August 20, 2024
Day 2
We have a great routine started in the evenings. We clean and lube the bike chains and then go through a selection of bike bolts checking for tightness. After that we stretch, clean up if possible and store our food and bikes away from our tent. We are in bed before 9. I slept poorly again. I woke up a lot and had trouble falling back to sleep.
Our tent was about 25 feet from the road but no cars went by. At 12:15 I was awake and heard a strange jingling sound. I knew our bear hang didn’t have a bell so that was good. The sound was far off but moving closer. It kept building to a fairly loud combination of cow bell and bear bell. Then I heard the distinct sound of horses. So weird to be going by at that hour with horses. And it wasn’t one horse. It sounded like there were at least 10 and this morning we saw a lot of piles of road apples.
This morning it was cold. At night I ended up adding long underwear and along the way we saw ice on a puddle. The riding was mostly downhill on a very hard packed gravel/dirt road. We had a few very cold descents where I was happy to be wearing my mitts and even then my thumbs were cold. Still not much in the way of wildlife. We saw several different kinds of birds.
We stayed on the gravel road for about 50 km and then hit some actual proper mountain biking singletrack. It almost felt out of place and with a fully loaded bike we both worked hard up a couple of very punchy climbs. After the climbing we were rewarded with some very flowy downhill that was even banked in sections.
We started the day thinking we would get to Ekford fairly quickly, maybe by 10 AM leaving at 7 AM. It turned out that we didn’t read the distance accurately on the map so it took us closer to 11:30 to ride the 60 odd kilometres. We decided that we still had a lot of food so we didn’t need to resupply. Instead we’d find a park, grab a coffee, and eat lunch. That turned out to be a good decision because the park was on a river and we refilled the water bottles after lunch.
After lunch we started a very long climb on the road. It was close to 600 m of elevation gain but the grade was fine so we could just sit back and grind our way to the top. The traffic wasn’t bad at all.
The next destination was Sparwood. We figured we’d camp there since it was close to 100 km. After the pavement the trail headed off into sparse woods on hard packed dirt.
After that we were on the road for a bit into blistering headwinds. We each took turns ‘pulling’; essentially one person in front with the other rider a few inches off their back wheel. The trailing rider gets a huge advantage saving about 25% of the energy.
Soon we were on quiet side roads that were really beautiful with farms and the mountains in the near distance. The terrain changes fairly quickly even by bike. I’ve noticed that the peaks of mountains are a little less rugged and some still have vegetation nearly to the top.
Oh, along the way we saw a gravel pit and thought it was a good safe place to fire off a bear banger so we know how to use them. It was quite impressive. Peter shot it into the air on an angle so it made a very loud bang about 150 feet out. They say if a bear is close you should shoot the banger straight up. You definitely don’t want to spook them behind and have them scared running towards you.
When we arrived in Sparwood it was only 3:30 so we decided that rather than camping in town we’d ride out of town and wild camp; basically just set up your tent wherever you want. It meant we’d also get in more distance and that’s always good.
Riding out of Sparwood was a mix of super bumpy gravel and highway. It wasn’t the most pleasant riding but it wasn’t long. And now we are more than halfway to Fernie and we will likely camp tomorrow night right before the US border.
Our campsite for the night is very simple. We cooked 100 m away and unfortunately couldn’t do a bear hang. We could only manage a rodent hang so fingers crossed.
The riding today was easier than the first day as we had a net descent. That meant we had a lot of downhill where we just laid off the brakes and cruised adding up the kilometres.
Distance - 123 km/1290 m elevation
Time riding - 7 AM - 5:50 pm with an hour for lunch and other breaks
Highlights:
-flowy singletrack
-great weather again, cold in the morning but 22 by day and sunny
-letting off the bear banger
-Elkford was a nice little town for lunch
-Paved side roads through farming area
Today's ride: 120 km (75 miles)
Total: 238 km (148 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 4 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 1 |
1 month ago