Trip Report – Canadian Rockies 2005

(Note: For those of us who are old fashioned this page has no embedded graphics and is designed to be printed out for reading)

“What is your objective?” As usual, Len asked the relevant question. What was our objective? Trip reports give a good indication of why people ride. Some ride for distance, some to own a piece of road; there are the downhill speed freaks, the long distance endurance marathoners, the uphill grinds, the odysseys lasting months or years; there are strangers seeking the company of organized tours, solo riders searching for the ultimate private space …

Our planned cycling route started in Jasper and ended in Vancouver – by our own standards an aggressive journey that would take us through some of Canada’s most beautiful national parks. The route was one thing, but our objective … our real objective, we decided, was first and foremost to enjoy ourselves. There is no point in being a slave to a plan if you’re not having fun … and on that happy note we booked an evening flight to Edmonton, an overnight room, and a train to Jasper.

The VIA Rail site has local maps of the VIA train station locations. The Edmonton station is located literally across the road from the airport – the old municipal airport that is, not the international airport which is a $50 taxi ride away. A four hour train delay gave us an opportunity to check our bikes as baggage (the local VIA staff would actually have preferred the bikes were not boxed, contrary to the web site) and take a cab past the old house and my first school. Forty years has not changed much – it was the briefest of walks down memory lane. The cab driver found a good spot for breakfast and waited for us to finish (he liked us); the waitress said we’d made her day and took 10% off the bill (she got it back in the tip, of course) – I guess we looked happy.

The suddenness of the transition from the Alberta prairie to the Rocky Mountains always startles. It is almost as if foothills don’t exist - within a half hour of travel time your gaze has redirected from horizontal flatness to jaw-dropping vertical. Geological explanations of ancient sea beds and tectonic plate movements may satisfy a cold, rational mind, but these peaks with their plastic folds of rocky strata still stir deep feelings of majesty and mystery.

A fellow cyclist at Jasper station was set to go – he was dressed in cycling skins, his bike was fully assembled, his Ortlieb waterproof panniers ready to be hung. His objective was to get to the Columbia Icefields that night, a distance of about 100km. For us on the other hand, there was “some assembly required”. We pushed a luggage cart with our boxed bikes up one half block to the Athabasca, Jasper’s second-oldest hotel. Built in 1928, it has an early colonial feel of wood panelling, plush carpets, acanthus-patterned wallpaper and an array of trophy heads staring impassively across the lobby. In the back lot the seedier patrons of the hotel lounge smoked their cigarettes and kibitzed while we assembled our bikes – on their second time out they dropped off a couple of condoms in case my vinyl gloves gave out (smart-aleks).

Last minute supplies – white gas, butane refill, maps, postcards and bear spray (recommended by Parks Canada attendants, by the way). We dined out for what we expected would be our last meal for many days at La Fiesta and had a wonderful soup of smoked tomatoes and goat’s cheese – now there’s an opportunity for some culinary experimentation when we return to a kitchen.

Sunday morning – the sun was shining, the bags were packed, breakfast eaten, it was time to hit the road. In less than a kilometre we ground to a wobbly halt – the food bags, strapped on top, had raised the centre of gravity to the point of destabilising BoB (our trailer). On the sidewalk we unstrapped, unwrapped, unpacked everything in BoB, placed the heavy food bags on the bottom, repacked, recrammed, put the ThermaRests outside on top, and restrapped – Take Two, we were rolling again.

The Icefields Parkway or highway 93 is considered one of the most beautiful drives in the world. With its wide shoulders and ban on truck traffic it is possibly the premier cycling route in Canada. Michael Fiebach’s comment that “cycling in North America does not get any safer than this” was one of our deciding factors in choosing this route. (By the way, Michael writes excellent trip reports worth reading just for the sake of his prose, particularly his European trips.)

Choosing a direction to travel on the Parkway is akin to deciding how you like your pain. Travel north from Lake Louise and you have 40 km of climbing right out of the starting blocks to get over Bow Pass (into a headwind), followed by long downhill glides; travel south from Jasper as we did and you are faced with 100 km of unending uphill gradients that have you turning the crank ceaselessly (into a headwind). At first we thought our brakes might be seizing, but no, the “level” road ahead of us was no more than an optical illusion – in fact we were climbing steadily. We gave up a gear to the grade, another to the wind, one to the load, one more to the thin mountain air – this was starting out as one long ride.

Traffic – just because there are no trucks on the Icefields Parkway, it doesn’t mean there are no large vehicles. Rounding a curve, I couldn’t quite decide whether the vehicle approaching opposite was a bus or not. Only when I could see the wife snoring in the passenger seat, head back and mouth wide open, did I know for certain this was not a passenger bus. The size of some motor homes is immense, and that’s not counting their trailers which are half as big again. Somehow the idea of going on vacation and “leaving it all behind” just does not apply here. While the wife snored her way into Jasper I was craning left and right at some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. Ah well, I’m sure she caught the video replay of the highlights later.

The Athabasca Falls are one of the “must see” sights of the Parkway, and a mighty sight they are. They are also where the highest number of tourist fatalities occur as a result of people stepping over the rails to get closer to the falls (“Darwin Award” candidates) – one slip on the very wet rocks is all it takes to prematurely end a vacation. The throng is predictable and sadly detracts from the experience of the Falls – it is somewhat like trying to appreciate the Mona Lisa at the Louvre – but we are tourists as much as the next fellow and have no justification for complaint.

Mary has three basic criteria for comfort – food, warmth, and staying dry. Of these the most important by far is food based on the hours of planning devoted to this one topic. Our first supper on the road was scalloped potatoes with capicolla and peas. The scalloped potatoes that had worked so well at home would not yield in the pot, the sauce that had been creamy clumped into muddy lumps – we were able to lighten our load by two extra meals’ worth of scalloped potatoes.

Our campsite was by the Athabasca river, we had a fire for mosquitoes, a small glass of cognac for the day’s notes – oh, and a small square of foil-wrapped Godiva chocolate for the addict among us. Then it was into a sleeping bag for the first time in more than a decade …

Technology has changed recreational sports (and the rest of life) significantly since we lasted pitched a tent – some things can’t be left behind even if you’d like. A cell phone rang at 5:00 am. Mary woke up as if a jolt of caffeine had hit her – it might be one of the kids. No, there was no one on the line – in fact, there wasn’t even cell service here in the mountains. Her cell phone alarm had been set in Edmonton to ensure we made the 8:00 am train, and we had not yet figured out how to turn it off – this was the third morning the phone had self-activated.

