Rockies: Traveller Among Tourists

 Of all the places I was expecting to see in Canada, the Rockies were the place I was most looking forward to. I’d never seen anything like them before and anyone who’s ever seen them before has only ever said about how beautiful they are. There would also be the chance to see some new animals that I hadn’t seen before like bears, elk and mountain goats. While I was not only looking forward to seeing the mountains, I also was looking forward to getting the chance to ride through them. The flatness of the prairies had become a little boring by the end and I wanted the challenge of having to climb some proper mountain passes.

Prairies meeting the mountains

When I left Calgary, I saw the Bow River for the first time and got quite excited by it. The reason being that it had that turquoise colour that glacial lakes had and it was quite the thing seeing water that colour for the first time. Leaving Calgary, I had a bit more prairie to do. I knew it wasn’t too much though, as the further I went west, the closer the mountains that were in the distance started to get to me. After about 40km or so, I was entirely done with the prairie land, but not the weather I had been dealing with in them. A little before I reached the mountains, yet another thunderstorm popped up. This one was directly ahead of me as I was riding and dropped a lightning bolt in the exact direction I was going on the road maybe about 10-20km ahead of me. That was enough to spook me and pull off to hide under the nearest gas station until the storm passed by.

Amongst the mountains now

After having to wait to be among the mountains because of the storm, it took almost no time to start being among them after starting back up. I smiled the whole time after reaching them as they were breathtaking. These insanely huge peaks stood so high above me and there were just so many of them as I kept going. They were in every direction too as I became surrounded by them. All the water that I was seeing now was the turquoise blue colour and with mountains sitting right behind the water, it made for stunning views. I’m not one for taking photos much and there are things on the trip I wish I had taken photos of, but right now I couldn’t stop taking photos as everything just looked so stunning.

Bow River

Mountains behind a lake

My day of being amazed by the mountains would end in Canmore, where more thunderstorms greeted me. When there was a break in the storms, I rode up to the Nordic Center taking some mountain bike trails to get there (don’t take mountain bike trails going uphill with a loaded bike, it’s not fun). The Center gave me a view over Canmore and an even better view of the surrounding mountains since I was up higher now. In the evening as it was getting darker, I saw an elk for the first time and even got decently close to it.

Overlooking Canmore

While the prairies had essentially no bikers, the mountains are full of them. Due to this, there’s actually some bike infrastructure, including a path that goes all the way from Canmore to Banff. I rode the path in the morning leaving the rest of the day for something I had wanted to do in the mountains: climbing up a mountain. While I was in town figuring out where to go, I ran into a cyclist who was just about to start his trip. This was Lloyd and this was the starting point for him in his attempt to do the Great Divide (Banff to the Mexico border mostly along the mountains, it’s a very popular route). I figured out where I could hike up a mountain and headed to the base of the trail for Mt. Sulphur.

Along the ride from Canmore to Banff

The trail to get up Mt. Sulphur was in a park on the edge of Banff, so therefore had a lot of tourists in it. Luckily for me, the laziness of most people was to my advantage as the majority of them took a gondola up and down the mountain instead of taking the trail, making it far less busy on the way up and down. The trail up/down was nothing but a lot of switchbacks and the only view being the pine trees around you on the steep slope. The hour it took to go up wasn’t overly exciting but I was happy to have the experience in putting in the effort to climb up. As a side note, there are some comments I get quite often about how I must be in good shape for biking so much and one of them is about how good my cardio level must be. Well today I learned that it is indeed quite good, as I found myself easily overtaking tired hikers all the way up, while I kept my good pace the whole way up. Once I reached the end of the switchbacks, I was up with the tourists who had taken the gondola, but this wasn’t the end point.

