About Me
This blog begins with a bicycle journey to Calgary across the mountains from British Columbia. The story explains, indirectly, how I ended up living in this city as well as giving you an insight to my love of the bike and in riding long distances.
It was the second summer of the Pandemic so while there were some interprovincial travel restrictions, these didn’t stop travel from British Columbia to Alberta. The previous summer in 2020, I had made a journey over the Rockies from Chilliwack to Jasper where my son worked at the Lodge. Now, in 2021, I had planned different route over the mountains to my daughter’s home near Nosehill Park in the northwest of the city.
The 1,200km route I had chosen from Chilliwack hugged the American border as far as Cranbrook and then struck north between the Purcell and the Rocky Mountains to Radium Hot Springs, where I would cut over the mountains to Castle Junction in the Bow Valley and then follow that river on the old Highway 1 through Cochrane and into northwest Calgary. From my experience riding to Jasper, I knew I could make it in six days.
I like to travel fast and light on a bicycle. This results in less days on the road and, in the summer, speed keeps you cooler and allows you to outpace most bugs. While I could have made the journey unsupported, my wife Jane readily accepted a driving role. Our strategy was for me to leave very early in the morning and she would depart some three hours later catching me up after four hours of cycling. We’d swap out drink bottles, I’d take on more snacks and then she’d drive ahead to me again two hours later. For a ride longer than eight-hours, we’d repeat our meet up another two hours down the road. Mostly, this strategy worked.
Unknown to us before I departed on Sunday 20th June, an unprecedented heat event was developing in southern British Columbia. Nothing appeared unusual as I set off at first light into a gentle headwind. In fact, a drizzly shower peppered me as I crossed over the mighty Fraser River at Agassiz on the skinny two-lane bridge that most cyclist dub the scariest in the Lower Mainland. At the time of day I crossed though, there was little traffic to harass me.
Riding towards Hope, I was in familiar territory as this was the same road I had taken to Jasper the previous year and where, more recently, I had made my longer training rides. However, climbing up into the Coastal Mountains east of Hope I was into new ground. Driving that road up to the Manning Park you just don’t realize how relentless the grade is but the views of mountains and the fast-flowing Skagit River compensated for my slow cycling pace.
At Manning Park Lodge, I rendezvoused with Jane and enjoyed a sandwich in the picnic area along with dozens of day-trippers and vacationers passing through to the interior. By then it was midday and the heat was building even at that elevation of 1,200m. Curious Columbian ground squirrels popped their heads out of burrows in search of crumbs. These ground squirrels are distant cousins of the smaller Richardson ground squirrels we see here, once the snow melts.
By the time I reached our Airbnb accommodation in Princeton, I was starting to wilt from the effort of riding and temperature, so the long cool drinks Jane plied me with were just what I needed. Those and a huge pasta meal to replenish lost glycogen.
I had no illusions the next day would be any easier as I had to ride through Osoyoos, well known for having some of the highest summer temperatures in Canada. By then we also knew a so-called “heat dome” was developing behind us and tracking eastwards. Even so, when I departed the air was pleasantly cool and the initial riding was gently downhill following the lyrically-named Similkameen River.
I had to climbed over the ridge into the Osoyoos Valley, first passing by the geographical oddity of Spotted Lake before making the fast descent to my rendezvous in Osoyoos where the temperature was already in the low 30’s C. A break in an airconditioned Tim Hortons revived me temporarily but did nothing to prepare me for the brutal ascent up Anarchist Hill on the far side of the valley. Granted I was moving slowly but I was managing to grind my way up the hill on tar that was beginning to get tacky in the relentless sunshine. That was, until I reached a roll-over accident where a gravel truck trailer had flipped on the descent, blocking the road.
With no alternative, I had to turn back as there was no easy detour around the blockage. I had ridden 132km but couldn’t get to Greenwood without arranging for a ride with my support car. We made a massive detour through Kelowna and by the time we returned to Highway 3, I had no appetite to ride the last 30km to British Columbia’s smallest city. Frustrated at having not been able to keep riding, I prepared myself for the next day that featured two huge climbs totally over 2,300m.