The tent was down by the time the rain started and we had shifted to the cooking shelter. Pancakes that tasted so spectacular at home now stuck to the pan, but at least the espresso maker bubbled its magic into tiny cups. A fellow cyclist, John, joined us in the hut to dry out. He was a school teacher on the first day of a short tour to southern Alberta on his brand new bike. His ride for the day would take him significantly farther than us, over Sunwapta Pass to the other side of the Columbia Icefields. The conversation turned to cycling and fitness in general. “It’s in your forties that you start to lose it,” said Mary – life’s distractions make it harder to keep up, easier to slack off. We left camp lighter than we had arrived – the pancake mix joined the scalloped potatoes.

When cycling one sees things that are missed by motorists, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. The views on either side were swallowed in cloud, but in the ditch there was an accumulation of litter tossed from car windows – every few bicycle lengths there was another scrap on the ground. The most common trash were beer cans (no particular brand), and the most disturbing were shattered beer bottles whose shards were large enough to shred a tire.

“Some people are on the beach.” We, on the other hand were pedalling in rain – well, at least it was warm, or more accurately it wasn’t bone chilling. The rain booties, pants and jackets did their duty, the pavement splashed, the road kept rising. At the top of yet another long hill we pulled over to catch our breath and a snack. Behind us John from the campsite pulled up. When we left he had not even starting packing, so either we’d been riding slowly or he’d been riding much harder than us – probably both. We carved off chunks of salami, he peeled an orange. John had ridden the Parkway before and thought there was a restaurant just around the next bend, and indeed there was. The Sunwapta Falls Lodge makes a nice beef stew for a rainy day, with a crisp green salad on the side – everything is reasonably priced. In the gift shop, John agreed with Mary – he had just turned forty-one and, yes, he had stopped doing the things he did as a younger man. We wore our hoods under our helmets when we left.

Since Jasper we had followed the Athabasca River (now the Sunwapta) upstream and by now it had become braided. The river basin was wider than the flow of water and streams of water played back and forth across each other through the sand banks in broad, woven threads. Why would the road engineers move away from the river bank and take us up yet another climb higher than the height of trees at the water’s edge? The answer was at the top of the climb where the road crossed a rock fall. The term “rock fall” does not do justice to the magnitude of scene. Imagine an ice maker that had gone berserk and spilled billions of cubes down the side of a mountain – except each cube is the size of a car, the splash is over five stories high and half a kilometre in width. The entire side of a mountain came down here and decimated everything in its path.

Mid-afternoon brought clearing skies, the rain had played itself out, Jonas Creek campground was the right spot to make camp – tomorrow would be Sunwapta, the Big One, the pass we had read about in every trip report, from the tough northern side.

We could see our breath in the tent that night – I put on a cotton toque for sleeping.

At breakfast neighbours invited us over to their fire to warm up. Normally they motorcycled and camped, but today they were tailgating out of the back of their pickup. They live in Jasper, he drives a train for Rocky Mountaineer Tours from Jasper to Kamloops. It sounded like they spent their free time hiking, biking, skiing, and backpacking. I asked about the TransCanada from Lake Louise – he avoided it whenever possible, even on a motorcycle – it’s too dangerous.

We were late leaving the campsite, we stopped at the roadside for trivialities, we ate trail food we didn’t really want to eat – we had no rhythm, no momentum. Sunwapta was ahead, we both knew it, it was the toughest climb of the trip. From the roadside by the river flats we could see it start, a stiff gradient that bends and disappears around a curve. Whatever is behind that curve is going to be long and tough – our first mountain pass.

Gravity is more than a good idea, it’s the law. At the second turnout, a motor home needed the entire radius to pull back into traffic – their hitched SUV was too heavy and the wife was now driving it up the pass. Two overweight girls half our age walked their unloaded bikes and called out encouragement – “Come on, you can do it!” The legs thrashed, the lungs grasped for oxygen, all the standard mantras were called upon – “In through the nose, out through the mouth … heels down … knees to chest … BREATHE!” … BoB was rolling backwards … the next turnout receded with every glance … a flashing burst of energy in the quads said everything had been spent, there was nothing left but pain … Mary managed three quarters of the climb before I distracted her with a call – her front wheel was as wobbly as her legs, I was already walking faster than she was riding. We mounted the bikes just 50 meters short of the crest to be able to say we had biked to the top of Sunwapta – sort of …

The walk-in sites in the Columbia Icefield campground had not yet filled, and there was a private spot by the creek. We took advantage of the restaurant in the Icefields centre – it tries to be world class, but the food is only adequate considering the exorbitant pricing. Mary cleaned her plate of carrots before even looking at anything else. She left her cycling mirror on the table – when she went back, the mirror was gone. I suspect one of a BackRoads threesome seated at the next table now has a good strap-on mirror. The public washrooms of the Icefields centre are available for the use of campers. By late evening the floors were awash from all the bird baths (there is no paper towel in the washroom or anywhere else in the national parks) – we decided our wash could wait until morning. That night it dropped to zero – luckily Mary had bought a woollen cap and mittens from the gift shop. The next morning we realized one of our ThermaRests had a slow leak.

There was a large group of Backroads bikers at breakfast (buffets can be expensive, but bikers always get their money’s worth). We watched them set out singly or in pairs down the road to Jasper from the dining room window, then went and washed ourselves. The proximity sensors went off in sequence as I passed the automated sinks to give myself a three-day cleaning. Back to the tent to drop things off and then on to the trailhead of Wilcox pass.

Like so many of the individuals who opened the Canadian northwest, Walter Wilcox was not a Canadian – he was an American from Washington, D.C., who returned to Rockies every year for exploration – one of the original tourists, if you will. When he came to the Columbia Icefields we could not find a way across – supposedly because the Icefield at that time extended a couple of kilometres further than it is today, but actually because a gorge cut across a rock slide by the Sunwapta River was impossible for horses to pass. Instead he took the next valley east, around what is now Mount Wilcox.

The vast majority of visitors to the parks never stray far from the highway and neither had we, either on this trip or previous visits. We followed the Wilcox Pass trail to its end, climbing all the time – over the tree roots of the moraine forest, through the sub-alpine scrub and bushes, over the alpine meadows where flowers in miniature peppered the landscape. Here broad vistas opened up with views twenty kilometres south and onto the Columbia Icefield itself. The temptation was to look up at bare rock faces, or out to the frozen sheets of ice, or down at the cheery but minute alpine flowers. There was no direction to look that did not amaze. Mary found a rock with embedded fossils – some sort of worm-like creatures from tens of millions of years past. We tossed it aside so some other tourist wouldn’t be tempted to pocket it. Little brown birds pecked at the ground scavenging, pairs of marmots (or were they pikas?) chirped to each other and played tag down their burrows, butterflies smaller than your thumb lighted on flowers tinier than themselves. We were entranced. By the time we got back down to the bikes we knew we had found something new, something different, something you couldn’t see on a bike.

