Chapter 11: Tour des Rockies (part 2)

Aug 2

Hello everyone! Here it is, the second instalment of the final almost-home stretch in the Rockies. It turns out the Rockies are expansive, and so too are these blog posts about them. Admittedly, I’ve found it hard to gather the motivation to post this one, and I think it’s because it marks nearing the end of this rich, dense, epic, challenging bike journey I set out to do once the borders had opened again. I don’t really want it to be over, but there’s a sense of accomplishment settling in to me that I’m just starting to comprehend, having finished the cycling. Anyway, on with the chapter…

Day 6 - Monarch campground to Takakkaw Falls campground, 12km

The thunder and lightning began at 12am, or at least that’s when it woke me up. Everything’s a little spookier when you’re half asleep in any case, but it’s heightened when you’re lying in the middle of an alpine valley in a thunderstorm. Each thunderclap’s boom bounced off the side of the mountains’ faces, echoing and echoing and echoing for what seemed like an eternity. One flash was so strong, the thunder followed less than one second after it struck.

It’s not every night you’re camping in the middle of the Yoho Valley, I thought, trying to encourage myself to make the most of this slightly intense situation. I just hoped the lightning wouldn’t find its way into my tent. Eventually the flashes became fewer and the sky ended its vent. I went back to sleep.

The apocalyptic weather was far from over, however, as the haze had thickened overnight. I ate my breakfast under a perfectly circular orb in the sky, glowing highlighter orange. Luckily, it didn’t smell too strong nor enter my lungs. As the premature wildfire season had been in full swing for a couple of months already, the haze was bound to hit at some point along my ride through the Rockies — and here we were.

Today was a short day of riding, only peddling up to the campground at Takakkaw Falls, one of Canada’s tallest waterfalls at almost 380 metres high. I’d planned to do some hiking up in the area, along a trail connecting up some more waterfalls. I find humans’ fascination with waterfalls fascinating — there’s something so mesmerising about gigantic volumes of water plummeting from great heights.

After a semi-failed attempt to dry my tent out before stuffing it in my bag again, I joined the bandwagon of vehicles travelling up to see this marvel of nature at the leisurely time of 9.30am. As the road up to the falls involves a very sharp zig-zag section, long vehicles are advised not to drive it. Despite this very clear warning in a sign at the start of the road, a tour bus had gotten stuck on one of the corners that morning, forming a line of cars on either side. Some passengers had gotten out to stretch their legs, see what the hold-up was, or in one case, make a sandwich. What can you do.

Many questions passed through my head when I saw the bus wedged into the corner: did they routinely come up here, and was this just a matter of bad luck or driving? Did they have a special exemption that all other long vehicles didn’t have? How long had people been waiting? How on earth would they unstick themselves? I concluded that the bus driver should come to Wellington for professional development in acing narrow corners on windy hilly roads.

Sneakily, I walked my bike past the queue of cars hoping there may be a chance I could squish my bike past the bus. The bus passengers were walking soberly down the road as I pushed Sirocco up. I could sense a collectively low morale and disappointment. I hoped they wouldn’t have to wait long — surely this happens all the time.

A man kindly offered to help lift my bike up and over the little gap between the bus and the corner, and I continued onwards. While I felt bad for the people waiting, I also wasn’t too sad that I got the quiet road to myself for a bit — a rare occurrence in Yoho National Park in peak season.

Takakkaw means ‘it is magnificent’ in the indigenous language Cree, and it’s no wonder how they came to this name. After setting up camp in a pleasant campground, I walked down to the base of the thundering waterfall. People-wise, though, it was eerily quiet and I had a moment with the falls to myself. The glacial mist gently spraying onto my body was the closest thing I’d gotten to a shower almost a week. What a force of nature. It truly was magnificent.

In the afternoon, I headed along a forested trail passing three waterfalls: Angel’s Staircase, Laughing Falls, and Twin Falls. The Angel’s Staircase was a bit disappointing to the point where I couldn’t make out if the falls were in the river, or a little side stream feeding into it. Laughing Falls was a little more impressive, a quintessentially tall waterfall whose name intrigued me. It looked a bit like a mouth and tongue laughing? Maybe I was reading into it.

