Awesome day today, minus the road problems. We cycled from the Mara Lake and into the Purcell and Columbia Mountain chain, totally 131 km. As the pictures below illustrate, this route was much more scenic that that of the past 3 days.
The Canada Day weather was extremely hot and the ride was long. Myself, Brett, Iona, and Graham did a four person paceline for the first 30 km. We were averaging over 30 km/h which put us in Sciamous, BC by 8:30.
Then the problems hit! I blew my first tire of the trip but quickly changed the tube without any trouble. 10 km later, Iona completely sliced the side-wall of her little racing tire. We did an quick patch job but she got her second flat shortly after. This delayed us quite a bit so we stopped at the place where the last spike of the iron ribbon was nailed that linked the east to the west.
Iona's rear tire was really messed up so Graham cut up her old tube to line the sidewall. Luckily, she made it to Revelstoke, BC where we met up with Bob Mac who also had tire trouble.
Graham continued on to Canyon Hot Springs to meet a friend. After lunch in Revelstoke, BC, Iona and Bob went to a bike shop for tire replacements while Brett and I set out for the camp. It was 40 km of climbing through the Revelstoke National Park and into Rogers Pass. However, we made excellent time by riding in a paceline and made it to our beautiful campground by 4:15pm.
Iona, Bob, Ella, and Cor arrived a little later than us with some interesting stories. Ella was hit by a car at a low speed in an intersection in Revelstoke but thankfully she was not injured. Iona came within 50 feet of a full grown black bear that was standing on its hind legs. She was smart enough to continue past instead of doing what I would have done and trying to pull out the camera. Either way, it's pretty cool but we are taking the bear issue seriously tonight and will continue to for the rest of our time in the mountains.
Although, I am sure that I am missing an awesome party at Paddy's Garden in Carbonear, NL right now, we had a good night at the hot springs to rest our tired legs and few cold beers to ease the nerves. The Canyon Hot Springs campground is my favorite thus far and tomorrow we will climb the rest of Rogers Pass into Golden, BC. Golden will be our rest day and I am looking forward to chilling out on the holiday Monday.
