On June 14th I did 8.6 Miles to Goat Creek. On June 15th I did 52.7 Miles to Elk Lakes Cabin. On June 16th I did 46.1 Miles to Sulpher Springs Trail. On June 17th I did 73.1 miles to Elko, Canada.
Listen to “Bad Luck Again” by Rural Alberta Advantage. I didnt know I was actually starting the trail in Alberta and crossing into British Columbia, but when I did I was having some terrible luck.
If you wanna be fast and light then I'd recommend against flying internationally with a bike as it's definitely a process to get your bike from point A to point B. In order to start the ride in Banff I had to break my bike down and put it in a bike box. After talking to a bunch of friends I realized that most people don't know bikes don't come assembled to a bike shop and they are broken down to fit into a box from the manufacturer then shipped to your local bike shop and then reassembled before you purchase the bike. This is convenient for me because the bike shops now have these giant boxes they have to get rid of and are more than happy to give away when a customer asks for one. I got the largest size box so I didn't have to strip my bike completely down and was able to make it all fit by removing the pedals, seat, handle bars, front forks and wheel and then filled the box up with a ton of padding since I've heard numerous stories of bikes being severely damaged during shipping. I got to the airport early to drop off the bike at the luggage check in, the box didn't even fit in my subaru and I had to leave the hatch open as I drove to the airport; it was 4am in Reno, there were many worse decisons being made in that city at that moment.
After a layover in San Francisco I made my way up to Calgary. I got my bike after clearing customs and the box looked like it had dropped out of the plane on its way there... great. I took a shuttle to Banff and got a room and started to reassemble the bike and to my suprise it was in good shape and took less than an hour to rebuild. I went out for a bite to eat and figured I'd load the bike in the morning. Banff is a pretty posh mountain town, the touristy kids who have never stepped foot off of a concrete sidewalk have nicer gear on than I can afford. After finding some grub I called it an early night. I went to load the bike the next day and half way through realized a very important bag of bolts was missing and must have fallen out of the many holes in the box the airline put in it.... fuck. Luckily Banff is big enough to have a hardware store and a bike shop and after 3 trips to the city center I had everything I needed to attach my equipment to my bike. I not going to lie my heart rate got pretty high when I realized I was missing most of my hardware and it took over 4 hours to go back and forth to get exactly what I needed, but all is well that ends well.
It was probably best that I was delayed since the weather was miserable. A huge storm front came in the day before and was causing flooding and the weather was going to be nasty for the next two-days, they ended up getting over 4 inches of rain in 2 days. I can handle bad weather and suck up the discomfort but I could barely see the mountains through the low stormy clouds. I've been in or near most of the mountains along the divide but I've never been to the Canadian Rockies and Banff is supposed to be one of the jewels of the CA rockies so I opted to leave town but do a super short day in hopes the weather would lighten up and the views open up.
The next day was overcast and drizzling but still much better than the previous 2 days. I made my way down trail and had to stop every mile to snap a picture of the gorgeous mountains. I felt like I was riding through Alaska and couldn't belive how unique every peak looked and how technical each climb would be to get to the top... I guess I know what I'm doing in 2023.
I made my way out of the forest and onto a super wide logging road that I followed for 20 miles through the valley. It had some moderate climbs and downhill sections. I really enjoy going downhill on a bike and do everything I can to make myself more aero dynamic to build speed as I am bombing downhill. On one section I was crouched down with my face just an inch above my handle bar and my butt behind my saddle probably maxing out at 30 mph and I saw this black blob come into my peripheral view (you've got to be kidding me) I barely had time to shift my weight and narrowly miss an adolescent black bear by a few feet that decided to dart out infront of me... I guess all teenagers are dumb regardless of the species. I'm definitely in bear country and saw another 6 on that stretch but none of them were cavalier enough to jump out infront of me like the first one.
