Category: trip reports

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bikes canada general trip reports

S24O

S24O stands for sub 24-hour overnight bike camping trip, for those of you out there who aren’t into all the cool acronyms the kids use these days.

After getting the Moosling to bed on Saturday night, I loaded up my bike, and headed out for a solo overnight adventure in the snow – just for fun!

Packing took a while – I’d never packed for an overnight snow camping bike trip before, so it took a little organising to get everything onto the bike. It did fairly simplify things to not really need any food or water (I did bring a thermos of tea though).

I took a fairly direct route, but it was still about 45 minutes of biking to get to my campsite, and then 15 minutes or so to get myself sorted and set up in my bivy in the snow.

But then I was glorious and snug in my warm bivy, and fell asleep to the sound of crackling ice and the distant noise of the highway.

In the morning I was rudely awoken by my alarm at 7.40, with the beginnings of dawn light beginning to show in the sky, but otherwise no difference to falling asleep nine hours earlier.

Twenty minutes to pack up, then I was on the road, and cycling away from a beautiful sunrise.

Successfully back home at 8.50am to be ready to head out skiing for the day at 9am. Brilliant! Must do this again.

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australia general moosling trip reports

Australia Part 4: The farm and the beach

The stay at my parent’s farm was only a few days. But we got the proper Coleambally experience, with a 38oC day.

The boy was well impressed with fresh peas. He’d even just eat the entire pod, not bothering to shell them first.

Evening walks, when it had cooled down to 30oC, and I could wear the unicorn mask without immediately dying of heatstroke.

We even went into town, where I got to meet up with an old school friend, and our kids were introduced to the joy of running through sprinklers on a hot day.

On the drive back to the farm from town, we came across a burnt out truck – trailers detached and safely unburnt though. I went to take a photo to show Dad, but he was out fighting the fire.

The stay at the farm over to soon, we were headed back towards Melbourne, although first with a detour to the Puckapunyal tank museum – the menfolk were thrilled, I happily napped in the van.

Dinner with old mountaineering club friends! All have offspring, and so they all went off and played together (they didn’t seem to be setting anything on fire at least) while we caught up.

Then it was down to Sorrento for our final night. Taking the boy to a proper beach was good, although it was a typical Australian experience, with the beach covered in bluebottles (aka Portugese man o’war) – a jellyfish-like thing with tentacles that can deliver a painful (and sometimes fatal) sting. Good old Australia.

And the cousins (and brothers) got to spend more time hanging out together, so that was good.

Wonderful, beautiful Australian coastline.

And then the next day was packing, returning the van, and back to the airport and on to the cold, dark Canadian winter.

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australia bikes climbing general hiking moosling trip reports

Australia Part 3: Arapiles days continued…

Wednesday was a chance to revisit my childhood of stomping about in the Grampians. Well, not exactly all of my childhood, but rather some highly valued and infrequent childhood trips to the Grampians. Trips that instilled a love of rock hopping, scrambling about on rocks, and getting to the top of mountains –  which my parents may have come to regret as I took to rock climbing and then disappeared to live in the Canadian Rockies.

We went to hike up the Pinnacle, overlooking Halls Gap – I had distant memories of it being fun, and involving plenty of rock hopping. I was right!

It was a warm day (by Canadian standards anyway) (actually, by Australian standards too judging by the state of some of the other people out hiking). Al and Lincoln joined us hiking, while Brendan was off on a gravel grinding loop through the Grampians.

The rocks were numerous, and highly hoppable – Finn took to it all with great pleasure. We explored in two caves, and stuck our head in a waterfall – all helpful to cool down. The details of Alex’s heritage as a cave dweller were explored more thoroughly (apparently this all started while they were climbing at Bushranger’s Bluff), as we explained to Finn that one of these caves was where Papa had grown up.

At the summit we found a pet cicada, then it was eaten by a crow, and a harsh life lesson was learned by all.

We even went and tried the nerve test, and discovered that we have no nerves, and were totally fine with that.

Then back down to the carpark, and it was time for icecream for all in Halls Gap!

Thursday brought a pleasantly relaxing morning, followed by some relaxing climbing in the shade with Cath and Adam. I even got to frolic through a field of daisies on one of the climbs! All of the rain has done wonders for some of the cliff vegetation.

Smudge wasn’t a fan of the unicorn, but was a fan of trying to devour things that anyone is holding, even if they are a unicorn.

