Tag: chariot

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bikes canada general moosling trip reports

Biking the Elbow Loop with a Chariot

The Elbow Loop is one of those rides I kept coming across in lists with descriptions like: “Classic K-Country Rides”. And in fact it is a classic – in the sense it comes from the days when mountain-biking was all about riding on rough dirt roads, back before the day when someone realised they could ride single-track, and that was actually a lot more fun.

With all that double track, we figured we may as well take the Chariot along. I’d never ridden the loop before. Alex had, but seemed to think it was worth doing again – and it was, in that it was one of the double-track rides around that’s possible to do with a Chariot. Otherwise, there are a lot of much more interesting rides in K-Country (although the scenery is quite nice, and maybe I’m just a little spoilt from living in the mountains now).

We headed out along the Little Elbow trail first, riding the loop anti-clockwise. After passing a few hikers we had the trail to ourselves for most of the climb up to Tombstone Pass. The climbing was pretty relentless, but we risked the perils of inertia and made one stop along the way so the Moosling could get out and throw rocks around (mostly at Mama).

The trail reports had threatened snow at the pass, but although there was a little hiding in the trees, the trail itself was clear. I’m increasingly having no faith at all in the trail reports out here.

Crossing Tombstone Pass

We didn’t spend much time at Tombstone Pass, but dropped down into the Big Elbow Valley, where the trail narrowed, and became a lot more like single trail (although still passable on the Chariot). At the same time, the scenery got a little more spectacular, and I could see why people would rave about the ride.

Descending into Big Elbow Valley

Some of the more interesting sections were found on this side of the circuit, and I was glad I wasn’t towing the Chariot – so I could zoom on the single track, and so I didn’t have to haul it uphill after the stream crossings. A couple of sections here the Chariot was walked, both uphill and downhill, but never for long.

Eventually we left the hills behind, and followed the river out along the flat. And along the flat. And along the flat. That interminable flat track, it eventually spat us out back at the carpark, and we were relieved, as we’d had enough of riding mountain bikes along flat rocky roads.

The Big Elbow River

Distance: From the campground carpark, the whole loop worked out to be a little over 42km
Elevation gain: About 850m of climbing. Basically it’s uphill for nearly 20km, to an elevation of about 2,230m, then mostly downhill for the 20km back home.
Chariot-ability: Mostly double track. A few sections narrowed to single trail, but it was always forgiving wide single trail that was easy to get the Chariot along. The creek crossings were numerous and interesting though, especially the rocky ones. And a couple of rocky downhill sections we opted to walk.
Rating: Nice views, fun if you’re bike packing through the area, feel the need to explore somewhere new, or have to pick an adventure that is Chariot/trailer friendly.

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bikes canada general moosling trip reports

A very bikey weekend

On Saturday, a plan was hatched to ride “Kananaskis 8”, a route described in one of the trail books. I’d never heard of it. After a few kilometres of riding, I had a fair idea why. Although the trails might have been great in the dry, as it was, it was a corrugated mess of sloppy, muddy horse track. Do not want! So we decided to bail out onto the Prairie View trail, and rode up Barrier Mountain (this was all Chariot and Moosling-free, otherwise the mud would have been even more fun).

Then as none of us had ridden Razor’s Edge before, we thought we’d finish up that way, and then bike along the highway back to the car. It would have worked much better if it wasn’t so hideously windy. In a typically windy area, riding a technical trail along a ridge, on an especially windy day – well it was interesting. The last section of trail we walked, and the wind was catching at my bike and blowing it into the air.

Sunday was a family outing with the Chariot, biking from Canmore out to Skogan Pass (about 45km return, with 1300m of climbing). Instead of continuing out along the old road beyond Three Sisters, we turned towards the highway and followed a rough road that sits near the highway, and is a lot flatter and more sensible riding than the higher option we’d ridden before. There was still the big climb up to the pass, but at least we weren’t already exhausted from hauling the Chariot up and down a steep “road” with fallen trees across it.

There were still a few snow patches higher up, but nothing the Chariot couldn’t be ridden across. And then there were summit baguettes and scroggin, and flying back downhill again (briefly interrupted when we saw a cinnamon-coloured bear cub, and waited until he got off the trail and went back to hang out with his mum).

(Sorry for the slightly dodgy quality photos, I haven’t been taking my good camera out biking, so it’s strictly phone photos)

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canada general moosling snow trip reports

Not quite to Tower Lake (and definitely not to Rockbound)

This was another lesson in the “It’s quite hard to take a lot of photos when you’re the only one towing a Chariot and looking after an offspring” factor.

Rockbound Lake is just near Castle Junction, tucked in behind Castle Mountain. And I’d skied it before, pre-Moosling. At the time it had seemed like a fairly easy day-trip, a nice little easy jaunt. Towing a Chariot made the whole thing a lot more uphill. The hills! They didn’t stop! My legs! Ow ow!