Sunwapta – what goes up must go down, and Sunwapta indeed goes down a long way on the south side. There were no speed records here – we pulled off at almost every turnout, and a herd of mountain goats at the roadside amused traffic for a while. The Big Bend at the base of the pass is an engineering anachronism – it seems to serve no purpose. There is a very interesting little unmarked canyon at the end of Big Bend on the right. It is crossed by an old road that has been closed off with boulders on the south side of the highway, just before a hill that ends in a turnout. I expect this particular length of road would make a very interesting walk (armed with bear spray) – it appears to cross the river on a bridge far below the height of the present highway.

Finally the water was flowing in our direction. The sky was cloudless, sun block (PF 60) was slathered in layers – it was a perfect afternoon to make distance, sliding down to Saskatchewan Crossing. A Backroads group was curb side by the lodgings, the leader offered us a beer but we opted for the pub. It was grill-your-own chicken breast with ambience to match the country music videos – “Hey good lookin’, what you got cookin’ …”. There’s strong country here, the food was good, we shared a cold beer, and the bartender sold us an Allison Ranch Merlot to pour into our spare water bottles. She asked where we were going tonight – Waterfowl campground, about 20 km distance. “It’s all uphill from here,” she said and she was right, there are 10 kilometres of uninterrupted climbing right from the bridge over the North Saskatchewan River. When we paused to catch our breath for the next 10 km and shared an orange it was like manna from heaven – up went the electrolytes, onward and upward we went. A headwind has a pattern when climbing – just when the gradient is at its steepest, before the crest at the toughest part of the hill, you feel it pick up and rush towards you, as big and relentless as a Winnebago. It’s the only time you welcome a strengthening wind, because you know you’ve almost made it to the top of another hill.

The young French couple in the walk-in campsite next to ours were both pulling BoB trailers, although hers was a smaller model with a hard shell case. Stephanie (I think) was from Mulhouse in Alsace and working as a translator in Montreal. Her Quebecois colleagues didn’t understand why she was making this trip to the Rockies – they always vacationed in Quebec and saw no need to go elsewhere. How was the road from Kelowna, where they started? Awful, especially the TransCanada – there was construction through Yoho (“Nowhere to ride but right in traffic”), the trucks were fast. Worst were the unlit snow sheds in the avalanche areas – both drivers and riders entered these black tunnels blinded by sunlight.

Our supper was the camp meal of the trip - sausages taken from the breakfast buffet with instant mashed potatoes, freeze dried peas and onions, buttered, salted and peppered. We filled our cups from the water bottle – the one with the wine, that is. “I hope we don’t run out of mosquito repellent, because we’re sure not going to run out of mosquitoes.”

Waterfowl campground has a pulley system to hang your food bags – all other campgrounds had bear lockers you could put your food into. We had stayed at this campground with the kids in either 1988 or 1990 – I still remember it as one of our preferred camp spots. We walked around the campground in the early morning to get some reflections from the lake and recognized the log bridge over the river. The bridge was closed now – large areas in this vicinity had grizzly activity, and the parks people weren’t letting people hike unless they were in groups of six or more. The driver of a VW van was shaving in the washroom. In Yoho, when he pulled onto the highway shoulder to let faster cars pass, traffic wouldn’t let him back in.

We both plugged in when the real climb to Bow Pass started, just when the shoulder disappears into a passing lane. The next nine kilometres were a game of gears, preserving the knees, pacing the legs, playing the tortoise and not the hare … slipping down a gear to maintain cadence, up a gear to leave some room for relief … eyes stay focused on the pavement six feet in front of you, there’s no concentration to spare for the ranges on either side … a freshened headwind at each crest and the rooflines of oncoming traffic tell you there is more hill to come. The sound of a diesel truck using its airbrakes was a jolt – no, it was cars crossing the centre rumble strip to give us room. A pair of motor homes were pinned in the slow lane by passing cars. They were close and couldn’t give us much room, but they did what they could – that was closest we got to close call. One kilometre from the summit there is a warning sign that the passing lane will end– you know the legs are good, you know the lungs will hold, all you need is the stamina to keep it together to reach Peyto Lake and busloads of tourists taking pictures of the most-photographed lake in the Canadian Rockies.

A few kilometres down the road at Bow Lake, an impressive phalanx of trophy heads oversaw our lunch of homemade tomato soup. The dining room of Num-Ti-Jah Lodge has a good selection of local art, and some older bronze busts. Maybe the first time we cycled over a mountain pass deserves a night with a roof and shower and beds overlooking the milky teal of Bow Lake. After all, one of the joys of aging together is remembering first times – you might as well make them memorable. Were rooms expensive? Yes, said Dave our waiter, rooms were quite expensive. However this was Friday afternoon and one of the big rooms was still empty - the front desk might be negotiable.

A room in Num-Ti-Jah boasts no phone, no clock, no TV, stereo, fridge or microwave – the only concessions to the electrical era are the room lamps and plumbing. Decoration is from the 1930’s and I’m sure very little has been changed since then, right down to the plywood doors and arborite on the wall behind the washroom sink. Décor might lag, but the linens are fluffy and white, even when obscured by 50 feet of rope draped with laundry.

Mount Jimmy Simpson … not Mt. Simpson, not Mt. James Simpson, but Mt. Jimmy Simpson. How do you get a mountain named after yourself? I doubt there will ever be a Mt. Kern or a Mt. Mary. It turns out Jimmy Simpson was an Englishman turned mountain guide. With the money his wife and daughter made as professional figure skaters he built Num-Ti-Jah lodge in the 1920’s. Jimmy’s fireplaces are so big you have to step into them to add wood. The lodge stayed in the family until 3 years ago – the grandson wasn’t into the hospitality business and decided to sell, but he still checks in occasionally to see how things are going. N-A-F-R was what the new owners wanted under their logo – “Not a Fairmont Resort”.

The lodge retains a touch of old-world class – appetizers are served in the library in front of the fire, and they remember how you ordered your steak when you made your reservation. I didn’t follow Dave’s advice on wine – I should have chosen his Baco Noir instead of a cabernet sauvignon that was more sharp than full. Dessert was in the library – chocolate fondue. Mary beat me at the pool table.

