When a Canadian says a trail is not bikeable, believe them. These people are not soft. They mean just don’t take a bike. At all. You will be pushing it, pulling it, dragging it, carrying it up and down vertical cliffs and diving to stop it falling into the river below.
It was a Forrest Gump box of chocolates kind of day. We never knew what we were getting and, apart from our first cable ferry ride, the surprises were usually unpleasant. Like expecting mint or coconut and getting liver and onions. On one 9km stretch we managed an average speed of about 3km/h. And that includes the bits we could actually ride. Now we understand why that trail wasn’t on any mountain bike websites. It barely gets hiked either.
The day started off pleasantly enough with great coffee and breakfast at Crumbs in Castlegar. And a nice little single track trail along the Columbia River and over the Brilliant Bridge where the Kootenay river comes in to join it below the hydro power station.
Then it was decision time, and we saw the warning signs on the trail (steep, slippery, lots of rocks) and heard the voice of our host at the Chameleon Hotel. “The trail on that side of the river is rough. You can’t get through with a bike”. So we duly went back across the river and rode along Highway 3A and followed the railway track, figuring we could cross the cable ferry at the little community of Glade and pick up the trail again. The ferry was a delight and we thought we were very clever as we crossed and rode through lovely meadows along the river.
Then not so much. For 9km we cursed and scrambled. Seeing plenty of signs of bears, we felt a bit isolated, but our breathing was so hard we were biological bear bells and needn’t have worried.
For most of the “trail” we had a steep cliff down to the Kootenay river on the left. We both had to dive and catch back wheels as the bikes we were pushing along particularly narrow sections succumbed to gravity and shot left.
Even after we emerged breathless into a clearing and on to a logging road the pain wasn’t over. The climb along the road to the settlement of Granite is relentless. We opted out of the detour up and over Morning Mountain in favour of getting Gill’s bike into the shop in Nelson to repair the damage done to the gearing by errant branches ahead of the climb up Gray Creek Pass tomorrow.
Today’s distance: 55km (in 6h30!)
Climb: 760m (most on foot)
Total distance: 1222km
#thegreattrail
#transcanadatrail
Trans Canada Epic 