August 18, 2024
Travel to Banff
Travel Day
It was an early trip to the airport, but my concerns about the bike box were unfounded. The check-in was smooth and the security process for the bike box was easy despite having to unpack it. All the staff were very nice and accommodating.
Once in Calgary the box showed up almost immediately and Andrew arrived from Vancouver an hour later and his bike also arrived quickly.
Thanks to being on time we got an earlier shuttle to Banff and were putting our bikes back together by 1:30pm. It took three hours total to get everything assembled, ergonomics sorted, brakes aligned, bags and water bottle cages installed, and all of the garbage and recycling responsibly dealt with.
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Shopping for bear spray, fuel, and groceries followed. We were both very pleased with how smoothly the day had had gone.
We headed to one of Banff’s enormous campgrounds (at least four with over 500 spots each I believe). We got dinner made, eaten and cleaned up, and tents set up with daylight to spare.
Habits
We’ve talked about this trip will go better if we establish certain habits that we do almost without thinking. Things like filling water bottles, charging electronics, and buying food whenever there’s an opportunity rather than assuming there will be another opportunity soon. In camp we want to establish the habits of checking the bikes each night for loose fasteners, and cleaning and lubricating chains. Perhaps even some stretching every night seeing as we’re old now.
Planning Each Day
Some parts of this route have longer stretches between any resupply options, 150 to 200km at times, and longer if we arrive when a place is closed. For this reason we need to look at the day ahead and decide how many meals to plan for at the next resupply.
In some sections planning for water resupply is similarly challenging.
For day 1, leaving Banff it’s about 170km to the first resupply in Elkford so we’re carrying almost two days worth of food right from the start. The rest of the section to the US border has much more frequent resupply options.
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