Day 2 - Tobermory Recreation Site to Fernie, BC

A long but relatively easy day!  After a pretty good night of sleep indoors while it rained on & off all night, we got off to a good early start.  Our only downside to staying in our nice little cabin was the food we sacrificed to the mice. Little nuggets got two of my granola bars! We had a string of folks knocking on the door asking if we had extra room inside the cabin until about 10pm when it finally got dark. A couple other Divide riders set up tents outside, but a surprising number just kept slogging on through the rain.



This morning dawned early and thankfully dry!  The rain quit just as the sun was brightening the sky.  But... while we didn't need to worry about getting soaked riding in the rain, we did need to deal with 40 miles of wet, muddy dirt roads into Elkford, the first real town since Banff. By the time we reached Elkford, both Mike and I had serious coatings of mud all over our bikes, which was rapidly drying to the consistency of concrete! Miraculously, we stopped for lunch at a little diner that actually had a hose out front for folks to eas off the mud :-). They also made a mean bacon cheeseburger!  

Our original goal for the day was to make it to Sparwood, the next town south of Elkford, but with the 10 miles headstart and ideal weather, we decided to keep going on the Fernie, BC, a much bigger town with a number of hotels.  A real bed indoors is always welcome;-). We also decided earlier that we'd skip the masochistically difficult "Koko Claims" section that's a required section of the Tour Divide Race.  As we're not really "racing," it seemed kind of pointless to torture ourselves on a round-about alternate section with a climb reputed to take 3 hours to go 3km pushing our bikes up a streambed on 15-20% gradients. We may be crazy to do this ride in the first place, but we're not stupid!-)
Sparwood was the next town along the route, and it is home to a huge open pit vosl mine- they've literally taken the top off a 4000' mountain to get at a huge seam of coal on the edge off town. To celebrate this, the downtown parke features all kinds of old mining equipment, highlighted by a retired dump truck that was one the world's largest... It's really impressive:-)


So... With good weather holding, we blew all the way to Fernie (about 80 miles total) by about 4:30pm, and got a nice room at the Raging Elk Hostel- we highly recommend it!  After getting our bikes sorted out, and our clothes washed, we got a great dinner of fish & chips at a very cool pub on the really nice historic main street.  A perfect end to day two...

Next up-- back in the USA!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 8 - Lincoln, MT to Helena, MT

Image
Wow. Today was one of those days you dream of when you're planning a ride like the GDMBR, where the weather is perfect: the terrain is challenging, but not so much that you're ruined at the end of the day; the people are all friendly, kind and generous; and the food is all delicious and even home-made! We began the day inauspiciously in the small town of Lincoln, with a damp chill in the air- 37F and foggy, but with a forecast for clearing sky's and warmer temps by mid morning.  After a big breakfast at Lambkins Cafe, Mike and I set off to tackle Stemple Pass-  a 16 mile, 2200' climb starting about 100 yards from the cafe.  Sure enough, within 45 minutes, the fog began to lift, and we each began shedding layers.   The road profile looked like a near perfect exponential curve, with easy grades to start, and the steeper and steeper pitches as we neared the top, with a good ...
Read more

Shakedown trip- 4 weeks to go!

Image
Getting close to time to head for Banff, but first a real test ride:-). 3 days, 2 nights camping at remote sites up in the Adirondacks.  About 30-35% gravel, with 3-4,000' of climbing over 40-70 miles each day.  It should be a pretty good test of both bike & body!  I started out about mid-day Saturday May 6 from Port Leyden on the Black River.  My route ran north along the Black River valley about 20 miles, then northeast into the Adirondacks Park to Stillwater Reservoir.  I got to the reservoir at about 5pm, and decided to catch a real dinner at the Stillwater Inn, where I enjoyed a really great burger and fries and a beer- Meier's Creek IPA even from back in Cazenovia;-) After dinner, I rode another 3 or 4 miles until I found a great campsite on a bluff overlooking the reservoir.  Camp went together pretty easily for the first time out in the wild, and I even enjoyed a pretty nice campfire before sleeping like a log.  Slee...
Read more

Day 31 - Pie Town, NM to Apache Creek, NM

Image
After yesterday's long slog along the GDMBR's gravel to Pie Town, last night we decided to consider a slightly longer route today, but sticking to paved highway instead of unpredictable gravel. Whether peanut butter mud or peanut butter powder, neither was something we wanted to experience at this stage of our journey! So after a pretty good night's rest at the Toaster House, we set off for Apache Creek along US 60 at about 7:00am.  Today we were not too worried about heat, as we would begin riding at about 7500' under oddly overcast  skies, and then climb to more than 8200' at Jewett's Gap, so for most of the ride we would see comfortable temperatures.  The wind was another thing though...but we apparently got lucky on that count for once!  The daily breeze didn't really kick up until after we got to Quemado and headed south.  Starting as a quartering tailwind, by the time we were descending along the San Francisco River, we had a full on tailwi...
Read more