Day 46: Rest!

Yesterday was a rest day from our bicycles (excluding the gruesome climb to the base of Whistler's Mountain shouldering the backpacking bag), but the mountain hike tired us out just the same. Today we took a real rest day, which involved a morning and afternoon of computer lab time: actually a long time just on couchsurfing.org. In the evening, we joined Garth and several of his friends in a camp fire dinner. Grilled steaks, which the vegetarian in me must shamefully admit were quite tasty. The highlight of the evening came when the crew got worried that a park warden was on his way, as we'd spotted him driving around. Apparently we weren't supposed to be there with fires. So Ian and Garth frantically picked up great flame filled battering ram of a tree trunk that we were burning and ran with it to the lake to put it out. We crammed 7 people into a small 5 person car, with me being the lucky last to get in, and drove back to Jasper Park Lodge, ducking every now and then. Jason made us all sangrias, perhaps the tastiest drink I've ever had. It has been great staying here at a classy five star of hotels, taking in the environment that most people think you have to pay a fortune for.

Day 47: Icefields Parkway with Garth

A wonderful turn of events today! Garth was scheduled to work in the morning, but for some reason he showed up and was told he had the day off. Since his next shift wasn't for three days, he loaded his bicycle and came touring with us on one of the most beautiful roads of the country: the Icefields Parkway. We loaded up on food as there wouldn't be any more groceries until Lake Louise, and rode out just as it began to rain. I've always enjoyed running in the rain: it feels so refreshing. Riding in the rain grieves me because I worry incessantly about rust. The cool, crisp air of the mountains combined with a pure shower, however, made me forget about rust and I had a spectacular time. It cleared up later, and we rode at such an elevation that it was always cool but the brilliant sunshine kept us warm in just our jerseys. Sometimes the cars would break for a few minutes, granting us complete silence in these enormous valleys.

About 30km out of Jasper is Horseshoe Lake, an aquifer fed lake carved into a steep enveloping cliff face, reaching hundreds of feet deep. We'd been told it was a great place to go cliff jumping, and Ian, being the sometimes crazy mind that he is, ran for the highest point he could find: 80 feet, rumour has it. Unfortunately, it wasn't very straight down so you'd need a strong running jump: probably not the best thing when a forest reaches so close to the edge. So instead he found a smaller and safer 20 foot jump. He's still crazy. And aquifer mountain lakes aren't warm.

We ended our day in the meandering flat valley of the Athabasca River, just before the climb up Sunwapta Pass. We snuck into the woods, at Garth's instructions hiding whenever cars went by. I felt pretty stupid, as I was certain they could see me ducking and squatting behind tiny pine trees. I think I'd have been less suspicious if I'd just walked into the woods quickly and purposefully. Regardless, it was fun, and we had a great camp amid tons of mosquitos, and ate 2kg of perogies.

Day 48: Pain.

Breafkast today was the best oats we've had all summer. Usually we just boil water and pour them over instant oats, which really sucks. Today we cooked Garth's steel cut oats, one of the tastiest simple breakfasts ever. We loaded our bikes on the highway, filled our bottles with fresh glacier water from the Athabasca (delicious!), and said good bye to Garth. It's amazing how in a few days with a couchsurfing host you can come to feel like you've known them for a long time, and this definitely happened with Garth. We will miss him!

And just after leaving Garth, the pain begins. Real, good physical pain. We immediately began climbing Sunwapta Pass. Having not warmed up properly, and riding into the wind, this 5 kilometer ascent, gaining 500 vertical meters, was one of the hardest things I've ever done. We stopped many times, as I was actually visably out of breath: something I haven't felt in a very long time. At the top we met Jürgen, a German cyclist taking the scenic Alaskan route into the Yukon. I'm feeling happy to be going south to warmer climes.

Shortly down the rode we found the Columbia Icefields, a busy tourist hotspot. It's funny: if you took all the tourists here and spread them out in direct proportion to the beauty of the landscape, you'd have almost no one at the Columbia Icefields, simply because there is beauty everywhere. But since the Columbia Icefields is a bit bigger and grander and easier to access than the other glaciers around, companies set up tour buses and guides take you out on the ice, and everyone drives to this one spot and thinks it's totally unique, a rare place in the world. Bicycle touring, however, offers sights of everything there is along the roadside. Since you're riding slowly and not crouching down to look upwards out a window, you see the entire vista complete and unobstructed, which car tourists tend to only get when they clamber out of their steel boxes.

Riding past the icefields we encountered 50 cyclists riding 150 kilometers in a cancer fundraiser, so we cheered them on. This is a popular place to tour, and we saw many other cyclists on the road. Later in the day it was raining as we climbed the Bow Pass (the highest road altitude on the Icefields Parkway), and a touring cyclist going the other direction told us exactly how far we had left to climb (300 more vertical metres...). But all day my hamstring had been feeling tight, probably from the brutal climb up Sunwapta that morning. It felt like a minor pulled muscle. So about 50 vertical metres from the summit (though not knowing it was so few) we pulled into the forest and set up camp. This is a longer than usual task when it's raining and you're in bear country: we pulled into camp a bit after 7 and slept immediately after finishing all our chores, at 10pm. By this time the sun was poking through as mist hung around the tops of the mountains. It was beautiful, and the air and water tasted pure and fresh. It was the Misty Mountains.

