Category: general

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bikes canada general moosling trip reports

Scouting Elk Pass

My next cunning plan was to ride my bike from Canmore to Fernie. But part of this plan involved convincing someone else to come with me, for at least part of the journey. For company, and so the bears would have someone else to eat.

The only difficulty was that the person who seemed most likely to come was being told that Elk Pass was under four metres of snow, and the whole expedition was foolhardy madness. We would be starting our joint journey at the Elk Pass trailhead. Elk Pass is the highest point between Kananaskis Lakes and Elkford, but if it was thoroughly under snow, there could be at least 10km of snow-slogging between us and the rest of the lower altitude (and hopefully dry) trail.

And so I had a scouting mission to undertake. Above is the view from the Elk Pass trailhead five days before we intended to set out. It wasn’t looking terribly promising.

But in the end, it wasn’t actually that bad. There was compacted snow on the trail, thanks to the cross-country grooming that takes place all winter long. But there were also a lot of dry and muddy patches.

The bridge I’m standing on to take a photo of myself? With a foot of snow on it? Five days later it was totally snow free.

But then, there were a few fairly epic snow patches too. Even towing the singletrailer, Alex fared better than I, with his big fat Krampus tyres.

But then we hit the powerlines, and everything was great! For a while. Then the trail was a perfectly compacted mass of slushy warm snow, mud and puddles of water, so we cycled along through the brush at the side for a while.

Picnic table at the summit of Elk Pass!

I went for a walk, found a good deep puddle of icy water, and tested my new goretex socks in it. Success! They’re absolutely wonderful. Shoes absolutely waterlogged and squelching with icy cold snow melt, feet toasty and warm within. Probably a bit stinky, but who cares so long as they’re warm! My new favourite piece of gear.

The boy spent some time throwing snowballs at everyone and everything, we napped in the sun for a while, and then battled the even mushier snow to descend back down to the car.

Mission successful. It definitely shouldn’t be too hard to get over the pass, the snow was melting like crazy, so things should be even clearer by the end of the week. And starting in the early morning will hopefully mean frozen mud and snow, much easier to ride on.

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bikes canada general

Canmore Cloverleaf

An after work excursion on the trails around town. We don’t have many of them, so I decided to ride them all (well, portions of them all – to ride all the Nordic Centre trails would take a few more hours).


(Montane, G8, Loki’s, Highline, Reclaimer, EKG @ Nordic Centre)

A solo 57km, with 1551m of elevation gain, finishing around dusk.

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bikes canada general moosling trip reports

The trails are dry, so we ride our bikes

The Salty Dog 6hr over in Salmon Arm, BC, marks the official start of the bike season in Canmore. Well, that’s my rule anyway. This year, we really didn’t have much in the way of dry trails in Canmore beforehand – so the greasy muddy trails we ended up having to race on were at least a little better than the snowy trails back at home.

Laziness being the better part of valour, I opted to have a team mate this year instead of going solo. In some ways this was actually harder, as I constantly had to be paying attention to the time, instead of just riding my bike in circles for six hours. On the other hand – well, I got to spend at least 15 minutes sitting down and doing nothing but eating every hour or so. The other bonus was that I didn’t have to do the first lap (pictured above), as sprinting up a hill to get into prime position for the single track really isn’t one of my fortes.

Other added bonuses of the Salty Dog trip included the cultural excursions to both Boston Pizza and Dairy Queen. Yes, I’ve spent this much time in North America without visiting either of those fine establishments.

My fancy new road bike was taken out on its inaugural voyage on the roads, as I cycled it out solo to Castle Junction and back again – a fairly leisurely 113km or so.

There were no bears, but swarms of other bikers out on the road. I’d forgotten how hypnotic a road bike can be, and how hard it can be to actually stop once you’re legs have picked up speed and rhythm. I was tempted to keep going to Lake Louise, but for the knowledge that my knees mightn’t be as happy with this plan as I was.

In the end my knees felt fine the whole way, the weather stayed nice and sunny, and I enjoyed the views along the Legacy Trail and Bow Valley Parkway.

We had another trip to Invermere on the May long weekend, while it rained in Canmore, surprise surprise (it rained a little in Invermere too, but at least it was warmer).

The boy found a friend to ride with, and so he and I rode a loop of the Junior Johnson trail with this new adopted friend and his family. The boys were busy pretending to be trains most of the way around, and we were just pleased they were sufficiently distracted with each other that they forgot to complain about hills or tired legs.

The boy remains cautious on steeper downhills (quite sensibly as he has no brakes on his balance bike).

After that successful weekend, which included a little frustration at trying to keep up with a friend who had pedals on his bike, we finally went out and bought him his first pedal bike.

Right now the boy and his new bike are engaged in a kind of stand-off though. He’s thrilled with the pedals, and keeps telling everyone that he has pedals now. But he doesn’t want to actually learn to use them, as it was a bit tricky the first time he tried, so all bike riding has become theoretical at this point.

Meanwhile I went riding south along Spray Lakes Road, just to see what was there. I found some snow, some ice, a little rain, and a squeaking noise in my bike. No bears.

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bikes general moosling travel trip reports

Riding bikes in Oregon – Part 3 (The rest)

Next up after Smith Rock was Peterson’s Ridge, near a little town called Sisters. After the Three Sisters series of volcanoes nearby. Which begs the questions “Why is it always Three Sisters, not Three Brothers?” But google confirms that it is sometimes Three Brothers, just less often.

