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bikes canada general

Kananaskis wanderings

A lazy morning, then I wandered out with a loaded bike, and pedalled up the Spray Lakes Road.

I hadn’t decided quite where to go, but ended up thinking of a Spray River/Goat Creek loop… but when I got down to the Spray River turn-off, I realised that the wildlife closure had come into effect a couple of weeks ago.

Change of plans! And so I decided to try and push through the Mount Shark area – which is exactly where the Tour Divide route goes. Up until then, there’d barely been any snow. As I got closer to Mount Shark, there was quite a bit of deadfall, and then more and more snow.

At least the snow made for good pushing practise.

It was unsurprisingly deserted, and I didn’t come across anyone on my travels until I got out onto the Spray Lakes Road again. At which point I was suddenly flying along the nice clear road.

After some early snow, it turned out to be quite a nice day. I finished up with a foray down Goat Creek, which was rideable, but a bit muddy still.

And that was the Karate Monkey’s last big adventure before it was due for partial dismantling and the build up of my Triton mega titanium adventure bike!

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bikes canada general moosling

April biking

More trips along the Legacy Trail…

Ridiculous lunchtime hike-a-bikes…

Evening loops out to Lake Minnewanka…

Solo rides up the pass on unsettled days…

More trips along the Legacy Trail…

Even more solo trips up the pass…

Group rides up the pass…

Clearing fallen trees by hitting them with rocks…

Lots of bike riding, at any rate.

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bikes canada general

Up the pass and down the pass

Sometimes solo, sometimes with a crew along, but the pass has been the ride of the season for me. Good for a quick workout, good for laps or hill repeats. And really, although it’s a great big dirt road when I’d rather be riding singletrack, the views really are pretty amazing.

25 times so far this year. Enough to make it pretty familiar.

Much more fun when it’s not dusty, or running with snow melt.

And even more fun when Reclaimer is in good shape for a fun singletrack descent, instead of flying back down the road. It’s all good training though.

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canada general moosling snow

Getting better and better on his skis

It’s pretty fun to spend a day out on the snow with the boy these days.

He’s happy to ski for a few hours, has firm ideas about where he’d like to go and what runs he’d like to do – and I no longer have to do the entire run in a squat, hanging onto him and snow plowing like crazy to control both our speed!

And at the end of the day, he likes to do the ski out down. And then go home for a nap. Perfect ski date!

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bikes canada general

Biking to Banff with my favourite training weight

Now the boy is big enough to big enough to be pedalling we’ve sold off the bike towing devices, and he’s only ever on the trail-a-bike if we get out on long rides together.

Sadly though, the trail-a-bike we have really doesn’t handle offroad trails that well (at least not the rough rocky rooty ones around here). We’re still torn about what to do as a solution – Tout Terrain make a gorgeous trail-a-bike with suspension, but it also costs close to $2000.

In the meantime, the boy really enjoys riding the trail to Banff, and has taken to suggesting it often (could it be because he gets icecream if we go there?) (and I tend to agree because I know we’ll go to the Wildflour Bakery).

And he’s actually pedalling these days. At least occasionally. Which is helpful when you’re trying to haul a 12kg bike plus however many kilograms of small boy up a hill.

Mostly he just pedals when he really wants to get to icecream or a toy store though, and isn’t convinced he needs to help me pedal into the brutal headwinds that tend to lurk on the route to Banff.

We had our last adventure with Al and Lincoln on a ride to Banff and back – they’ve now disappeared back to Australia, and we have lost some good quality adventuring partners. Sad faces all round.