Dave and some others hiked an hour and a half to an unnamed lake after their evening shift. They were going for the “true” summit of Crowsfoot Mountain. “That’s the one in the window.” I was impressed – I stop to take photos of peaks like that. Our morning hostess had decided not to join them - she had to be back for her 7:00 am shift. But, as she said, hiking for an hour and a half in the rain is a “Friday night out” when you work in the mountains.

The morning kitchen staff ran out to look at the rainbow that reached right to the lake. We pedalled away on a descending run into a headwind of strong rain to Lake Louise where the TransCanada Highway turns to Vancouver. Up on Crowsfoot, Dave was being lashed in the side of the face by hail.

The village of Lake Louise is an accident of Canadian railway history. The original planned route for the railroad went north through Fort Edmonton and what is now Jasper, over the Yellowhead Pass and then southwest to the coast. The directors of the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) (all born penniless, by the way) decided in a single afternoon to ignore 10 years of surveying and go south across Kicking Horse Pass. Kicking Horse had been rejected 10 years earlier - the pass itself was too steep and there was no known route across the Selkirk mountains beyond. Wherever the CPR built a station, a town sprang up – Lake Louise, at the bottom of Kicking Horse Pass, was one of these. It didn’t take long for the CPR to see the profit potential in tourism, and Chateau Lake Louise became one of Canada’s premier vacation destinations. Trains still run through the village (you can hear them from the campground), but they are only freights and don’t even stop. The railway station is now a restaurant with an old fashioned wooden ambience – we didn’t eat there but it looked like a good spot.

Lake Louise campground was unique – it is surrounded by an electric fence and has a cattle gate for automotive traffic. A bear had crossed the Pipestone when we arrived and was napping up in a tree. The Parks staff were keeping an eye on him – some young Dutch kids had left food outside their tent and had it confiscated. There was more Dutch, German and Swiss spoken in the washrooms than any other language, including English.

An observation on tents … test designers must have a lot of fun. Today’s tents have no limits on design, shape or colour – they are as fanciful as a wall of kindergarten art. It seems no two tents are the same. But I’m not sure how tent manufacturers make money – they must never sell more than one tent of any given model. In Lake Louise campground (over 700 sites) I didn’t see the same tent twice.

A plan. The Icefields Parkway was finished. The TransCanada, our intended route to Vancouver, had been ruled out – white knuckle cycling did not fit with our objective. The photo shop clerk told of a couple who got creamed by a semi- last year – “It’s the most dangerous stretch of highway in Canada”. Well, we may not have a plan, but we had an opportunity. Hiking Wilcox Pass had been the highlight of the trip so far – getting above the tree line literally gave a totally new perspective to the mountains. Our only problem was gear - Mary had only cycling shoes with her. Off to Wilson Sports for two pairs of hiking boots.

The road from Lake Louise village up to Chateau Lake Louise is not long – 4 kilometres – but it was by far our most aggravating stretch of road. The first 3 km are a narrow, 6% grade with no shoulders and non-stop traffic of all sizes. Its only saving grace is that there’s so much traffic everyone goes slowly.

From the asphalt walkway that edges the shore of Lake Louise we had the classic, foreshortened view of turquoise-green against a backdrop of mountains and glaciers – dozens of rented canoes dotted the surface like a flotilla of toy ships.

It doesn’t take a lot of climbing to shake off the Chateau throng. Switchbacks take you through the sub-alpine forest, up past Mirror Lake to a set of stairs by a pretty waterfall and the Lake Agnes tea house. Lake Agnes is a tarn, or glacially carved, lake. The teahouse, built of rounded logs, is perched so close to a cliff’s edge it looks like it could be toppled with the push of a finger. It has a slightly Bohemian feel to it – tables are bare-topped and seats are upright chain-sawed logs. A couple we had passed a few of times on the climb arrived to no table, only two log stumps. They joined us– we ordered a tuna sandwich and homemade tea biscuits (really good tea biscuits).

Eileen and John are from Washington area – she is a municipal planner and he is the retired director of exhibits at the Smithsonian and Air and Space Museums. Normally they vacation at a friend’s New England cottage, but this year thought they could do the Canadian Rockies for less money. They were still a bit shell shocked at their expenses – their room was costing $300 a night and our tent was looking pretty good. The conversation shifted – they were dismayed with the present drift to extremism and divisiveness in American politics. I thought the major shortcoming of the American system is that there will never be a meaningful third party in our lifetimes. Politics is always a good cue to move and, besides, the sun was getting lower. From the teahouse we worked our way around the edge of the lake past “the world’s biggest rock garden”. At an un-melted snow patch Mary decided to put on long pants.

The switchbacks up Big Beehive are not a place for a misstep – if you fell you wouldn’t stop until you literally hit rock bottom. The view from the top is incredible. Directly below is the Chateau perched like a Monopoly hotel on the edge of beautiful Lake Louise. The panorama at the horizon must span at least 50 kms, a spectacular vista up and down valleys – it’s easy to see why mountain climbers get hooked. At this height there was a cell signal - Mary called one of the kids.

The first 3 km of climbing towards Lake Louise may be tough, but once you’ve made it that far you’ve done all the hard work for Kicking Horse Pass. The old TCH is now closed to traffic – it’s a ski trail in winter, the road surface is gradually deteriorating, but there are no hills to speak of and there was not another soul on it. At the Great Divide in Yoho, a single stream literally branches left and right – the left flows to the Pacific and the right to the Atlantic via Hudson’s Bay. High above, traffic on the modern TCH whizzed by, oblivious to the divide – we were the only ones on this disused road.

Decisions – we had done all we really wanted to do in Lake Louise – there were other hikes, but they were closed to groups of less than 6, the campground was functional but nothing more, we needed to make a decision … tomorrow, the Kootenays! Getting out of town is never that easy of course. We packed up a box to mail home, made yet one more stop at Wilson Sports – the bike tech made time to look at our rear derailleurs and in fact did a superb job adjusting them, they have never worked better. He gave a quick précis of Shimano components and disc brakes. “If you’re planning on doing more touring you might want to get good bikes.” It was a bit humbling … we thought our bikes were pretty good – we like our bikes!

The Bow valley Parkway is a very calming ride through an evergreen corridor. It may be an exaggeration to say there were more bikes than cars on this road, but a one-to-four ratio was realistic. Anyone in a hurry was on the TransCanada. Backroads riders were everywhere, the cycling was casual even without a shoulder, cyclists “owned” more of the road.

