Kamloops to Golden

In Kamloops we had our rest day. We slept in, had a lazy breakfast then spent the afternoon lounging around the backyard of our hosts. We cooled off in the pool, chatted, tossed a frisbee for a bit and did some random cartwheels and ninja rolls in the backyard. Essentially we acted like school children. After a quick lunch we went to town to pick up some food for later and viewed the town from the local high point. It is a very widespread town in between the mountains with the Thompson River running through it. We went back to the house and had another magnificent Japanese dinner and stuffed ourselves. Then sat down for to watch Me Myself and Irene. We were craving a movie after a week on the road, it was very fulfilling.

Next morning we woke up and left Kamloops to meet up with a fellow from the local paper. Pat had arranged a meet with them to "get awareness for the charity". I got a flat, so we didn't get very far before we met up with him. He talked to us for 2 min and then wanted to get some shots of us biking. I guess we were pretty enough to make it in the paper, but not interesting enought to get an article. We kept blasting at a good pace after that with a nice tail wind. Ran into an older fellow who was biking across the country with Cycle Canada. This is an organization that sets the whole ride up, so all you have to do is give them $4000 and they carry your gear, set up your camp... the whole shabang. All you have to do is ride from spot A to spot B each day. The up side of this is no worries, downsides are very expensive and little freedom to stop as you wish, but it is a good way of getting into it if you don't have the guts I suppose. It turned out an excellent day and we played some games (categories and 20 questiosn) along the way to make things more interesting. Similiar to the long frisbee car rides. We stopped for lunch at 80 km, which is usually our end target. Fairly flat ground, once hill. At the top of this hill we took some majestic shots of ourselves.

We then decided to continue on to Salmon Arm to top of the day with 130 km, a record so far. We made it in but we were feeling the burn. Salmon Arm is ANOTHER nice little town in the mountains by a lake, we checked out the info centre, then biked up a decent sized hill which felt brutal because it was at the end of the day. Finally we hauled into what looked like a permanant home RV park. There we ran into a fellow who was coming back from treeplanting by Prince George and biking to Revelstoke.

Next day we headed on out through more mountain country towards the real mountains. We stopped in Sicamous to buy some food. It turned out to be a long break but it was enjoyable, the town had a little beach, but we didn't have time for that. We kept going through nice scenery towards Revelstoke. Lunch was at a little mini museum by a small creek. Lots of mosquitoes. As we kept biking last days power ride started to catch up with us. It was a bad idea to go all out and set a record the first day after the break. We had to stop at a huge hotel/tourist spot in the before Revelstoke called 3 Valley Gap. It was surrounded by steep cliffs and looked quite spectacular. We bought some postcards there and slothed around in their yard for a bit looking sketchy. Then we made the big push to get to Revelstoke. The final bit in was all downhill and very comfortable. We rode into the downtown area to find the info centre. Info centres become our natural stop off spot where we would bug the cute girls with questions about the area. Some of them were pretty useless becuase a lot of them were hired from far away like Ontario, so knew next to nothing about the local area. Downtonw Revelstoke is a nice little spot with two big bear statues at the front. It's a little touristy but what the hell. There was a band playing which was relaxing. We stuffed ourselves at a Chinese restaurant, then took 2 steps outside only to pass out on the chairs and watch the band for an hour because we were too full to move. Eventually we got up and made our way to the campsite the other side of town. It was full so the manager put us beside in a site with trailer where the dude was gone for hte weekend. Here are some good pics from Revelstoke.


Canadian Tire making its way out west behind the mountains.

We woke up late next morning and slowly wandered out. I had a flat in the morning, but pumped it up and it was ok. Very strange behaviour, this lasted until Calgary. Each night my tire would deflate, I would pump it up again and it would be fine for hte day. Right before Calgary, it went completely flat and it turned out the tube had a whole right on the valve. Anyways, we started off knowing it would be a testing day through Rogers Pass. It was very hot and there weren't any big hills at the start. We stopped at the Skunk Cabbage Trail and did a short hike through a marsh. Very unique thing to see in that area, a marsh. As we started, a tourist bus pulled up so there were lots of old people going by us. Here's some pics from the trail.

The bog

Pat and Jan

We passed by the Albert Canyon Hot Springs, where we originally wanted to stay. But it was too expensive and too far at the time. After this there was a slow hot climb. Started shirt soaking again because of the heat. The worst part of climbing a pass is when you start going downhill, because you know that you will have to make up for it later. Another phenomenon that occurs in the mountains is that you can't tell uphill from downhill because you've lost all idea of hwere the horizon should be. So you could be going uphill but it feels like you should be speeding along. Strange mountain hallucinations. We had lunch by a nice waterfall.








After this we began to get tired so our pace slowed down. We passed by a forest trail that we had originally planned on hiking. We gave up on it as it was too late. Our trip today took us through 2 parks, Revelstoke Mountain provincial Park, then into Glacier National Park. The latter is where we camped. We slowly pulled into the Illucillawaet campground expecting a desolate place. However it was booming with campers, an unexpected surprise. We had some pasta for dinner, and checked out hte map of the park. As it turned out there were a lot of trails in the area. So we decided to go to bed early and wake up in order to climb to a Glacier the next day.



Next day was June 29th, my birthday, booyakasha! We were up at 6 am to hike up to the Illucillawaet Glacier, which is very difficult to spell. It was tough to wake up, but as soon as I remembered what the reason was I was pumped. The estimate was 2.5 hours, but we made it to the head of the Glacier in 1 hour. It went through the forest and then opened up and went right beside the valley of the mountain. At the trail end, we began scampering up rocks to get to the actually snow/glacier. It was far from the trail end because the glacier has been retreating so much in the past century. Spectacular scenery, tempting to stay the whole day and ascend the nearest mountain.








But we had to head back. Down and packed up by 12, we made the short uphill bike to the top of Roger's Pass which had eluded us the day before. Then it was 20 min of 65 km/hr decent through 4 snowsheds. The snowsheds ensure snow doesn't block the roads during avalanches. On the way down we met a fellow cross country biker named Derek who we would bump into agian. He stopped with us for lunch, probably thought we were mad because of our random sugar-high shenanigans. Our lunch diet is solely sugar - trail mix, nutella, pb, jam, and honey sandwiches. VERY high in sugar. The way I see it is we burn that up on the ride and then refuel with carbs at dinner. As we continued it became scorching hot, more shirt soaking followed. We were hoping to pass through the elusive town of Donald to fill up on water, but as seems to be a pattern, there are many towns listed on our maps that don't exist. So we filled up at an RV park and bought choco bars. Eventually we cruised into Golden our stop for the night. It lies in between the two passes in the Rockies, Roger's Pass and Kicking Horse Pass. Unfortunately the only available campsite was a the top of a brutal hill that killed us. Before making it up this, we stopped at a Timmies for some ice cap (for the record a poor choice when you are so hot, soup would be much better). Mike had almost passed out from heat stroke in the past half hour. After setting up camp at the overprice Golden campsite, we drudgingly went down the hill to find dinner (knowing we would have to climb it on the way up). We had dinner at a Greek Restaurant for my birthday and went all out. PRetty sweet. Came back and passed out.