Susan's and Doug's Adventures

The ride was beautiful, hard, easy, hot, cold, fun, difficult, inspiring, noisy, quiet — one can pack a lot into 1200 km! We did very well – finished 8 minutes ahead of our schedule.

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We started with the 90 hour group at 10 pm on Wednesday night in Kamloops. Through that night and next day we rode to Jasper, finishing early evening. Starting just after midnight and finishing just before the next midnight, on Friday we rode from Jasper, to Castle Junction and then down to Golden. On Saturday and through early Sunday morning we rode from Golden over Rogers Pass to Sicamous, then south to Enderby, back north to Salmon Arm and “home” to Kamloops. Here are some facets of our ride.

Beautiful: We left Jasper at 1:30 am on Friday morning. I thought we would just be riding in the dark following the white line but no. With the moon and the stars there was enough light to see the line of the mountains and the tops of the trees. There were almost no cars. Small red lights ahead showed us the road going up. The air was filled with the sound of the running river beside us. Instead of a black tunnel, it was a magical place, majestic, barely revealed and peaceful.

Hard: The last 110 km into Kamloops was hard. We were tired, getting crotchety with each other, butts hurt, hands hurt and my achilles hurt. We should have planned more stops in here and a 24-hour restaurant would have made it all work for us!

Hot: Any afternoon climbing in the sun is hot for me. The only time though that others would also have thought it was hot was Saturday afternoon, coming out of Revelstoke over Eagles Pass through Three Valley Gap and out to Malakwa. We had tube socks packed in our Revelstoke bag and filled them with ice. Wonderful. And then we stopped in Three Valley Gap and bought ice so cold it was hard to persuade it to go into the socks as it immediately froze to the wet socks. We packed extra ice into plastic bags and stuck it into our camelbaks to insulate it. At Malakwa we refilled the socks. Bliss to a heat hater like me!

Cold: Coming through Sunwapta Falls and up to Beauty Creek it was cold. The operators/volunteers/control captains at Beauty Creek said it dropped to 3 degrees. We stopped briefly at Sunwapta Lodge and the nice desk clerk let us use their washrooms and sit on the couch in reception even though everything was closed. It was at this point we pulled the fleeces out of our rack packs and wore them. It was super nice to have enough clothes with us.

Fun: We stopped for ice cream at the D Dutchman dairy in Sicamous. Then, just as the sun was setting, we headed down past Mara Lake. Beautiful. As we left the lake, I took a turn at the front. I had a Rod Stewart song stuck in my head and I was feeling really good (last heat of the ride was done). So I was dancing on the bike, 1000 km into the ride and just having a ball!

Difficult: One of our planned breaks was Field. We had a great descent down Kicking Horse Pass with Doug leading us out strong. We left Field into the falling light. The darkness hid the nastiness of the shoulder and we did not feel we could ride out in the lane. Approaching vehicles made seeing even harder. We went down the next section extremely slowly, hurting our hands further after the pressure cracks of the Icefields Parkway and the climb to Kicking Horse. Much bad language was uttered. Much swearing about how the club should never run a ride down this road (and we organized the ride in 2004). We made it. But it was very difficult.

Inspiring: I know how fun volunteering is but it still never ceases to amaze me that there are all these people out there, on their holidays, trying to help me do this ride. I’m just an ordinary person and here they are doing this for me! I always find the volunteers completely inspiring.

Noisy: Its a bit of shock leaving the Bow Valley Parkway and joining the TransCanada to climb Kicking Horse Pass. Two lanes of traffic each way: solid and noisy.

Quiet: Much of the ride was quiet. In particular, the first night, leaving Kamloops and up toward Barriere, so few cars and just of the faint sound of bikes. Even the wind was quiet because it was behind us.

It was a great ride. I’d like to thank the organizers and the volunteers, my fellow riders and particularly Doug for making it so!

Susan (note the ice sock)