Day 49: Cold, Pain, Missed Sun

The Misty Mountains did not remain so peaceful. Thunder and lightning, and rain battered our tent through the night, even until our usual wakeup time of 7am. The sound of rain in the morning is like the snooze button on the alarm clock. When I woke again an hour later it was peaceful, so we hurriedly packed up camp, though not before the rain returned. It was cold at 2000 metres, harkening back to the May days on Lake Superior when our hands would freeze while packing up the tent. Between that and worrying about my hamstring, I was not excited to go cycling. But what else do you do? So we climbed Bow Pass and dropped downhill for quite a while, finally stopping at a picnic shelter to eat our breakfast. I changed to my fingerless pair of gloves because my full fingered gloves were soaked. Ten kilometers in these and my fingers were almost totally immobile. Ian, on the other hand, was toasty inside his layers: gloves, socks, then big blue plastic freezer bags. Sure, changing gears and braking is hard, but it's also hard when your hands are frozen! So I put on my biggest socks and we transferred the freezer bags to me, while Ian wrapped full size garbage bags up to his elbows. We were warm after that! And I had great fun waving my big blue clubs of hands at the other touring cyclists.

I had been told many times about the beauty of Lake Louise, but at the time it was a few kilometers out of our way and we were miserable and we'd seen many beautiful glacier lakes nestled in the mountains, so we skipped right onto Hwy 1 towards Golden. I made it to the BC border, but my hamstring was not happy and I was worried about Kicking Horse Pass. Not having realized that the top of the pass is at the border, and that from where I was it was mostly downhill to Golden, I decided to hitch-hike. It took a while, and it felt pretty humiliating, but eventually two nice men, Brad and Cornell, picked me up. They were from Alberta, on their way to Vernon to do some mountain biking and fishing. As we drove I talked with them but always was looking out the windows at the beautiful mountains. I knew I was missing a great ride, and I knew I was missing great scenery even though I was looking as best I could for it from inside this car. Ian rode the distance as we usually would, and he had a great time. And so my ideas of bicycle touring versus driving are true.

In Golden, I had a few hours to wait until Ian arrived, so I went to a diner, did some shopping, and read Walden visibly at the side of the highway. Ian came in perfectly on time, at 6pm. Our hosts in Golden were Nick and Laura (Cassie had met Nick at her permaculture class a few weeks before), but we had trouble reaching them by phone. So we went to the library, where we met Nadine and Martin, who are cycling around the world from 2003 to 2010! They even carried inflatable kayaks to do extended water trips (while locking their bikes in the woods). It's incredible to think about how many people they must have inspired during their trips. Count two more!

In the library we got Nick and Laura's address and so headed over there, and met them shortly after arriving. They were returning from a potluck (organized by Laura!) celebrating Golden being Canada's 5th Fair Trade certified city! I was sad to have missed it. We got a fancy dinner at a Greek restaurant, and spent the rest of the evening talking about books, music, and a lot about passive heating. Nick told me all about Don Stephens' annualized geo-solar heating technique. Most houses are built with insulation under them, but with this idea you thermally couple the house with the ground and deposit heat, captured on sunny days in the summer, into the ground a few feet below your house. After six months, that heat will have radiated outwards, and some of it will return to heat your house. You can add insulation into the ground to capture more of that heat, and the process gets better after a year or two of operation. But it's amazingly effective, and simple, and it doesn't require sunny days every day like daily solar heating does.

Then we slept in our tent in the yard. It rained.

Day 50: Hope for the leg! Roger's Pass and Giant Cedars.

In the morning I talked some more with Nick and Laura. I would have loved to have spent more time with them. They are so friendly, and wonderfully intelligent and aware. I hope Fair Trade and green homes permeate Golden and beyond!

Today I had planned a big ride: 150km to Revelstoke. Our couchsurfing host in Revelstoke, Enid, warned us that it was going to be very hilly, but we decided to try anyways. We rode into a bit of a wind all day, and climbed a few hills, but my leg was holding up okay as I was drafting behind Ian. Ian was holding up okay, too. Hurray! Then came Roger's Pass. For me, drafting, it was fairly easy. For Ian, pulling, it was extremely long and tiring! Way harder than Sunwapta Pass, for him. It's amazing what a small wind can do. At the top, we met April, who had done some bicycle tours and offered to let us camp in her backyard in Revelstoke. Hurray! She also told us about the Revelstoke Music Festival that was happening this weekend. What? Music Festival! At the beginning of the summer I left all my music behind, wanting to purify my experience. But I allow myself to listen to music when at guests homes, as that is all part of the experience. Now I ache for music. So news of this festival, combined with a tired (but victorious!) Ian, convinced us to change our plans and make it to Revelstoke early the next day. We rode downhill 40 more kilometers, just inside Mt. Revelstoke National Park, leaving 30km for tomorrow morning. We found a picnic area where no camping is allowed, and hid behind some trees in the bush. Marvellously, this area is a temperate rainforest with giant 500 year old cedars and a nice boardwalk on which to escape the painful Devil's Club that is spread everywhere. We didn't see any flying squirrels, and it was too dark out to take photos, but it was still a great journey -- I promise.