The real highlight for me was Twin Falls, which as you can probably guess by the name, were two tall chutes of water falling parallel into a cascading river. This was also the site of a historic chalet and tea house, sadly but understandably no longer in business.

Back at the campground, I did some puzzles and ate dinner under the smokey sun. I took stock of my current physical state: sticky, sweaty, dirty, the natural effects of bike touring in the summer. While I washed in rivers and lakes where I could, nothing could match the impact of a warm shower. Only two days until that basic need will be fulfilled.

Day 7 - Takakkaw Falls campground to Hoodoo Creek campground, 50ish km with side trips

More dramatic thunderstorms shook through the valley and my body last night. I think this must just be a regular occurrence in the Rockies during the summer, but it didn’t make for smooth sleeping.

The fiery haze hadn’t dissipated in the morning, so I was in for another day of riding without much of a sense of where I was. Cycling back down, I was glad to see the bus from the day before had been rescued and the road cleared. I’d still like to know how they got it out of its awkward position… a helicopter?

I stopped off in the historic and creatively named town of Field for lunch and coffee at a homely cafe, where they were coincidentally playing a song that had been going round in my head, Take a Load Off Annie. The Field visitor centre provided some excellent wifi connection, so I sat inside and caught up on life for a little while. I was in no rush.

As today’s ride was short, I took a side trip out to the ‘natural bridge’ (a rock in the middle of a river) that tourists were enamoured with, and then breezed on to Emerald Lake. I kid you not, the cars began parking along the side of the road 2 kilometres from the lake itself. It was one of my smug bike moments, making my way to the lake without worrying about finding a park.

The lake was beautiful, as all of these lakes are, even with its surrounds hidden in the haze. I didn’t spend too long there because of the crowds and continued onwards to my camp for the night. I noticed my gears weren’t shifting very smoothly, and made a mental note to get them checked out at Golden, the next pocket of civilisation I’d ride through.

Riding on the wide but busy Trans Canada highway again felt like a bit of a means to an end, and a few cars sped at unnecessarily speedy speeds. At the stage, the haze had gotten thicker and I just had to conjure up my imagination to paint the mountains around me.

Entering Hoodoo campground was like a scene from the apocalypse. A faint silhouette of Mt Chancellor hung in the grey sky above an empty field, each campsite marked only by a picnic bench and offering little privacy. There was no running water at this campground, and despite its name and the map I was following, there was no creek nearby. Luckily, I had just enough water to ration out for dinner and breakfast. Just.

It would have been cool to go for a walk up to the Hoodoos, a quirky rock formation, but the visibility was so poor it would have been a futile trip. Instead, I hunkered down in my tent and listened to some podcasts, which have kept me good company on this trip in the absence of humans to talk to. Lying in my tent, I felt sticky and so ready to wash everything - myself and belongings.

The campground filled out a little, and the smell of my neighbours’ sautéed vegetables wafted into my tent. I longed to eat some food that wasn’t dry two-minute noodles with peanut butter and week-old broccoli florets.

Day 8 - Hoodoo Creek to Golden, 36km (5km of which was a ride in a roadworks truck)

I woke up to the sound of a freight train’s dissonant brakes, and was happy to leave this spooky campground ASAP. It was hard to tell if the haze was early morning fog or lingering smoke. Either way, onwards to Golden! Another luxuriously short cycling day, and even more exciting, a shower and groceries at the end of it.

Most of the road was under construction, as they were building a four-lane highway. It was clearly a mammoth project, and the road was narrow and tight in parts. A road worker leading the traffic convoy approached me as I pushed my way to the front of the line of stopped vehicles (working the cyclist’s privilege yet again) and strongly suggested I hitch a ride with her to Golden. I happily accepted, and awkwardly lifted my back-heavy bike into the back of her truck with her help. We made some light conversation during the ride, but I was mainly distracted by how bad the smoke was getting the further we got to Golden. The driver assured me this was the worst it had been this year.