It was a gorgeous blue bird day though, and lovely and warm (about 5oC in town), pretty much Spring weather. And we only came across two other people there the whole day! On a weekend!

Getting the Chariot up there was pretty easy, with a wide trail that wasn’t too off-camber. But then the trail swung around towards the west, and the skin trail became a narrow little winding path. Then I started to need help getting past trees and tree wells, and getting up some of the steep little rises. Do-able, but if I was to ski there with a Moosling again, I might use the Ergo instead.

We stopped for lunch in the sun. The sun had other ideas, and buggered off behind the peak about a minute after we sat down. And then half the party headed on to Tower Lake, while the other half went “blow this for a joke, snow-covered lakes are boring”, and started working the Chariot back through the trees (with only a few sideways Chariot on the snow incidents on the way) and stopping and chatting in any handy sunny patches they found.

We met up in time to do the fast descent together, flying down the icy track without incident to find the sun again in the carpark. Ow, my legs.

Elevation gain (to Tower Lake): About 650m?
Distance (to Tower Lake): 15.5km return

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bikes canada general moosling

Riding Whiteman’s Gap – Goat Creek – Legacy Trail is a silly ride and I’m never doing it again

It didn’t really help that it was unexpectedly cold. Riding from Canmore up to Whiteman’s Gap towing a Chariot was good training for Alex. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I’d never biked Goat Creek before and was surprised by how rocky and rough it was (although the photo below was taken on a smooth section, there were rocks, honestly).

Definitely do-able with the Chariot, but all descents had to be taken slowly, and the riding really isn’t that exciting, with views of trees, trees and more trees along the way (also for a ‘downhill’ ride, there’s a lot of uphills). Finn did like the creeks though.

Stopping in the sun in Banff was pleasant enough, but then returning via the Legacy Trail was just beginning to get a bit tedious, probably because I was cold and cranky by that point. All in all, ride rating was a solid ‘meh’. Now I’ve done it I need never do it again.

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bikes canada general moosling

Nearly cycling up to Skogan Pass

A couple of weeks ago we went on a random cycle down an old mining road that led away south-east from the Three Sisters village in Canmore. On Sunday we decided to explore it properly, and see if we could get all the way up to Skogan Pass, snow permitting (for those in the Bow Valley, Skogan Pass is the one you see when driving away from Canmore towards Calgary, with the power lines leading through the trees up and over it).

After re-tracing our tracks of the previous week, we reached the fork in the mining track and opted for the lower, grassier, option. Studying a topo map had suggested it was the not-so-steep option. It wasn’t too steep, but it was certainly covered in lots of undergrowth, with branches overhanging the track, and fallen logs to lift the Chariot over. Thanks to the lack of traffic I was also collecting enough cobwebs to knit a tasteful spider-silk sweater.

Finally we were out of the awful overgrown track, over a couple of rickety old bridges, and turning off just short of the Pigeon Mountain carpark, along the track towards Skogan Pass. In the sun, beside the scenic buzzing power-lines. I was grateful when the track disappeared into the trees and away from the power-lines, which didn’t take too long.

After a pre-lunch break there was some relentless hill climbing, a lunch break, and some more relentless hill climbing. Streams were crossed, squirrels were eaten.

Finally we were getting a good view back down the valley, but it was then that we hit our first big pile of snow. We got the Chariot through it and rode along quite happily for a few hundred metres more, when we hit another huge road-covering snow patch. I scouted ahead and determined there was snow for several hundred metres, which there would be no getting the bikes and Chariot through (well, not easily anyway).

And so we had to give up on reaching Skogan Pass (within 2km of the pass too), and went flying back downhill again. With lots of heavy braking, so the Chariot didn’t get too much air over the rocks.

We didn’t come across any bears, but there was a huge bull moose standing in the middle of the trail at one point. We yelled out at him until he wandered out of the way a bit, then we scuttled past so as to not offend him. He didn’t look like the sort of moose you’d want to offend, even if his antlers were only quite small (he looks quite small in the photo, but he was a long way away, rest assured he looked much bigger when he was just ten metres off the track as we cycled past).

Back on the mining trail to Canmore, we took the steep track option this time. It was definitely clearer than the lower option, with less overhanging vegetation. There were still plenty of logs across the track though, and it had a few pitches so steep that it took both of us to push the Chariot up.

Covered in mud, we finally made it back to the civilisation of ground we’d covered before, and then to the Bow River cycle path, still busy with the weekend hoards.

Distance covered: 41km
Total ascent: About 1km
The list of interesting things we found to check out:
The single track that crossed the old mining road
The path up to Wind Ridge
The path up to Pigeon Mountain