Rain threatened at Castle Junction – why pitch a tent in weather when you can rent a room with little sleeping alcoves and a tiny woodstove? We had Cabin 1 in Castle Mountain Lodge, very much like a little Newfoundland cabin, the first cabin they had built. The kids on staff at the lodge – pasty faced with Goth mascara – looked like the only thing they wanted in Castle Junction was to get out, and who would blame them because there is nothing, absolutely nothing else there but the lodge. There were enough newer high-priced, honey-coloured, pine-log kit-construction cottages built that a steam room was at our disposal. After a supper of barbequed “smokies" (from the lodge’s deep freeze) we shed several layers of skin. A small fire in the woodstove drove out the damp. I woke from a dream with a terrible leg cramp – a freight rolling by had blown its whistle, and in my startled sleep I had smashed down on the pedals to get out of its way.

Vermillion Pass starts at Castle Junction and rises 8 km to its highest point at Storm Mountain Lodge, a steady pull under a cloudless sky. A fuel truck with a full double load laboured past us in the fast lane at roughly double our speed. Many trip reports on this stretch of road note that the Continental Divide is actually lower than the height of the pass. The explanation for this is that the Continental Divide is based on the watershed – rain that falls on the height at Storm Mountain will drain west to the divide, and then be carried back east in the Atlantic runoff. That’s why cyclists from Radium still climb after passing the Great Divide.

Forest fires raged through Kootenay National Park in 2003. The pines left standing that were downwind are scorched brown - they were roasted in the heat but spared an explosive incineration. For all this destruction you would expect Kootenay to be a depressing place, but surprisingly this is not the case.

A hiking trail to Stanley Glacier starts in one of the burn areas with a series of easy switchbacks. Fireweed and a yellow daisy-like flower carpet the mountain side – they are the “first colonizers”. It is a pretty contrast to the fire-blackened skeletons of trees, some standing, some fallen like a massive game of pick-up sticks. If Lake Agnes was rock garden, this was a “fire garden”. Further down the highway Marble Canyon was still closed – the bridges on the trail were burnt and have not been rebuilt. The Indian Paint Pots were another walk down memory lane – I visited here when I was a child. The site is contemplative rather than spectacular – it makes you wonder what was so special about these springs and soil that tribes travelled hundreds of miles to harvest it. For us there was little contemplation – horse flies were the order of the day.

Lodges – the old mountain lodges were built of logs in the round with uneven dimensions, and had small single pane windows and large fireplaces. These were places where the well-to-do came for a taste of rustic life. The cabins at Vermillion Crossing (now called Kootenay Park Lodge) are very old fashioned. They were well made in their time and still function well. We made it in time for the dining room, although we need not have hurried. The owner, an old lady at the desk, said “We always have food for our guests.” Mary’s Atlantic salmon was nicely done, but my poached trout was underdone and the wine list was off limits – I suspect the Lodge had lost its liquor license.

That night we realized we were pedalling into a dead end. Kootenay Park is more well suited to hikers than cyclists (most camping sites are back country) and it lacks the drama of Jasper. The mountains are not as high, the tree line extends to the peaks – it’s pretty but really there’s no comparison. Radium Hot Springs, towards which we were headed, didn’t sound appealing (27 motels, 2 Austrian restaurants and a pool filled with people in bathing suits), and after that Golden is on to the TCH.

The next morning we stood on the shoulder of the highway waiting to wave down the Greyhound bus to Banff. A coyote on the other side loped along the ditch with his curious sideways shuffle. We had never planned to go to Banff – it’s over developed, and feels more “Rodeo Drive” than Jasper – but it redeemed itself with a Calbault chocolate store and an excellent lunch at St. Jame’s Gate Irish pub.

Peggy was our Brewster bus driver from Banff to Jasper. She’s on the larger side of life with salt-and-pepper hair that would kink out in all directions if she didn’t tie it back. Peggy has no qualms about putting out a “swamp rats” (kids on summer staff at Lake Louise) at the roadside if they’re too rowdy – “The company will back me up as long as there’s a phone to call for shelter.” Home? “Home” is Calgary, at least that’s where her stuff is, but when you drive 300 days a year your home is the company’s hostel. She tries to keep suppers under $2.00. She has two motorcycles – a Kawasaki for handling and a Honda for touring. It’s a late love - she didn’t start riding until after 40. “I like how you smell the rain in the air before it hits you.” She noticed our “Hand book of the Canadian Rockies” by Ben Gadd. “We call it ‘the Bible’.” She did one tour with Ben, her best one ever. She drove and he provided the commentary. “Wouldn’t you know it, it was the one time I forgot my book and couldn’t have him autograph it.” We pulled into the Icefields Centre to drop off mail and pick up laundry. There was a BackRoads van with its dozen bikes racked upside down. Her opinion of cyclists? “Now those are the ones I hate,” she said, motioning to the van. “They ride side by side and leave no room for passing. They have no idea how dangerous it is.” She let us off in Jasper in a lightning storm and waited very patiently while we got our stuff together.

The Athabasca Hotel found us a room, Andy’s Bistro found us a table (it had stopped raining) and we had a fabulous meal – scallops with wild mushrooms and foie gras, duck breast with maple syrup and saskatoons, and a full-bodied Kettle Valley pinot noir from the Okanogan with a table-thumping finish – superb. (I later tried finding this wine, but Kettle Valley is too small a producer to be carried by the provincial liquor stores in B.C.)

Lessons learned – take less stuff. Before setting off for Mt. Robson we put at least 10 lbs in storage.

Yellowhead Pass was the original route of choice for the railway because of its gentle grade, and on a bike you see why. Rising out of Jasper for twenty or thirty kilometres, the climb is gentle and it’s literally downhill after that, though the usual headwind ensures you can’t just coast. Once again the Great Divide is lower than the crest of the pass.

We probably stopped too early that day – we put a tarp over the picnic table but it snapped so loudly in a wicked wind off Lake Lucerne that we took it down. Supper was about to be served (cheese tortellini with dried mushrooms) when it started to pour. In the campsite opposite, the bleached blonde sipping a Wendy’s soda disappeared into the tent, leaving her boyfriend to make the best of his evening alone by the fire. We ate standing in our waterproof hiking boots, sheltered under a tree with rain dripping into our plates. Lying in our sleeping bags Mary felt a splash on her nose, then another – not good news, especially in our new Sierra Designs tent. There was a minute drip in the end of the zipper seam, possibly just around a single stitch – I strategically hung a face cloth under it.

The highway leading to Mt. Robson itself descends for about 15 km from Red Pass, 5 km of it at a 5% grade and the final kilometre at 6%. Mt. Robson is the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies. It seems to be a cloud magnet. Outside the B.C. Parks information centre they had a depressingly short list of the days the actual peak had been sighted.