For peace of mind, I got my bike checked out as soon as I rolled into Golden, by a person who knows more about bike mechanics than I do. He re-aligned my rear derailleur, and told me my chain would be fine at least until Banff. I really should have taken a bike mechanic course before I left…

The highlight of the day was stumbling upon Bacchus, a sweet book shop and cafe filled with books about the area and more. Being in full vegetable-deprivation mode, I ordered a big bowl of fresh colourful edible things. It was delicious. In the afternoon I exhausted the things to do in Golden while waiting for the campground check-in time of 2pm so I could have my much-anticipated shower and laundry. Naturally, this involved a stop in at the public library to swallow up their wifi and do some planning for the next stretch of the Golden Triangle.

The eventual shower and laundry renewed my spirits and physical state. It’s a wonderful thing to have access to soap and running water. Tucked into a cosy corner of the camp (aka the furthest site away from everything) I set up my tent and settled in for the night, not before stocking up my food supply at the local store.

Day 9 - Golden to Redstreak campground, 107km

The distance I’d planned to cover today was a shock to the system after having ridden some very cruisy short stretches in the days before. The route involved pedalling through a valley all day, so it would be nothing physically intense. So I thought, until about an hour in when a sharp pain in my inner thigh made itself known to me. Up until this point my body had held up remarkably well, given what I had been putting it through. But, as it goes, it sometimes takes a little wake-up call to realise how good something has been.

As I hobbled into a park for a rest, my catastrophising mind was swamped with regrets that I hadn’t looked after my body better. After a self-assessment, I concluded that the pain was bearable enough that I could continue on, albeit noticing each upward pull of my left leg more than usual. To distract myself, I paid more attention to the sleepy surrounding of the valley emerging from the melting shade.

While only one valley over from Kootenay National Park, the valley was a dramatic shift in landscape and terrain from the mountainous ranges I’d just emerged from. The mosaic of wetlands, farmland and river beds lay just below on my right. I was in the company of very few cars, but rather several herons gilding overhead. This area reminded me in some ways of riding through the Waiau Valley, the gateway to Nelson Lakes National Park.

The surprise of the day was finding a shop in Spillimacheen, one of the townships dotted through the valley, which sold local produce and coffee. The store owner was very enthusiastic about my travels and offered to fill my water bottles up. It was turning into a very hot shadeless day, after all. The Americano I ordered only made things hotter, but it gave me enough buzz to continue and stop feeling sorry for my leg.

I rode through some roadworks, dodged clouds of grasshoppers, sighed at the teasing hills, and sidled a golf course. A road cyclist in Lycra sped past at one point, giving me a fright. Still no shade in sight, though. The heat persisted, and the country mile phenomenon kicked in when I got about 10km from Radium Hot Springs. The country mile, despite there being an objectively short distance, makes one’s destination feel like an eternally long way away.

Just when I thought Radium Hot Springs would never arrive, the town’s welcome sign appeared. Radium is known for its — you guessed it — hot springs, and also its big horn sheep. I couldn’t possibly imagine anyone wanting to go the hot springs today in the mid-30-degrees, but who is a chronically dehydrated, sweaty cyclist to say!

I ate lunch under a tree on a manicured lawn, supervised by a skittish prairie dog who was working through the dilemma of really wanting my crumbs, but not being brave enough to approach me (unlike that bold squirrel on the Icefields Parkway…). The campground I was staying at was situated a few kilometres above Radium and involved a climb that involved a 200-metre elevation gain on the bike. To procrastinate from the ride, I cooled off in the visitor centre for a bit before trekking up to Redstreak Campground. Eventually I made the grind up to the grounds and checked in, ready to rest and freshen up.