The peak I stopped at

I guess everyone thought that where the gondola went was the summit, but it wasn’t. The real summit was another few kilometres hike and I wanted to go there. With everyone being oblivious, the way to the real summit was entirely empty to myself. This part was entirely different than the switchbacks and featured some up and downs that required more careful navigating. I did end up coming across one older couple though (Eric and Joanna) who were into doing more difficult hikes. Shortly after encountering Eric and Joanna, we reached a peak with an incredibly stunning view. I’m unable to post videos here but wish I could as it really was incredible. You could see about a kilometre down over the Bow River, the Trans Canada, Banff and the valley between the mountain I was on and its neighbour. This was the highest I’ve ever been as I was over 2300m in elevation. I ended up deciding to stop here, as the rest of the trail looked too sketchy for me and my inexperience in hiking mountains. I didn’t reach the highest summit of Mt. Sulphur, but I still did better than nearly everyone else and was well rewarded too. I watched Eric and Joanna as they kept going and thought about I was happy where I stopped when they very slowly and carefully were going across a ledge at one point. The hour back down wasn’t as fun but it was better than the gondola and I got to talk with some of the hikers who were going up.

View from the peak overlooking highway and river

Banff and the surrounding national parks in the mountains are quite strict about enforcing their rules, including on no wild camping. I considered the potential big fine I may face if caught wild camping not worth it and decided on using campgrounds for the rest of my time in the national parks. This decision would end up paying off right away. I found a campground with an open spot and went about my usual evening stuff. While I was there, a herd of elk came right through the section I was in and peacefully grazed, unafraid of all the campers who watched them. Also not long after I had gotten there, I saw a couple of cyclists going up the hill towards where you would enter the campground. I ran over to the ledge over the road and yelled over to them, inviting them to my spot if they didn’t have one yet. They did not and a couple minutes later found my spot. This was Carsten and Isabell from Germany, who had just finished cycling the Great Divide going from Mexico to Banff. They’re on a year long sabbatical and have been travelling all over before starting the biking portion (they have their own blog about all of their journeys if you’re interested: https://findpenguins.com/6p4ifepvipw1o) We got talking before dark while I made my supper and figured out that we were heading in the same direction, so decided we’d cycle together when we left in the morning.

We rode out of Banff towards Lake Louise on an alternate to the main highway, which was much nicer as there were far less vehicles, letting us talk as we rode. The other nice thing was that we rode at about the same pace (although Isabell was a bit slower on uphills), which made it even better to ride with them. We just rode to Lake Louise for a shorter day as we planned to get very early the next morning to ride into see the lakes before they were stuffed full of tourists. The day overall hadn’t had much happen other than the campground fiasco.

When we arrived in Lake Louise, Carsten asked at the visitor centre about camping. They told him that the main campground would be full and not even to bother trying to get a spot. So we went to the campground with the plan to ask if we could share a spot with someone who was already there. After a little while of asking, a Turkish woman and her mother said yes and we sent up our tents there. A little while later, a ranger or staff member who was inspecting the campground, said we couldn’t camp where we were, as we weren’t on the main camp spot. He was nice and told us that there may be an open spot and to go ask at the entrance (we didn’t enter the main way). So I went and found out there was an open spot and got it for us. By the time I got back though, the situation had changed. Another person of power, like the guy I had talked with, who was not so nice, told Carsten and Isabell that we had to move/pack up immediately (the nice guy was fine with letting me go and come back and then doing something). She forced them to move and during this, a camp spot right next to where we were, saw and invited us to move our tents there. So they did and when I got back, I found out I no longer needed the spot I got as we had a new one. So I went and got a refund for the spot. However, a while later while I was showering, the cranky woman came back around and now was telling everyone that the situation was no good and needed something to be done with right away. This time because there were too many tents (3, apparently max 2) and that the people who had the spot for the night couldn’t have their tent where they did because it wasn’t in the right spot. So then Isabell had to go get the spot again that I had gotten earlier. While she did that, the people who let us camp with them helped us move. Our new spot was on the other side of the campground and we already had our tents up and everything we’d want in them for the night, so packing would be a pain. The people in the spot though had a truck and offered to put our tents on the back of the truck and move them to the new spot. We accepted the offered and got all of us stuff moved to the new spot. Finally, everyone was satisfied now and we could just relax for the rest of the day.