We’d been told Peterson’s Ridge was a must-do ride, with great views. I’d vaguely assumed it must be on a ridge, and so would have awesome views. This was all lies and trickery. The trails was very nearly entirely flat, and was 95% in the forest, with views of nothing but trees. Pictured below is the “view” at the “summit”.

It is quite a nice view. The snow-capped volcanoes are very pretty. But we had to stop and look at it, as you could only see it for a few metres. On the plus side, there was a picnic table and a chipmunk there, and a big rock to sit on so as to promote greater enjoyment of the View.

It was an ok trail. Perfectly fine. But just don’t go into it expecting a ridge, or great views, or particularly thrilling riding.

Next up, I convinced Alex that we should go and ride Mrazek. And that was fun riding. Gradual uphill over many kilometres. Still not much in the way of views, although it felt like there really should be, and nearly would be at a few points. Just one really technical rocky section. Otherwise it was very much like a flatter version of Frisbee Ridge in Revelstoke. A nice consistent climb uphill, but then fantastic fun once you turn around and point your bike in the other direction – the sort of trail guaranteed to have Finn whooping and hollering at Alex “Faster Papa, WHEEEE!”.

The final big ride was the McKenzie River Trail. We weren’t sure if the single trailer would make it over some of the technical riding higher up on the trail, so we decided to do an out and back ride starting from the lowest point of the trail.

And for all that we were following a river upstream, it really didn’t feel like we were going uphill at all. The trail meandered through ferns and mossy trees, and the river burbled happily.

Everything was green.

We even released the Kraken from his trailer to go for a run.

Crossing all of the trail bridges got a little tiresome though. And so, when about 10km along, we reached one where the trailer would not fit, and instead jammed, we were pretty happy to turn around and head back.

I’m sure the upper part of this trail might be really fun, we hardly rode any of it. And it was quite pretty. But just a little boring (sorry McKenzie River trail).

And so ended our Oregon bike adventure. Well nearly. I went out alone the next morning on the local Bend trails and rode a really fun and fast loop, before jumping into the car and driving until we got to Canada. We camped the night; the next morning it started to rain on us, and by the time we got back to Canmore, our bikes were coated in ice, our deck had a foot of fresh snow on it, and biking in sunny 25oC weather was nothing but a distant memory.

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bikes general moosling travel trip reports

Riding Bikes in Oregon – Part 2 (Smith Rock)

Turning off the highway and driving the final few kilometres to Smith Rock began an exercise in longing for my climbing gear that lasted until I began to realise that it was actually pretty fun to be riding here too. Smith Rock is one of THE North American rock climbing destinations. Birthplace of sport climbing? Maybe. Spectacular rock and views? Definitely.

The boy rode his bike for the first few hundred metres, then decided he’d had enough, and for the rest of the day it was just helping Alex with his resistance training.

Alex tried to sell me on the idea of starting off with an easy loop around the river trail, but I wasn’t having any of it, so instead we immediately started heading uphill, where the views are. Although of course this did involve initially dropping down from the parking lot, to the river, and then having to start the climb from the valley bottom.

We set out with a route description from an old mountain biking book. This book suggested that the trail we were headed for, Burma Road, was a pretty burly climb. Thus far, nothing we’d rode in Bend seemed to involve any climbing at all. So we may have underestimated this threat. It was indeed a burly climb, particularly with a singletrailer. Even without – there were pitches of loose, steep trail that weren’t easily rideable.

After that, things got a little saner though. We’d gained a lot of elevation already, and were spat out onto some doubletrack that was a more sensible gradient (something between the climb to the Pass in Canmore, with occasional touches of the Quaite Valley trail thrown in for good measure).

And then views! For some reason Alex was feeling a little tired by now, and felt like sitting down in the shade and eating some lunch.

From this point the route in the book described dropping down on fire road for no reason before climbing back up more fire road to reach Grey Butte. Alex was not enthusiastic about this option, so after lunch I did some scouting, and found some singletrack headed towards Grey Butte that was deemed acceptably not-uphill.

It turned out to be a great choice. In fact the only flaw to this piece of trail was that it was hard to avoid looking at the views. And when you did look at the views, it was hard to avoid falling down the side of the mountain. Aside from that, it was lovely. We turned around once we reached the butte though, rather than trying to ride around or up it, and headed back towards Smith Rock. Where there was more difficulty trying to look simultaneously at the view, and the narrow strip of dirt we were trying to balance on.

From here it was all smooth sailing back to the car, except for the one steep section of Burma Road, where the boy was booted out of the singletrailer. I walked him down the hill in stages, while Alex man-handled his bike with empty singletrailer down the hill.

But after ferrying my bike ahead through one piece of trail, I stopped after hearing an odd noise. After looking around, I realised the source of it was a little rattle snake sitting on some rocks just in front of me, rattling in a cranky kind of fashion. He was close enough for me to reach out and touch, and seemed so small as to be adorable rather than threatening (at least compared to Australian snakes I’m used to), but I backed away anyway, and advised Alex he’d be better off taking the high route at this point, as the low route had an irritated rattle snake on it.

And then it was time for icecream!

Distance: 17km return
Elevation gain: 660m