The campground was a village in itself, with hundreds of campsites each separated into their own sections. I set up camp on a dusty patch and jumped into the shower, before making myself comfy on the bench. The sites slowly populated, party by party, as the long hot afternoon drew on. I puzzled, read, podcasted, watched the world go by, ate dinner. In the evening, I was tempted to join in the family-friendly camp programme (some campgrounds in North America run an entertainment / education camping programme over the summer), but when I found out it was an interactive murder mystery, I decided to wander the grounds instead.

Day 10 - Redstreak campground to McLeod Meadows campground, 31km

The climb up to the campground was really just a warm-up for this morning’s cycling, which began with a 15km climb into Kootenay National Park gaining 700 metres of elevation, only to drop straight back into the valley on the other side. I get the sense that Kootenay is the sometimes-neglected cousin, living under the shadows of Jasper and Yoho and Banff next door, but I wanted to experience the park with no comparisons.

Fuelled by the need to charge my power bank, I headed to the Big Horn Cafe in town to consume the electricity under the guise of drinking coffee. As I left the cafe a couple approached me, enthusiastic about what I was up to on my bike. ‘Are you from Wellington proper, or like, Upper Hutt?’ The man asked when I told him I was from New Zealand. (Anyone overseas who mentions Upper Hutt has clearly spent some time in Wellington!) turns out they’d been backpacking there back in the day, like many Canadians I’ve met. They kindly offered to shout me breakfast, had I been staying not leaving. As tempting as it was to stay a little longer, I hopped on Sirocco and off we plodded to the start of the climb. It was a pretty steady climb up, but I got into a good rhythm.

Close to the top of the climb, a car slowed down next to me. ‘Looking good!’ I heard a voice shout. It was the couple from the cafe! They pulled over further along and the man got out, rummaging for something in the back of the car. He pulled out a biscuit tin and held it out as I got near. The tin was filled with homemade energy bars that the guy had made for a gravel bike he was about to take part in. He generously gave me three bars for the ride; we wished each other well and they carried on. This fleeting act of kindness, the only social interaction I had that day, gave me so much energy. The relative solitude of this trip is making me value each social interaction much more than I usually would.

Dropping back into the valley was pretty fun, as all downhill stretches are. I stopped briefly to enjoy the views of the vast valley floor from the top of the pass, imagining all the animals traversing the valley, and then kept heading down to the river. The mountains, though not as distinct nor big as in Banff and Jasper, were beautiful in their own right. It was as if someone had etched out the mountains with a fine chisel.

Shortly after pausing, some foreboding storm clouds came into view — if they were anything to go by, the sun wouldn’t last long. Sure enough, while stopping for lunch down by the river, I got absolutely bucketed down on. The very localised thunder started soon after, but passed as quickly as it came.

The weather continued to not know what to do with itself for the rest of the day. In the duration of my walk to Dog Lake (thinking of you, Nyla) after setting up camp at Mcleod Meadows, I got all the meteorological experiences in one: drenched, spooked by the thunder and lightning, and sweaty all in that short space of time.

Admittedly, the short days of rising have at times tested my tolerance of not doing much. I find that sometimes the rest is mentally more challenging than the riding, but it’s been good for me to sit with the feeling and learning to just do nothing. After the walk — well, you can probably guess by now how I entertained myself for the rest of the evening. One highlight of the campground was Nell, a golden retriever who LIVED for tummy rubs. I bumped into her and her person a few times while walking around the camp, and each time her insistence on stopping to be cuddled never faltered.

Day 11 - McLeod Meadows campground to Banff, 103km

It was easy riding in the morning on wide, luxurious road shoulders. The sun took a while to shine, but we got there. Sirocco and I zig-zagged through the valley. At one corner, I finally had a wildlife encounter beyond a squirrel or prairie dog: more mountain goats with their kids!

The further north through Kootenay I travelled, the more frequent the attractions and side trips became. At a waterfall, I met my first bikepackers a since the Icefields parkway: a couple from Colorado cycling north to Jasper. I was surprised I hadn’t bumped into them before this time, actually — the past few days, the cyclist traffic had thinned out significantly.

