Preparation and Logistics
The Grasslanders crew rides again
This is year three of what seems to have become an annual tradition - a late May short bike trip with good friends. It was the same crew as described in last year's Galena Loop near my home in Revelstoke, BC; me, plus Sue, Rick, Adele, and Steve. But this year's four day trip took us back to near my former home in Calgary, Alberta. We all have deep ties to Alberta, so it was a homecoming of sorts for Adele, Steve, and me.
Rick didn't bike the full distances due to recent back surgery. Instead, he drove their Sprinter van with all our stuff and did shorter out and backs. Having a support vehicle was fine with all of us because this trip would be tougher to provision than our 2022 and 2023 trips -there are no stores or restaurants on the route. We also didn't have cell coverage for most of the time, so couldn't post anything during the trip. But we did have two Garmin InReach devices between us, so we could message (slowly) back and forth with Rick.
How Did We Find The Route, and Where Did We Go?
We got the idea for this foothills and grasslands loop from the Bikepack Canada website, where we also found our original Grasslands Circuit ride near Kamloops from 2022.
The guys who created this loop called it Old Porcupine's Choice. It does pass through the beautiful Porcupine Hills Public Land Use Zone, but that's only part of the story. It starts in Willow Creek Provincial Park. In addition to passing by numerous private ranches, it also skirts next to Chain Lakes Provincial Park and goes through the Indian Graves Provincial Recreation Area, then along the edge of the Cataract Creek Public Land Use Zone, then through the Mount Livingstone Natural Area, the Oldman River North Provincial Recreation Area, the Dutch Creek Provincial Recreation Area, the Bob Creek Wildland Provincial Park, and the Black Creek Heritage Rangeland before entering the Porcupine Hills. And the beautiful montane area colloquially known as 'Whaleback' is contained in the Bob Creek and Black Creek areas. Phew. What's the difference between a park, recreation area, public land use zone, and natural area? It's complicated. They're all public lands (crown land, to us Canadians), but have varying degrees of restrictions on resource development and use (lots of cattle grazing in these parts), recreation (e.g., motorized or not, hunting or not) and camping (e.g., in campgrounds only, or wild camping permitted). In the summer, this area is most likely teeming with both horse-related recreation, and also with off-highway vehicles. And in the fall there will be a lot of hunters. We biked Tuesday to Friday in an attempt to avoid weekend warriors on ATVs. That definitely worked. The mediocre weather may also have kept people away.
From a First Nations perspective, we rode in the area covered by Treaty 7, signed in 1877. Treaty 7 is the last of the treaties made between the Government of Canada and the Plains First Nations. It was signed by five First Nations: the Siksika (Blackfoot), Kainai (Blood), Piikani (Peigan), Stoney-Nakoda and Tsuut'ina (Sarcee).
And from a county perspective, we rode through three municipal districts - Willow Creek, Ranchland, and Pincher Creek, plus public lands within the Kananaskis Improvement District, known to Albertans as K-Country.
What Did We Ride?
Bike-wise, all of us but Rick were on the same bikes we used last year. I love that it's a mix of bikes, because it shows that there's no right answer. I'm the only one who used a drop bar bike. Sue rode a Trek 1120, which is their beefiest touring bike, a rigid mountain bike with large-ish tires, meant for bikepacking. Steve and Adele used well-travelled hardtail mountain bikes, and Rick had his full-suspension mountain bike. Because this route is pretty much all gravel roads, I switched back to the original 50 mm mountain bike tires that came with my bike instead of the 35 mm tires that I used in Italy last fall. I set the bike up with a 5 L under seat bag containing all my foul weather gear, plus a frame bag with repair things, a small handlebar bag with food, and a top tube bag for my phone and InReach. I added a third bottle cage so I could carry bear spray - that wasn't necessary in Sardinia, of course!
The Day Before
Sue and Rick live in Canmore, so they got the shorter drive this year, and their home provided me a lovely place to stay the night before we started biking I drove to Canmore in afternoon, making it just in time for pizza dinner. It was my bright idea to order pizza so we could have leftovers for lunch tomorrow, but I wasn't planning to arrive so late that Sue and Rick would have to buy it. Whoops.
We didn't see Adele and Steve for dinner because they had a contractor doing work at their Revelstoke house and needed to be there all day.
As I entered Canmore, it occurred to me that some areas of our planned route might not work because Alberta’s mountains were looking very snowy after a cool and wet spring. Komoot says that our route will take us over 2000 m elevation twice. We’ll see tomorrow where the snow line is a couple hours southeast of here.
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