forest and ranchland. And now we're here in Sparwood - and about to leave for Fernie, thirty-some kilometres down the road.

We'll try to provide a more detailed update sometime in the next couple of days!

In the beginning...

Today was a big day for Matt and I!

It was the day that we filled the panniers, loaded up the bikes, donned the functional clothing, and rode all the way to...
Roberts Creek!

Which might not sound that exciting to other people, but it was for us because it was our official Trial Ride. This was our opportunity to see whether out plans to cycle all the way across the province by back roads and trails was a great idea or a whole pile of craziness. So we took all of the gear we'll be bringing (well, most of it at least - I used lots of cans of tomatoes to fill the space that will be eventually filled with food once we do a final shop before the first leg of the trip) and meandered about until we'd ridden just shy of 40km, which is what we have to average each day of the trip. And it wasn't that hard.
Now we just have to do that 45 more times!