Lured out to ride a bike one more time (it’s notoriously difficult to get me to go for a ride, it tends to be as difficult as just suggesting one), I rode up to the summit of Arapiles with Brendan once again. When there’s nothing but plains all around, it’s far and away the most obvious spot to go – and has the added benefit that you can actually see the sunset!

Sundowner beer successfully drunk (dranken? drinked?), it was back to Andy’s to catch the tail end of roast dinner and more catching up with Brett and Sair who had arrived that afternoon.

Friday morning we all hit the Organ Pipes, now climbing with Sair for the first time in absolutely years.

Fun climbing times done, we headed into town to hang out at the cafe (blanket couches!), then it was time for goodbyes. Again. This was the downside of the Australia trip.

The afternoon plan was to go and visit the Little Desert National Park. I was dubious. We arrived in the desert. It was full of trees and plants. I proclaimed that my parent’s farm looks like more of a desert than this. #worstdesertever!

All the recent rain did at least mean there were pretty flowers to look at. However, our attempts at doing the guided desert walk were a bit of a failure – there were lots of numbered posts, and an accompanying informational brochure, but the majority of the flora of note seemed to have died in the meantime.

The hand lizard enjoyed making its way around the desert though.

And there’s nothing quite like deserted desert roads for jump shots. And photo bombing apparently.

Saturday brought yet more goodbyes, as the NZ crew disappeared. Cath and I got one more climb in at the Organ Pipes though, so that was lovely.

The afternoon was gainfully spent lazing in trees, hiking to the summit of the mount with Al and Lincoln, and sitting about in the Horsham pool. And catching a Snorlax – there was a lot of Pokemon catching on this trip.

Then it was Sunday, and time to leave. But not before a final bike ride to the summit!  Andy and I rode together until we hit the Arapiles road, then he sent me off to sprint to the summit, which I had great fun doing, thoroughly exhausting myself (and getting a couple of QOMs, woo).

Final Arapiles farewells were said to Al and Lincoln, and then to Andy, Ying and Smudge, who we’d been staying with for the past week (and had loaned bikes, and entertained the Moosling with an endlessly fascinating collection of Lego Technic creations).

And so, onwards, with just one week left in Australia, the van hit the road once again.

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bikes canada general trip reports

When Minnewanka rides get out of hand

The one problem with riding Lake Minnewanka is that it’s an out and back. And it’s a busy and out back, popular with hikers and bikers alike.

And so when we rode out, and reached the cabin, I was happy to keep going, and put off the return journey. I’d never ridden past the cabin before (it’s at 15km, and makes for a nice 30km round trip) and Minnewanka was in great late season condition.

And so we got up towards the end of the lake. The terrain becomes more technical, and it’s much harder to ride everything. There was almost no deadfall though.

A couple of big wash outs from the 2013 floods were slow going, but as we drew closer to the end of the lake, I realised that I really wanted to keep riding. I only had one bottle of water with me though, nearly empty, and just one bar left.

Thankfully I have friends who come oversupplied, and I stocked up on both water and food, and even managed to convince Danika to come along with me. Meanwhile, I passed on Alex’s phone number, so he would get the heads up that I might phone begging for a lift when we emerged into cell service at the other side of the ride.

And so the two of us set off into the semi-unknown.

There were two creek crossings ahead of us. The first was at the end of the lake, where you cross onto the south side of the river. It ended up being the deepest, at mid thigh, and bracingly cold.

From there, we were onto well-travelled horse trails, much more well defined than the eastern Lake Minnewanka trail, but also much muddier, much more rutted, and much more inclined to have snow due to the aspect.

But it didn’t really take long at all to get through that section, then we were out onto double track, then crossing out of the Banff National Park and into the Ghost Wilderness Area – where civilization quickly caught up with us, with 4WDs wandering about, and groups camping everywhere.

The second river crossing was a breeze, and soon we were pedalling up the big hill, onto fairly well-travelled gravel roads.

Well-travelled gravel roads that were covered with snow and ice for kilometres on end! But still fun to be exploring new terrain, and a thoroughly worthwhile adventure, although I’d still like to ride the full loop from home.

And for reference – there’s cell service on and off for most of the ride, definitely far more than we were expecting anyway. And we were picked up about 10km shy of reaching the 1A, to make for a 66km ride an an unexpectedly long day.

