Day 9, Baynes Lake to Edwards Lake

Due to continuing rain we didn't hit the road until after noon and made it a short day. We had a much easier route for the day. It was all roads, about 50/50 paved/unpaved, and no trails.

We hit Edward's Lake campground around 5 p.m., right as it started raining again and temporarily ducked under a tarp until it passed and we could set up our tents without getting soaked.



 






Thankfully the weather is finally going to be sunny for the remainder of our ride. The constant rain was a bit of a surprise that we were not all that well prepared for. The ride has been a lot of fun but I am looking forward to some dry and sunny days.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 0, Hanging out in Banff

Image
Dante, Kaden, and I are about to start another biking adventure This time we we be riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route from Banff to either Whitefish, Mt or Helena, Mt depending on how we are feeling after the first half. This is the same route that I rode down to the Mexico border in 2022 (https://gdmbr22tg.blogspot.com/). Starting tomorrow you can follow our location here: Share.garmin.com/GDMBRDKD25 PW: GDMBRDKD2025! We don't plan to go fast or to cover any impressive distances each day, just to take our time and have fun. We plan to average 35 or so miles a day and to mostly camp out. Today we spent the day relaxing in Banff, doing some food shopping, and picking up some items we couldn't bring on the plane, like bear spray and camp stove fuel. We also reassembled and loaded up our bikes. A few pictures from our shuttle trip from Calgary and from today appear below.
Read more

Last Day, Tuchuck C.G. to Kalispell, Mt.

Image
This ended up being the only long day of riding on this trip. About 20 miles into the day we had to tackle Red Meadow Pass, another challenging climb. It ends at a spectacular lake that makes it all worthwhile. After lunch there it was mostly downhill to our ending point of Whitefish, MT. Unfortunately, Whitefish is a very popular tourist area and all the campgrounds were full, as were almost all of the motels. I did find one room at $628/night, but decided that was just too offensive. So after eating in Whitefish we did another 15 miles to Kalispell, where rooms were available at almost reasonable prices. Our total mileage ended up being 78 miles. Dante and Kaden decided they had to get to 80, so after I headed into the motel they went out and did two more miles. Some pictures from the day appear below. I wish we had the time to do the second segment down to Helena that I had originally planned, but the couple of days we lost to my illnesses early on leave us with too little time to c...
Read more

Day 7, 20+ Miles of Single Track

Image
Today we rode from a cheap motel in Sparwood to a cheap hotel in Fernie. Describing it that way drastically understates the experience though.  We left town after picking up some ready to eat breakfast items and snack items for the day. There was some very light rain as we started but it didn't last and wasn't even enough to get us into our rain gear. Leaving town we immediately hit the Elk Valley Trail, which is part of the Continental Divide Hiking Trail, and rode it almost the entire day (26 miles). It is mostly single track and presented endless challenges like huge roots, large rocks, big drops, and very steep climbs. That meant each of us stopping dozens of times when one or more of us failed to negotiate tricky technical sections and/or lost balance, or just couldn't muscle up a particularly steep part. Dante was the only one to take an actual spill though, falling on his side while trying to ride across an icy creek.  Near the end of the day there was a steep climb ...
Read more