Day 5....Up....The Icefields!

Perfect weather, awesome scenery, and then the ascent.......

I remember driving this road, with my parents, and friends over the years and this one part always sticks in my mind (unfortunately, I do not have a picture of it). There is a long turn to the right, that seems to go forever. However, before that, you can look up, way up, and see cars parked on the side of the road and it makes you wonder how the hell they got up there. As I rode up to this section, I too wondered how the hell I would get up there.

By this time we had been climbing for quite a long time and were quite spent. I am pretty good about keeping myself going but at this time, I was happy to have someone else pushing to keep me motivated. The wind on 'the turn' was pretty strong but we kept pushing as we knew we still had plenty of uphill climb ahead of us.

It was a warm day, actually, it felt hot at this point. The ascent to the point where the cars seemed to be parked precariously on the edge of a mountain was still a ways away, and damn, it was steep.

We made it, had a rest, received a few compliments from thsoe who drove up, then headed up a bit more. We basically chose a spot we wanted to get to and pedalled on. Stop, rest, pick a spot, pedal on...repeat. Those days of riding my Balfa up the fireroads in Japan paid off....

One more kilometer!

We reached the Icefield Center, sat around and had a couple of beer(s) and chatted with a German woman who was riding the other way, alone and heading to.....not sure. It felt great to be here, 25 years after.

Aviam and I, although completely bagged decided to start heading down....... We only had a couple of beers and this was over a 'considerable' amount of time. Wilcox pass, a campground , 3.1 kms south of the Icefield Center, seemed way to far to go back to; going downhill was the way to go...

We ended up riding another 20 kms, I think, to Jonas Creek, which should have been named Mosquito Creek, cause holy crap, was there a shitload of them (someone was kind enough to leave us some repellent though.

After hauling our bikes up a walking trail to the tent area, which sucked, we set up camp and made dinner. I again, almost lit the table and surrounding areas up with my brother Michael's stove (which he kindly let me borrow...thanks bro!). Aviam got a kick out of watching me fight with the stove and proudly posed with it later.

I think he wanted to steal it and sell it for a new pair of shoes

Day 5 The Climb

The night before Aviam and I decided we would head out in the morning together. Around 6 a.m. I peeled myself out of my tent, packed things up a bit and then headed out to see if Aviam was alive yet. Turns out he didn't actually get a very good sleep under his blanket he brought with him (temps get a wee chilly in the mountains at night) and spent most of the night shivering. I, on the other hand, had a decent sleep in my warm, comfy MEC sleeping bag....

After some breakfast we headed out. I was a bit concerned that I had a leak in my back tire as it seemd to have lost air. However, after pumping it up it seemed to hold. It may have been a combination of altitude and temperature that brought the tire pressure down.




Things warm up quickly when you are riding with 40+ pounds of gear.














Not a bad way to spend a day.....





The first bit of the ride this morning would mean completeing the climb up to the Bow Summit. It is a 40 km climb, which turned out to be pretty painless. When Aviam and I got there we were quite surprised that was all. We were expecting a bit more of an ass kicking than that. I did know what lay ahead. I had driven it a few times in the past and knew that many vehicles disliked the the ascent up to the Columbia Icefields. Constant reminders to Aviam of what we were to face usually resulted in 'Bring it on...". Little did he know.