Our campsite was the nicest of our trip – it backed onto the Robson River with woods on either side. Across from us was a young German couple with a rented camper. She came over asking if we had anti-histamines – her boyfriend had been stung in the back of the head by a wasp, and his fingers were now swollen and purple. They eventually drove to Valemont for medication.

Mary was at the showers and I was doing dishes when a fellow-camper dropped by saying that a bear had been sighted coming up the river bank next to our campsite, and it looked like a grizzly. Food was still out but not for long - in a flash the food bags were stuffed and sealed. As I walked to the food lockers I recognized a familiar outline in the corner of my eye– yes, a second look confirmed the unmistakeable silhouette of a bear, probably 4 feet at the shoulders. Nothing quickens your pace quite like carrying a food bag in your right hand and having a grizzly on your left. The bear spray was, of course, safely in the bottom of the BoB bag. I didn’t tell Mary until the next day.

The trail to Berg Lake is justifiably the most popular in the provincial park. The first 7 km of the trail to Kinney Lake can be cycled, and the trail was about as rough as I would want to handle on our hybrids, especially the steep section of a kilometre over an old skree slide. Mary’s tire slid out from under her - she fell, fortunately not over the edge. The alluvial fan at the head of Kinney Lake looks so delicate from a height, with lace-like streams weaving their way to the edge of the lake. Once on the bridges at ground level you grip the handrails very carefully – these streams run fast and cold, and you have no idea how deep they could be. It would take a strong, cool-headed swimmer to get out of that water quickly.

At the top of the lake, a pair of recumbents flying Guernsey flags was parked and locked. A couple from the Channel Islands had hiked into Berg Lake for 5 days and came out the next morning. A father with a prosthesis and his young son had climbed the seven kilometres we had ridden and were still hiking hand-in-hand. We passed and re-passed three Japanese kids with heavy backpacks and trekking poles who were having a great time.

Only one person at a time crosses the swinging bridge at the Valley of a Thousand Falls. We didn’t see a thousand falls but we could see seven with the naked eye, maybe triple that number with binoculars from our fixed vantage point, including three fountains erupting from a solid rock face. Berg Lake is supposed to be beautiful, with glaciers “calving” into it, i.e. chunks of glacier ice fall off into the water. We realized we couldn’t do the whole trail in a single day – it’s 21 km one way, all of it up. It was here we decided that when we return we will come equipped to camp overnight in the back country – the alternative is a helicopter lift.

The signs in the back country outhouses are in English with German sub-titles – no French.

It was on the descent that Mary broke her spoke – a poorly attached sandal slipped into the rear wheel. This was a conundrum – I had a spare spoke, but the break was on the cassette side which I couldn’t access without special tools (and know how). The rivet of the spoke had snapped so I couldn’t even attempt a splice. We’ve never ridden with a broken spoke before and had no idea what sort of distance was feasible, but 100 km back to Jasper with 40 lbs in the panniers did not sound realistic.

Michelle and Devon, campers across the way, had a cheery 13-month son Elliot who paced the family’s schedule. More importantly, they were returning to Edmonton with enough room in the back of their pickup truck for our bikes and BoB. They often hiked around Jasper and had good opinions on possibilities in the area. We left them in Jasper with enough of a thank-you card to enjoy a good dinner out – they had saved us a lot of grief.

The towns in the national parks are like alpine flowers – they get as much as they can during the brief summer months and hope its enough to make up for the winter’s losses. I like Jasper. It has only two streets of consequence so you can’t get lost. It has everything you need in the way of equipment and supplies. The people are nice – the maitre d’ from Andy’s recognized us on the street three days later and wanted to know where we’d been. And there are lots of good day trips you can do from the town.

Lessons learned – camping was easier twenty years ago than it is today, and mummy bags are aptly named – they are a curse to sleep in. For our last nights in Jasper we rented a very cosy cabin at Tekarra Lodge. It gave space to decompress and a small kitchen for meals. We sat overlooking the confluence of the Athabasca and Miette Rivers while Housekeeping cleaned our cabin until the wind and rain drove us in. We fixed a lunch of Natural High freeze-dried 3-Bean Chili, our best camping meal of the trip other than mashed potatoes. Viscous Cycle had a two day backlog for repairs – “It’s Jasper, it’s a long weekend, and everybody wants their bike fixed” – but they managed to squeeze us in. Shrimp for supper with Quail’s Gate dry Riesling and a fire in the stone fireplace that had a terrible backdraft – the smoke alarm went off at a most inopportune moment …

Mt. Edith Cavell – this day excursion from Jasper is written up so often it sounds hackneyed. There is a 15 km ride to the trailer drop-off on 93A, the old Icefields parkway, and then a 14 km climb to the glacier. (By the way, the first 2 km of 93A has been newly resurfaced, a major improvement according to some older trip reports.) At the trailer drop-of we could hear the rev of a motorcycle’s engine through the trees as it rounded switchbacks above us, each time climbing higher. The first 4 km of the climb were stiff – based on the map the gradient was at least 5% - and the remaining 10 km was not trivial. The reward for this effort begins with a classic view of the mountain at the height of the climb.

The parking lot was jammed with cars – ours were the only bikes – but most people choose to stay at the base for their sight seeing We put on our hiking boots, and took a pole each for the climb – past the moraine of glacial rubble the size of cars, up through the sub-alpine forest of fir and spruce, into the alpine meadows covered with pinprick-sized flowers, up the steeply pitched, hard rock trail to the trail’s end – we were about 1200 metres above Jasper in altitude. Temperatures dropped with each metre we climbed and the wind was almost cruel – it was jackets and gloves at the summit with a breathtaking view of the mountain, the glaciers, and the panorama of distant mountain ranges. Only a handful made it this high and the company was appreciated – it would have felt lonely and dangerous otherwise. On the descent we took the photo of a young family carrying two children in backpacks. Dad was from Vancouver but working in Taiwan, and they had come to the Rockies for a vacation. The elder girl could not have been more than two and was obviously cold, dressed in her mother’s jacket with sleeves flapping in the wind past the length of her arms. “Do you like chocolate?” Mary gave her the rest of her Calbault chocolate nuggets.

The lake at the bottom of Angel glacier on Mt. Edith Cavell is edged with a sheer ice wall built in sinuous layers whose top has been cut back in terraces. There is an ice cave at the base of the cliff that is dangerous – it is a maw twice the height of a man and quite capable of trapping anyone not respectful of its icy lip. The interior ice walls have melted into a gothic fantasy of twisting curves – at the base, melt water rattles over gravel.