Fog in the mountains in early morning to Lake Moraine

We were up very early, around 5 in the morning and left the campsite before 6. We headed towards Lake Louise and Lake Moraine with the goal to try to get into the lakes before they were full of tourists. We decided to head to Lake Moraine first, since people aren’t allowed to drive their vehicles in and instead have to take shuttles, there would likely be less people there than Louise. While it was only an 11km ride into the lake from where cars were denied access, it still took us a while as the ride was mostly a climb. It was absolutely worth it though, both putting in the effort and leaving as early as we did. The lake was beautiful and the earliest shuttles had only just beaten us there, leading to not many others being there and us being able to enjoy it more peacefully than we otherwise would’ve. A little after we got there, someone had already gotten a kayak in the water. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me but it just seems a bit sad that you can’t enjoy something beautiful like that without people having go in it and disturb it like that, especially since it’s such a well known spot that so many people want to see in its full beauty. The lake was beautiful with its turquoise colour and we spent a bit of time there appreciating it before heading back to see Lake Louise. I think Lake Louise actually looked slightly nicer than Moraine, however it was packed full of tourists and people out in kayaks by the time we made it there. It almost felt hard to even be able to enjoy it at all like that.

Lake Moraine

Me, Isabell and Carsten at Lake Moraine

Back in the town, Carsten and Isabell met up with Jack and his wife Maureen. They met Jack earlier in their trip and had helped him out after he had accident. Jack and Maureen planned on joining us for the day, as we started riding the Icefields Parkway. They brought lots of food for Carsten and Isabell and even let me have some of it too. Jack and Maureen had something I’d never seen in person before, that being a bike for two and that’s what they’d be riding for the day.

Isabell, Carsten, Maureen and Jack

Icefields Parkway was definitely a suitable for the route. Basically as soon as we turned onto the route, we started seeing the mountains had plenty of glaciers. They were stunning and had us all stopping regularly to take photos and just marvel at them. Jack and Maureen had ridden this stretch multiple times before and knew of everything there was to see, making sure we didn’t miss anything. The colours of all the water we saw was the pristine turquoise we had seen but even better here. As the water here was mostly all melted from the glaciers we were staring at, I think it helped make the colour sharper than what I had seen the past few days. I think the best of them all was at Peyto Lake, where we would split up from Jack and Maureen and where I had finished climbing my first ever mountain pass. After seeing Lake Peyto, Jack and Maureen turned back, while the 3 of us got to coast down the other side of the pass to a campground where we would stop.

Isabell, Carsten and me

Me, Isabell and Carsten at Bow Glacier

My first mountain pass complete

Peyto Lake

The morning felt very cold when we all got up. The higher elevations of the Rockies result in the temperatures being quite a bit cooler than whatever it is like in surrounding areas. I had gone from regular days in the prairies being 30 or more degrees, to now having temperatures drop as low as 5 degrees in a matter of a few days. For the first time in my life, in the middle of summer with it being August, I was actively using my winter jacket. Even though it was a sharp change and I definitely felt cold at times, I was enjoying having the change temperature from the heat I was used to.

Mountain

We had wanted to see the Columbia Icefields in the day (and that was as far north as any of us intended to go) and there were no campgrounds up that way it looked like we could depend on, so we dropped off a lot of our stuff at a different campground earlier in the day with the hopes of finding a spot when we made it back later. It was yet another day of stunning mountains, glaciers, lakes and rivers. We had another mountain pass to do and this one was much tougher. The pass we had gone over the day before left me a bit disappointed, as I had an expectation of how tough it would be to do a pass and it wasn’t near as difficult as I imagined. The one today though matched my expectations as it was a continuously long and at times steep route that would take a few hours to climb up. By the time I reached the top, I felt good and tired but able to be proud of what I had just climbed. The other cool thing about the pass we climbed today, was the change in watersheds that came with it. I had been cycling in watersheds that went to the Arctic Ocean via Hudson Bay since a little after Thunder Bay, but now the water would flow all the way north to the Arctic Ocean by the McKenzie River.