Some of the other natural highlights of the day included the ‘paint pots’ (pools lined with ochre clay — I didn’t see them in real life as it was a bit of a walk to get there), a day-use area called Dolly Varden (not to be confused with Dolly Parton, as I first thought the sign said) and my favourite: the Marble Canyon, a deep crevasse with luscious water gushing into the narrow passage with great gusto.

At the top of the climb, passing back into Banff National park and Alberta, was a sign marking the Continental Divide — on one side the rivers drain into the Pacific Ocean, and the other into the Atlantic. I imagined the water’s circular journey from glacier to river to ocean to sky. Each drop in the river would not travel that same journey again. I, too, had one chance at this.

The downhill whizz back down to the Trans Canada highway was one of the most fun yet. A truck travelling at what I can only guess would be 10kph up the hill tooted in support as I rolled down. It was nice to get a big vehicle acknowledge a bike, as most of the time it can feel you’re invisible to the trucks.

Back on relatively flat land (it’s all a bit relative in the Rockies), the Bow Valley Parkway was a breezy entrance into Banff. The parkway turned into the Bow Legacy trail, a cycle path that skirts the highway — thankfully no contending with the traffic on the road. One of the lakes I rode by on the trail smelt so sulphuric I could have been in Rotorua.

The Banff welcome sign has its own carpark for the hordes of tourists lining up for a photo on it, and I think that says all you need to know about Banff. Banff really is the Queenstown of Canada, but I’m not sure Queenstown’s sign is as popular (or if it even has a notable welcome sign). Despite one of my Warmshowers hosts describing Banff as a ‘zoo’ to me, the town centre wasn’t as hectic as I thought it would be. It was surrounded by impressively giant peaks and had a pseudo-Swiss Alps feel to it. I could see why it was popular with literally everyone, it seemed.

After people-watching and calling my sister, I cycled up to the hostel, which sat on a decently graded hill. The staff member who checked me in complimented the beauty of the New Zealand passport, and I placed Sirocco into his bedroom for the next couple of nights: a storage shed stuffed with an eclectic mix of neglected bikes and ski equipment.

Hostels can be hit-and-miss, but I got a good feeling about this one. My roommates were all kind and respectful people, which always makes a big difference. It can be a bit of a challenge, trying not to stink out the room with all my dirty cycling gear, but I managed to contain everything tidily (I hope haha).

Day 12 - ‘Rest’ day in Banff, 0km

‘Rest’ is in inverted commas here because, while I wasn’t on the saddle, I did seize the opportunity to climb up one of Banff’s surrounding peaks and get a good old view from the top. The track I chose, up to Sulphur Mountain (the smell by the lake is now explained), was a little long so I decided to run it instead. A popular destination, the summit of Sulphur Mountain is typically reached by gondola due to it being a 1000-metre climb up to the top from the township of Banff. Being cheap, and also to set a good challenge, I powered up the under my own steam.

My run meandered flat along the river until Bow Falls, then turned to travel up the side of the mountain along a switchback track. The going was steep, but I moved steadily up each countless zig and zag. The trail sometimes passed directly underneath the gondola line, the pods gliding effortlessly up and down the steep face.

When I finally arrived at the top, surprised that my legs still remembered how to run, I was hit with a wall of tourists who had arrived via the gondola and were also making their way to the summit, where a small tower stood. It was fun meandering up there between everyone, sharing a collective awe of the impressive panorama that wrapped around us.

After pausing for a moment at the top to appreciate how tiny I felt and how incredible this place is, I headed back down the way I came, only this time being able to move much faster heading down to Banff. When I got back down, I lay on a grassy patch in the park and stared up at the tower I’d just run up to, a dot on the skyline from this perspective. It seemed impossibly high up. A big day’s outing can only be concluded with replenishing the stores. I bought snacks of all varieties, including the juiciest nectarine, before filling up a feast back at the hotel.

I really enjoyed my time in Banff, despite its busy-ness. It also marked my departure from the Rockies; these mountains have been good to me, but I’m sure I’ll be back soon for more adventures — maybe next time on foot.

Hazy dayz