The parking lot had emptied by the time we started our return ride, picking paths around the potholes. I curled around a switchback and my shadow leapt out in front, challenging me to a race. The road was smooth, I released the brakes – the rush of wind, the whirr of the tires, the golden blur of pavement, my shadow stretched in front of me, getting longer – it was hypnotic. We made it back to town just in time to pick up some steak and an Allison Ranch merlot for a stir fry.

Our last day riding was under a cloudless sky, the first of the entire trip. On the road to Maligne Lake each rising grade ends in a curve, and around every curve there is a rising grade. Medicine Lake at the halfway point is both beautiful and interesting. It has no outlet, but instead drains into the longest known cave system in the Canadian Rockies. An ice plug freezes during winter and traps the spring runoff. Just when the lakes downstream are warm enough to swim the ice plug melts and the downstream lakes get cold again. By late autumn the lake is almost empty. When we were there the water level had probably already dropped 5 metres. On its northern side a sedimentary slab of rock leans back, its layers whorled as a fingerprint. It looks like it was designed by a mathematician whose speciality was partial differential equations, then fractured and reassembled by some mad cubist artist.

Mary and I have differences. We have many of them actually, one of which is our style of riding. I like the effect of gravity on a downhill run and use it to ramp up for the other side; she brakes to keep her speed under control. I ride with a fast cadence while she presses down on the heavy gears – going uphill she may be two full gears higher than me, pedalling slow and hard and then standing for a boost of acceleration. This is something you can spend a long time observing on a 50 km stretch. When watching her gears I noticed an s-shaped wobble in the rim. The bike tech at Vicious Cycle said he had done a minor truing on the wheel – it looked like he hadn’t known what he was doing. There was no point mentioning it. (It was only when we got back to Jasper that we saw that her brakes had been rubbing twice on each revolution of her rear tire as a result of another broken spoke.)

The final 15 km to Maligne Lake was a relentless uphill into a headwind. Mary had that look that says she is not happy with the way things are going but she’s going to do this and get it over with. Wild strawberries at the shoulder helped lighten things up – tiny as a baby’s finger nail they burst with flavour.

The road to the lake ends in a tourist trap of boat tours and lousy cafeteria food - in hindsight maybe we should have stopped at Medicine Lake. There was no time to hike either the Bald Hills or Opal Hills, both supposedly more than worthwhile. As it was we only had a half hour to rest and eat for the 50 kilometre return.

It was the last run, a return of long downhill glides without having to so much as touch a pedal for kilometre after kilometre. There was enough headwind to check our speed, roadside flowers were backlit in the evening sun, billy goats gruff strolled the road at Medicine Lake. Shadows of trees across tumbling streams were black stripes that alternated with flashes blues and whites in the late afternoon sun, hazy mountains were outlined in the distance … we were coasting through a slice of creation that is awesome in the truest meaning of the word. With the Hammond organ of “Philosopher’s Stone” in the headphones I lifted my face to the rush of wind and thought, there are worse ways to get old …

There are no words to describe the Canadian Rockies. The contrasts are so extreme in almost every aspect you look at them – time, mass, distance, age. The mountains are so young they rip a hole in the sky, but are built of ancient sea beds that have buckled and twisted like plastic; fountains gush from solid stone; the landscape of the horizon is as wondrous as the pinprick of life clinging to a rock at your feet; a glacier’s icy grip shatters rock and then melts in the warm breath of summer; mysteries of creation beyond the human dimension are given rational explanations. Unlike cycling trips, the contrasts never end.

Postscripts

The menu of the Tekarra Lodge dining room has an Asian-fusion theme – the Pacific bouillabaisse was thin on meat and heavy on potato – for the price it should have been crammed with fish. In comparison, the meal on the VIA train was superb – salmon and pot roast of beef, cooked on the spot in a tiny galley and a bargain at $30 including two glasses of wine and a dessert. The train crew had been up more than 24 hours – a derailment had forced them to be bussed 12 hours from Saskatoon to Jasper – they did an admirable job. Coach class on Via is very comfortable for a day trip (i.e. from Edmonton to Jasper), but at night gravity rules once again and you slip down in your seat all night long. We have found a way of sleeping that is more uncomfortable than a tent …

Lessons learned - thoughts on cycling the Icefields Parkway

This section is really intended for those thinking of cycling the Parkway, with some ideas on what worked for us and what we will change next time. All costs are $Cdn.

Cycling time: most guides mention 3 days for cycling the Parkway, and this is certainly viable. However, you’re cycling through some of the most beautiful landscape in the world – why hurry? Personally, we will spend as much time as possible along the Parkway the next time we go.

Park fees: you will have to buy a National park permit. Our stay was a “worst case” scenario and we bought a family pass that is good for a year ($110).

Road conditions: we rode four different highways and looked at a fifth – here they are:

· Icefields Parkway: extremely good. There is a wide shoulder the entire length of the parkway, except when it turns into a passing lane (e.g. for campground turnoffs or long passes). The shoulder is not perfectly smooth – there are seams from frost heave every 10 feet or so which will be aggravating if you are a speed demon. Also there is an 8-inch seam that runs the length of the Parkway shoulder – I expect this is where the telephone and electrical utility cables were buried.

· Bow Valley Parkway: excellent cycling. There are no shoulders, but there is very little traffic and nobody is in a hurry. Riding along the parkway is like riding through a tunnel of evergreens, i.e. the views are not as spectacular as the Icefields Parkway but it sure beats the TCH to get from Banff to Lake Louise.

· Highway 93 (Kootenay National Park): excellent cycling. There is a wide shoulder along the entire length of highway. There is truck traffic, but volume is light.

· Highway 16 (Yellowhead): very good. This is a busy highway (speed limit 100 km) with quite a bit of truck traffic. There are wide shoulders with a rumble strip along the shoulder. Despite the shortcomings of speed and volume we felt quite safe riding this route. There are no services between Jasper and Mt. Robson.

· Highway 5 (Mt. Robson to Kamloops): appears to be very good. We didn’t actually ride this highway, but we looked at it closely when travelling by train from Jasper to Vancouver. There are shoulders with rumble strips along its length and it appeared to have light traffic. It did not look like there were a lot of services on this route – the towns we passed could not be described as thriving and I don’t know if camping is available.

Park camping: campgrounds along the Parkway are generally spaced every 30 km or so, and many have “walk-in” sites. Don’t worry about arriving with the campground full – there are open areas to pitch a tent in a pinch and if you’re on a bike you’ll be tolerated. Nightly fees range from $14 (Jasper parks) to $21 (Lake Louise), plus $7 extra if you want to light a fire. All campgrounds have either bear-proof lockers (which can be locked) or cable systems to hang your food. A light weight hatchet (1 lb) is useful for driving tent pegs into the stony soil and of course for splitting wood if you want a camp fire. A note on campfires in the campgrounds (subject to prohibitions): softwood is provided in campgrounds, often not split. With a hatchet, trim enough small kindling (i.e. lots and lots) to build a base and the larger pieces will catch by themselves. A useful product to carry for starting fires is Zip, a dense, solid, foam-like petroleum product that smells awful (like kerosene) but works wonders, especially in the rain.

