We arrived yesterday in Fernie, after four great days of riding. Here are the highlights...
I hugely appreciate having such a good friend in Linda and her daughter-in-law Sharon, who drove all the way from Seattle to Banff to pick up our car. They are stars.
No mechanical problems of any sort, all the gear is working well.
The weather has been great. In July there were three weeks of really hot weather (40 degrees C) which would have been miserable. We'll get our share of hot weather, but at least we got to start the trip with 60-70 degree days instead of 85-100 degree days.
The first two days of riding was all in National and Provincial parks, with stellar scenery, no logging or mining operations, no paved roads, and few cars. The third day was on dirt/gravel roads in areas with coal mines and some logging. The fourth day was crummy riding on a primary highway with lots of traffic.
The only other GDR riders we have met are Chris and Jack, at the Safeway in Banff. They rode the US portion several years ago with the ACA group, and are now back alone to ride the Canadian portion, and then as far south as Whitefish. They both had bob trailers, and what looked like heavy loads.
Once we started riding we were particularly happy to have smaller loads. Riding uphill is hard enough with a big load, but the places we had to push the bikes uphill would have been tough with heavier loads.
We are now staying with Linda and Heiko, parents of our friend Elke. Elke's parents live in Fernie, at the ski resort, where Elke was raised. They have been kind and generous hosts, and we appreciate their hospitality.
Life is very good. Amy, Jim, Rickson
2 comments:
A couple things I'm wondering about: first, is all the food you're eating uncooked? I don't see, in the equipment list, any pots, dishes, knives, forks, spoons or stoves. Not even a water filter. How are you purifying your water?
Each two of you average over 200 pounds all up if you include food and water, so if you each carried 10 more pounds of stuff, that would less than 5% more weight. So, that would be one gear lower on all climbs. Would it make such a difference?
All our camp food is uncooked. We gave up cooking years ago when we took up light-weight backpacking and saw no reason to return to it. Saves weight, time, clean-up hassle, the necessity to camp near water. Also cooking is the greatest way to attract bears I can think of.
We carry chemical water purification systems. They weight significantly less, never clog, require no tedious pumping, and the new ones add no flavour to the water.
Any weight savings have made this trip much easier and we can't figure out how people do this with the loads they report. It would be serious struggle to get heavier bikes up (and down) some of these hills. We can't figure out how people manage with trailers.
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