76.5 miles and 3,670 ft ascent
I was up early and snapped these photos of the sleeping camp.
Breakfast! Everyone is always hungry! Riders burn 5000 calories a day!
Great day to ride! This photo was taken looking back toward campsite.You can see by the water, there was no wind, and today it was not raining, a pleasant relief from conditions yesterday! Thankfully, my brakes were working well, despite yesterday's weather and road condition challenges.
Here we joined the Trans Canada Highway (Canada 1) for the first time.
The Trans Canada is the principal highway across the country. Amazingly, it is a TWO LANE road with traffic in both directions, as you can see in the photo below. There are passing lanes in the mountains. Cyclists have to be wary of passing trucks. Heavy trucks create great disturbances in the airflow when they pass a cyclist, and riders have to be careful not to be thrown off balance. One truck passing created a disturbance that made me wobble today. Further down the road from this location, the shoulder degraded considerably, and it required us to drop speed while descending.
We knew we were approaching the mountains when we saw this sign requiring winter tires or chains for vehicles October 1 through April 30 each year.
And finally the mountains came into view! It was our first glimpse of snow cover and land above timberline. The guy in this photo looked like he could use a chocolate milk, but he wasn't anywhere near done with the day's ride, so no recovery drink yet!
Lush fern along the roadside.
A view of the abundant spring runoff. Reminded me of the old Coors advertisement and its accompanying logo picture which bragged that Coors Beer was made from "pure Rocky Mountain spring water". When I rode past a roadside river with fast water, the temperature dropped about 20F. A bit chilling. Soaking in cold water is good for the riding legs though. I have been on rides where we were happy to do just that.
The road curved to show us this gorgeous view of what's ahead. Roll on crew, roll on!
We were still chasing this mountain. Yet another breathtaking view....
Captured these shots in a lake reflection. The camera was NOT upside down.
We were seeing these signs all day along the road. This far down the road the thought of relaxing in those hot springs surely was tempting!
Then this sign came up to remind us where we were.
No worries though. We arrived at the Albert Canyon campsite with lots of sunshine. At last we could lay our wet camping gear out to dry before evening. By the way, that's my Tennessee orange tent. Bet you would never have guessed that it belonged a fellow from Tennessee! I'm on cooking crew tonight, so better get busy. Another episode in the adventure tomorrow....
Great blog so far Jim. Enjoy the ride!!
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