It is an incredible privilege to have the health, stamina and opportunity to experience what we did today. Neither the words nor the pictures will do justice to this our best day ever on the bikes. But we will try to describe it and will likely share far too many photos – you are warned.
How clever we were to get the brunt of the Gray Creek Pass done yesterday and leave ourselves only 7 arduous kilometres and 600m of climb to the summit today. We didn’t feel so clever when Bron’s hydraulic dropper seat post refused to work and she was forced to start out riding with her knees around her ears up 14% grades. But a bit of creative mechanics sorted that out.
A word on the pass: according to dangerousroads.org it’s the highest unpaved road in Canada – the summit sits at 2,072m above sea level. The road only opened on 1 July this year once the snow cleared enough to make it passable. It’s not maintained but the rustic toilet at Oliver Lake near the top is stocked with loo paper.
The way up is lovely, especially because the chipmunks and ground hogs were so friendly and inquisitive.
But after the summit on the way down to Kimberley everything changes. The wildflowers – whites, pinks, oranges, blues – had Bron in tears. Gill grinned the whole way down the 15km descent. The peaks soar above you as you navigate the bike down a steep, rocky, gnarly track. The few people we came across were friendly and chatty – a high alpine camaraderie. They were in 4x4s though.
The steep descent emerged into an up-down-up leg-biting trek on a dusty, loose gravel road that felt a bit soul-destroying in spite of the scenery. We couldn’t really take advantage of the downhills, and the rocks and stones made climbing much more arduous than the gradients would suggest. And here for about 30km the few people who passed us raced by covering us in their dust. We imagined them tossing their beer cans out the windows down the road.
Eventually we turned left into the beautiful forests of the Kimberley nature reserve. A nasty leg-buckling climb for the first 3km almost had us. But then we hit the downhill – and we flew down a track through exquisite forest on the way into town as a thunderstorm built overhead.
Kimberley is another surprise – it’s an incongruously Austrian-style alpine village. But it knows how to do forest trails.
Home tonight is an alpine style hotel run by a couple of Aussies. Dinner was great in the Pedal and Tap pub.
And we crossed a time zone today. Not a provincial boundary yet, but appropriately we are on Mountain Time.
We don’t think a day on a bike can get any better than this.
Today’s distance: 80km
Climb: 1,331
Total distance: 1,362km
#thegreattrail
#transcanadatrail
Trans Canada Epic 