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bikes canada general moosling trip reports

Fall bikepacking to Lake Minnewanka

Getting out on a family bikepacking trip is one of those things that we kept meaning to do, but somehow we had nearly run out of summer weekends and it still hadn’t happened.

We’d initially been thinking of riding the Elbow Loop. Or maybe just going out and back on the north-west side. But our attempts to book a campground failed. Curse you, Alberta Parks with your “oh, sure, we have sites available” website, but then when they get back to you 48 hours after you tried to book online it turns out that there are indeed no sites.

Contemplating alternatives, we realised I was supposed to be back in town by 3 or 4pm on Sunday afternoon, so it would be better to stay close to home. And so Lake Minnewanka it was. Especially as there was a whole lot of camping availability out there – for some reason K-Country was packed, but the lovely LM8 campground on the shores of Minnewanka was fully available on Friday. We ended up sharing it with one other couple. It was amazingly deserted out there.

We convinced our friends Kat and Mike that they should come along on their first bikepacking trip too, which meant a lot of borrowing gear and working out how on earth to fit everything into such a small space when you’re used to panniers or hiking packs. It took a little while, but they sorted it!

A lazy start meant that we decided to head out on the Legacy Trail rather than Goat Creek. The downside was that we had no justifiable reason to stop at the Wildflour Bakery in Banff. But at least it was fast and easy going, and plenty of chances to work on fine tuning gear setup.

With a three and a six year old along, we made regular stops along the way for them to get out and play. And for snacks.

We made it onto the Lake Minnewanka trail in the mid-afternoon. This was our family setup above – pretty similar to our Scotland trip last summer.

Getting up The Hill before you start heading north along the lakeshore always warms you up. And sometimes, just sometimes, loaded bikes and towing kids means you just can’t ride everything.

But while Alex kicked the boy off the trail-a-bike, the boy discovered the joys of poking puff balls with a stick.

Then it was just scenic lakeside singletrack, through golden aspens and alongside the turquoise lake.

It’s only an eight kilometre ride in to the LM8 campground (unsurprisingly, if you think about it). As we hit the bridge just before the campground, the kids hopped out and ran the rest of the way to camp.

There were so many deers hanging around! Fairly oblivious to us, they wandered around and did their thing, and had me jump out of my skin a couple of times when one wandered up unexpectedly close.

Collecting water from the lake was more challenging than usual. The camping pads were quite sheltered, but the cooking area was further south and thoroughly exposed to the wind. A nice series of waves was rolling onto the stony shore, and a few of us received an accidental foot soaking.

Cooking dinner in the trees, thankfully we had a shelter at our cooking spot.

We all curled up in bed pretty early. I was testing out how the boy would go in a full-sized sleeping bag for the first time, after realising his kid bag was just no longer big enough (or warm enough for shoulder season adventures). The end result was – he was super snug and warm in my 15 year old down bag, and I might see if I can adjust it a little so it’s a bit shorter/lighter/smaller, and he’ll probably be able to get at least five more years of use out of it (depending how fast he grows).

Morning light is gorgeous on the aspens. We slept in until 8 or so, and then eventually gave in and got up for breakfast.

There’s been so much going on before the trip that food had been thoroughly disorganised. Breakfast was mostly pastries that we’d picked up the day before from Le Fournil Bakery in Canmore. Delicious tasty pastries.

The boys enjoyed hanging out some more, and playing in the forest.

And then we got things packed up again, ready to hit the trail before it became too busy.

It was a beautiful ride out, and it felt much easier than the day before – even the hill climb!

Although – sometimes it’s just so steep you have to push. But the trail has recently had some work done on it, and the section on the hill that used to be loose and rocky and pretty interesting to ride… well now it’s flat and hardpacked soil, and far easier.

Just after we got the group shot below, some tourists came up to get their photos taken with the crazy group of bike people (and were thoroughly startled when they realised that the trailer had a child inside it).

After this, it was a tail-wind home on the Legacy Trail.

Bikepacking trips sometimes seem to require a lot of effort, but are thoroughly worth it, and so much fun once you’re out there pedalling and camping!

Route: From Canmore, along the Legacy Trail, via Cascade Ponds, on the road to Lake Minnewanka, then along singletrack to LM8 campground
Distance: 35km one-way
Elevation gain: ~400m on the way there, ~200m on the way back