After leaving the logging road I jumped on a paved road and made my way to Elk Pass Trail Head. I was suprised when I got to the base of the trail head since A) it was covered in snow and B) there was only one tire track in the snow. I knew there was a possibility of hike a bike section but didn't think it would be at this low of an elevation and then I was trying to figure why there weren't more tracks in the snow since there were about 200 racers who started 4 days infront of me. I checked the GPS several times and after verifying my position I started to push my bike through the snow. It was probably 18-24 inches deep and I tried to follow the wheel track of the person infront of me. I wasn't the only one following the track before me, as there was also footprints of a huge bear following the other biker. In all it took me 5 hours to push my bike 7 miles up and over the pass. I was exhausted, but when I reached the road at the bottom of the pass it wasn't plowed and still only had one wheel track (and the bear tracks). With the prospect of having to push my bike another 30 miles on the snow covered road I started to get a feeling that maybe the race route took a detour and that I wasn't following the correct path. I sent Lizzy some panicked InReach messages to see if I was on the race route. As I was sending the messages I smelled smoke and realized there was a cabin 0.3 Miles from me. I figured I'd ask whomever was in the cabin the best route out since I was seriously considering pushing my bike back over Elk pass. I knocked on the cabin door to find two Canadian families who snow shoed into Elk Lake. I picked their brains to come up with a course of action and at the same time was getting updates from Lizzy. It was determined from the Canadians and Lizzy I was on the correct path and the best course of action was continue to push my bike down the road and that there was only one other track in the snow since it was all recent snow and it just barley missed all of the race riders. I was glad I didn't have to go back over the pass, but not happy about the long snowy road. The Canadians lived up to their stereotypical friendliness and were adamant I spend the night in their cabin. I didn't want to intrude but with my feet going numb and being mentally and physically exhausted I joined them and ended up drying out next to a fire sipping on some wine and snacking on some fresh popcorn... not a bad end to a relatively shitty day.
I got up early the next morning and made my way down the road. 30 miles of pushing a bike seemed like an inner ring of hell so I decided to try and ride it. It was sloppy, and slow and I was skidding everywhere and fell a few times but I was able to do 4 MPH, which is better than 1.5 MPH. I passed by a small hut and noticed the single tire track infront of me went into the hut. I walked up onto the porch when all of a sudden the door opened and this guy yelled at me with Bear Spray in his hand. I froze, and then he froze and he shook his head in disbelief that anyone else was dumb enough to be out there too. His name was Brent and he set the one solo track in the snow; he also knew he was being followed by the bear and it had harassed him several times in the cabin so it's no suprise he came out ready for a confrontation when he heard noise outside. I came in to the little hut and made some coffee and told him it was possible to ride out even if it was painfully slow. After packing up and eating a bunch of calories we set out and slowly made our way down the trail riding on the snow, it should be noted we were actually following bear prints the entire way which was kind of the bear to break trail for us. We made it about 10 miles before we ran into a large set of tire tracks from a logging truck which made it sooo much easier to pedal. By mile 15 we were riding on snow free, but very muddy road and back into the groove of the adventure. The rest of the day was chill and I slowly regained full feeling in my toes and ended up camping in a lush meadow... its always a shock to me that the beginning and ending of a day can be so drastically different.
I was slow to get going to the next day and actually made two cups of coffee in my tent not wanting to leave the dry comfort of my sleeping bag. I didn't end up getting out of camp until 730 but figured I'd gain some time with the extra caffeine, unfortunately the trail was a nightmare with down trees every quarter mile that had me carrying my bike up and over each one and the super muddy terrain that had me slidding across the trail. I probably went over 40 down trees in 8 miles as I made my way to Sparwood. There wasn't much to see in Sparwood and after eating a quick lunch next to the world's largest dump truck I headed back out on trail to find myself on semi-technical single track for 15 miles. I was a little shocked to be on this track which was probably at my upper limit of bike handling on a fully loaded rigid bike. After the single track I made my way into the super cool city of Fernie which was one of the coolest mountain towns I had ever been in. I found a local pizza joint and had second lunch since I knew it was going to be a huge day and rode the streets a little bit to see the ins and outs of the town. On the way out of town I ran into MJ and Carolina who are a Polish couple doing the divide as well and we linked up and headed over the next pass. It was great to have company as we made the climb back up into the mountains. Unfortunately the skies opened up during the climb and we continued on in a horrendous downpour. On our route we were stopped by not one but two bridges that were completely washed away which required us to down climb a steep ravine, ford the river and climb back out with our fully loaded bikes. The afternoon kind of sucked between the torrential downpour, lack of bridges, and steep elevation but having people to share the suffering with was great.