Lodging: you can rent rooms at Sunwapta Falls, the Icefields Centre, Saskatchewan Crossing, and Num-Ti-Jah on Bow Lake. All will be expensive (as in, very expensive) and heavily booked. Further south, you can rent rooms or cabins at Castle Junction (Bow Valley Parkway), Storm Mountain Lodge (Vermillion Pass), and Vermillion Crossing (Kootenay National Park).

Groceries: you can count on grocery supplies in Jasper (very good including Nutters, a good store for outdoor-type foods) and Lake Louise (a village store with enough variety to get by); there are no groceries at Saskatchewan Crossing. You can buy frozen sausages and wieners at Castle Junction (joy oh joy).

Restaurants: For an extended stay along the Parkway, it’s good to know where you can plan on eating (expensively) without using up your trail supplies. Sunwapta Falls (cafeteria at reasonable prices, and a licensed restaurant that is probably expensive), Icefields Centre (very expensive restaurant – almost exorbitant), Saskatchewan Crossing (the pub has excellent food at good prices), Num-Ti-Jah lodge (extremely good food but expensive). In Kootenay National Park there is Vermillion Crossing (the food was okay but not cheap). Mt. Robson Provincial Park at Mt. Robson itself (not the Lucerne campground close to Jasper) has a very good, reasonably priced cafeteria – the food tasted like home cooking. There are no groceries at any of these locations.

Weather: plan for cold, plan for wet. Most nights it dropped below 5 degrees C, and one night it went down to zero. Long underwear and a hat are advised for sleeping. Bring lots of good sunscreen (PF 60) – the sun burns quickly in the mountain air.

Bicycle repair: Bicycles mean mountain bikes in the Rockies. We didn’t see a single touring bike on display in the stores. That said, these people know their stuff – there are a lot of $5,000 bikes in Jasper. Jasper has at least two, possibly three bike shops – Freewheel Cycle on Patricia Street was very good to us and is recommended. In Lake Louise Village the bike tech at Wilson Sports did amazing things with our rear derailleurs.

Mountain biking: we didn’t do it, but these are mountains and there are mountain bikes everywhere. See Gem Trek maps (below) for mountain bike trails.

Gears: our lowest front gear had 28 teeth – I’d consider something slightly smaller if doing this tour again fully loaded.

Buses: Brewster runs buses along the Icefields Parkway at least a couple of times a day. They will pick you up or drop you off along the highway – you just need to know the scheduled time that the bus passes, stand on the highway shoulder, wave to the bus and ,voila, it pulls over. It is up to the driver whether your bike can be taken – it depends on the size of the bus, his load, etc. We had no problem getting on with two bikes, a BoB trailer, BoB bag, and two panniers. The cost from Banff to Jasper is about $50 one way and the trip takes about 4 hours (including stops). If you’re running short of food, a viable strategy is to bus into either Jasper or Banff, pick up supplies, and bus back again, all in the same day. Be nice to the drivers and they’ll be nice to you.

Hiking: for us this was the major discovery of the trip – if you see more on a bike than from a car, you see as much again if you hike out of the valleys and climb above the trees. Biking shoes will be okay for most short trails but you can count on sore feet – also, the clips slide on rocky surfaces, which could be a problem when descending. At a minimum I suggest hiking boots (ours were waterproof and warm, a bonus on wet nights in the campground). A pair of trekking poles are a surprising help on both the ascent and descent and can be strapped to the back of the bike with little fuss. We always took rain gear – temperatures at high altitudes were 10 degrees C cooler, winds were stronger, and getting caught in a storm on the side of a mountain would not be fun. If you decide to hike, plan that 10 to 15 km will be a significant effort – there’s a lot of climbing involved. You can buy quality hiking equipment in Banff, Jasper or Lake Louise. Banff easily has the most variety, including mountain climbing equipment.

Backcountry camping: next time, we’ll be equipped to spend at least a couple of nights back country – there were places we just couldn’t get to on a day hike. The only additional equipment we’ll need are good backpacks (we’ll leave behind the BoB bag in favour of these). There are fees for camping back country and it has to be arranged with the park – no details.

Bear spray: I’d get some even if just biking . I’d even keep it with me and not in the bottom of the BoB bag. You can buy it in any of the park towns ($40).

Resources:

· Handbook of the Canadian Rockies by Ben Gadd (publisher: Corax) is the authority on the natural history of the Rockies. It’s not a light read at over 700 pages, but it’s well written, well organized with the layman in mind, with lots of interesting information – it is worth its weight in paper. The area covered ranges from Glacier Park in Montana to Peace River in Northern B.C., i.e. the Canadian Rockies from a geological perspective. If you plan to do anything more than just cycle down the Parkway at lightning speed, get this book (and you’ll understand why Kick Horse Pass is tougher from the west than from the east).

· Gem Trek maps: available everywhere in the Rockies, these topographical maps are pure pleasure. They have computer-enhanced shading to give an immediate 3-D visual perspective of mountain peaks. Secondary roads, mountain biking and hiking trails are well marked with distances and selected descriptions on the reverse. If you like maps, you’ll love these. My only criticism is the absence of highway distances (a minor aggravation).

· Hiking guides – there are lots of these in the parks, but with Ben Gadd and Gem Trek maps I’d pass on a heavy guidebook with lots of colour photos. However, these could be useful at home for planning beforehand.

· History: Pierre Berton’s “The Last Spike” is a good read for a trip to the Rockies, particularly if travelling the TransCanada. Berton, an excellent storyteller of Canadian history, tells of the building the transcontinental railroad from 1881-1885, much of which is based on the route between what is now Lake Louise and Revelstoke.

· Trip reports:

o An excellent trip report by Jan and Elke Himmerkus to reference for planning purposes can be found at http://www.geo.uni-bonn.de/members/himmerkus/Janhtml/bicycle_BC.html

o Michael Fiebach writes my favourite trip reports. His reports of the Rockies are good, but his European tours are the best. You can find them at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mfiebach/index_s.htm.

o Caryl and Brian Bergeron have been riding and posting trip reports for ten years. Their trip report on the Icefields is at http://www.outthereliving.com/worldbike/GDBR_2000/gdbr2000_1.htm