An expedition into town today led to the acquisition of some Continental Spike Claw 240s (at the only local bike shop that wasn’t sold out of winter tyres). The physio also made my knee work again – well, it’ll still be recovering for a few more weeks, but now it bends at least.
So maybe eventually I’ll be able to ditch the crutches and start utilising the fancy new winter tyres. And perhaps one day our car will no longer live at the mechanics.
After Sundays adventure I’m hobbling around on crutches with a knee that is swollen like a water balloon and won’t bear much weight. Thankfully there’s probably nothing broken, fractured, twisted or torn, so I just have to wait for my knee to stop panicking (it has an built-in air bag that doesn’t deploy quickly enough?) and recovery might not take too long. I hope.
Then I shall buy these tyres (Schwalbe Winter Marathons) and laugh in the face of any ice and snow in my path.
Pro I got to have a sleep-in, because I was doing the Yamnuska Leading on Ice course today.
Con Our Jeep still isn’t working, so I had to leave the house early to cycle to the Yamnuska Office.
Pro Riding around town is always fun, and it was fairly warm this morning.
Con I arrived at the offices at 8am (as it instructed on the email I got) and everyone else had apparently been there since 7.30, and they’d been having a pre-course briefing.
Pro I got to carpool with a nice Japanese girl.
Con The other car which held the other three people doing the course, and the guide, quickly disappeared. So much for a convey – oh well, at least he told us where we were going, and we can hopefully remember how to get there.
Con We realised after we pass Dead Man’s Flats that the car would not have enough fuel to get to King Creek and back.
Con Exshaw petrol station doesn’t open til 10am on Sunday.
Con When I phone the guide to let him know we’ll be late, it goes straight to voicemail. Damn.
Con We end up driving back to Canmore again just for fuel, as it’s now the closest place that will be open.
Con The car will now not go into gear, and is not going anywhere any time soon.
Pro At least we’re stuck in Canmore, rather than anywhere further afield.
Con Get voicemail again when try phoning guide again. Leave message. Get voicemail at Yamnuska too.
Con Where we want to go is too far for any of the cab companies.
Con The rental car places are closed on Sunday.
Con Cannot find anyone with a car I could borrow.
Pro Having walked back to the Yamnuska offices, they are toasty and warm. I wander round inside and yell to see if anyone is there.
Con There is noone there.
Pro If I was a thief I could steal lots of good things.
Con I am not a thief.
Pro It is snowing pretty fat flakes, and I decide to ride to the Canmore Junkyards – it is Sunday, maybe there will be people I know there.
Pro I look around and take photos at the Junkyards.
Con I do not climb at the Junkyards.
Pro Cycling in the snow is fun!
Con I go back along the powerlines, where there is ice underneath the snow. The ice is less fun, and on a downhill section I lose the back end of my bike and land knee first on the ice.
Con My knee hurts rather a lot.
Con I have trouble walking now, and cannot bend my knee to ride.
Pro Nice men from the power company give me a lift in their truck.
Con My knee has an increasingly large bloody lump on it.
Pro The snow is pretty to watch outside the window, and is handy for putting inside a bag to ice my knee with. And I have brownies.
(Grade subject to revision depending on how this knee injury turns out… and I would love some studded tyres to help with the ice problems, but they weren’t really in the budget… hmm.)
It wasn’t going BOOM at all (except for once perhaps, on the way up).
Starting from a parking lot not far South of Castle Junction, you head up through the trees, then up and down a meandering path through the trees til you hit the lake about 5km later. When we went up there were only a few sets of footprints there, some of which had obviously given up after a kilometre or so. The lake was mostly frozen (except for those few disconcertingly slushy sections), and had a few inches of snow on it.
There are a few ice routes up the end up the lake too, that were looking blue and climbable.
So, with the Jeep still out of action at the mechanics (and while it’s away we’re secretly looking at every Subaru we see for sale), we ended up cycling to the ice. First we tried to have a look at the Pigeon Mountain Falls near Dead Mans Flats, but the guys at the quarry in front of it weren’t having any of that. So we cycled onward to Heart Creek.
Nothing was looking particularly inspiring – and Heart Falls definitely didn’t sound very frozen, I couldn’t be bothered with the scramble round to confirm one way or the other.
So we ended up playing on the left smear near Bunny Wall (WI2ish) – which was thick enough to take screws if you chose your spot carefully.
Of course by the time we left it was already 4.30pm. And there was a headwind. And we were hungry. And it was uphill. And the only way home is along the freeway. And it was 25km of cycling in the dark to get home. Just sometimes, I think a functioning car could be a handy thing.