The road was empty when I set off at dawn and as the day brightened logging trucks began to appear, headed for the mill in Grand Forks. Further east the Kettle valley gave me some respite before a thousand metre climb to Paulson Summit. Beyond was my reward of a 30km descent to the Columbia River at Castlegar. During that descent, I had a scare with high-speed shimmy on the front wheel, something I had experienced a couple of times before on the Roubaix road bike. Intriguingly, I concluded that I was causing the oscillation myself with my twitching, tired arm muscles. Once I dared to take one hand off the handlebars the oscillation disappeared!
I hid in another air-conditioned fast-food restaurant at Castlegar, drinking a litre of ice cold coke and not wanting to go back into the withering heat. Facing 40km more riding and one more big climb of 700m, I reluctantly left and set off for accommodation in Salmo.
Day 4 was a tough one featuring a thousand metre climb followed by a decent to Creston and then a hundred kilometres of slowly rising terrain to Cranbrook. The 20km climb seemed never ending and my only reward was the 30km drop to Creston, a British Columbian town that sticks to Mountain Standard Time year-round. In summer that time is the same as Pacific Daylight-saving Time so no clock changes we necessary. As I made my way further east, I noticed clouds developing and sensed a change in the weather was coming. Later from our hotel room at Cranbrook, I observed the sky turning dark, preceding a violent thundery rain storm where the streets ran with water that couldn’t drain fast enough.
When I set off the next day, it was still dark and street lights reflected off puddles in the road. The rain had stopped but I donned a jacket to stay dry from the spray. I was headed north along the Rocky Mountain Trench through Fairmont Hot Springs and Windemere. Luckily a southerly wind helped my progress and soon dried out the wet road surface. Vacation traffic was busy by the time I reach Radium Hot Springs and turned up though the narrow gorge on the cut through to Banff.
The terrain climbed beyond Radium Hot Springs and gave me a wonderful open view of the Kootenay River after the highpoint. Down in the Kootenay Valley, my tired legs appreciated the gentle grade and I found the wild landscape therapeutic enabling to enjoy the final climb up the Vermillion Valley to Kootenay Park Lodge. In that second pandemic year, the Lodge was up for sale and appeared to be struggling to survive.
With the temperatures I had experienced on this venture up to that point, I had forgotten how cold it could get in the mountains, even in summer. So, when I set off without gloves on my final day, I was soon struggling to keep my hands warm. The further I climbed to cross over to the Bow Valley, the colder my hands got. Then I had the exhilarating descent to Castle Junction but I didn’t appreciate this as it was all I could do to stop shivering uncontrollably.
Eventually, I warmed up enough on the Bow Valley Parkway to enjoy the ride to Banff and to take in the majestic mountains south of the Bow River. Carrying on through Banff, I followed the cycle trail to Canmore, meeting up with Jane for a celebratory breakfast at the Summit Café in Cougar Creek. By then, I was warm enough to sit at an outdoor table that afforded an excellent view of the Three Sisters ridge across the valley.
I couldn’t linger for too long in Canmore as I was only half way to my destination in Calgary. I found Highway 1A east of Canmore busier than I had expected and got held up for a while at a railway crossing before making my way past Ghost Lake to Cochrane. After brief pause at the Ranche parking lot, I had to fight my up Cochrane Hill as by then I was really feeling the six days of accumulated fatigue in my legs.
Not really knowing my way around Calgary and not wishing to ride in afternoon commuter traffic, I agreed with Jane to halt just inside the city limits at Tuscany. When I stepped of the bike, I was exhausted to the point of needing to sit still for five minutes before loading the bike on the car and driving the final 15km to my daughter’s house.
In a roundabout way, this is the story of how I got to move to Calgary. When we arrived at my daughter’s door, my first grandchild greeted us at the door and this welcome subconsciously set in to motion the wheels that lead us to live in the city less than three years later.