Overlooking highway and mountains in clouds

After a bit of a break at the top of the pass, Carsten and Isabell caught up with me and we rode down to the Columbia Icefields. All the glaciers we had seen up to now were up near the peaks of the mountains, but now we were looking at a glacier that was down at ground level with us. Not only that, but there were 2 more glaciers on each side of the low glacier. Being able to see the 3 glaciers at once was incredible. Carsten and Isabell had hiked on a glacier before, so they decided to head back while I went out to hike on the glacier. It was impressive how large it was when I had made it up to it. I got to walk on it for a little but didn’t get to explore as much as I wanted since it was getting later and I decided to head back. 

Athabasca Glacier at Columbia Icefield

Me on the glacier

The reward for climbing the pass early in the day was being able to coast back down for a good chunk of the way back. There was even a stretch on steeper, twistier parts of the road where I was able to overtake some vehicles which felt pretty cool to do. I fully expected to find Carsten and Isabell would be back at camp well over an hour before I would make it back, so I was quite surprised to see Carsten on the side of the road as I was whipping down a hill. He was on the side of a very steep hill and as I stopped to turn around to go back to him, my mind started thinking something very bad must have happened and one of them must have fallen over the hill. When I got back to Carsten, luckily everything was alright. Turns out, they had decided to take a side trail that wasn’t so fun to ride and it had lead them to a dead end. They didn’t want to go back and to get back on the road, they would have to try to get their bikes all the way back up the steep embankment of the side of the road. I helped them get the bikes back up but Carsten’s chain had somehow gotten very badly jammed in the ordeal. It took a good amount of finagling and yanking, but we got it back in place and then we were able to ride back to camp together.

While our stuff was back at camp, we still didn’t have a spot to camp for the night when we got there. It was another camp that required reservations (which is essentially impossible to plan when travelling by bike), so we had to ask around to see if anyone would share their spot. Right away when we started asking, we met with a yes. Francois and Marianne, a couple from France, were happy to let us  camp next to them and share our travel experiences.

We chatted with Francois and Marianne more in the morning before saying goodbye, as they left before us. It wouldn’t be the final goodbye though. Unfortunately, my time with Carsten and Isabell had come to an end as well. We hadn’t known how long we’d be together as none of us had known the route we planned on taking after seeing Columbia Icefields. The day before though we figured them out though and this would be our splitting point, as I would head south off of some recommendations I had gotten, while they would head east before going to Calgary. I had really enjoyed my time with them over the 3+ days we spent together. I also knew I had made new friends that I expect will be a part of my future. We also all planned on being in Vancouver in the near future and had the hope that our paths may cross again while there. We said a sad goodbye but I was confident we’d be reunited soon, which made it a bit easier to split up.

Now that I was back on my own again, I planned on backtracking the past few days of riding so I could start going further south. I got to do the other side of my first mountain pass and this side was definitely more difficult than the side I had first ridden. I got all the backtracking I would need to do in just the day and I even got to see a little bit of new towards the end of the day. I made it back south of the Icefields Parkway and then also halfway back between Lake Louise and Banff before starting back on seeing new stuff. I didn’t get much further south in the day, but did have to climb another mountain pass to make it to camp. This one wasn’t as long but made up for it by being steeper than the previous ones I had climbed. Climbing a second pass in a day was definitely tiring but provided me with a couple of significant surprises I wasn’t expecting. The first of those being that this pass marked the continental divide, meaning that all water I encountered now would flow to the Pacific Ocean. The other being that I had now finished my time in Alberta as this was the border with BC, my final province of Canada. I had no idea I was about to cross into my final province but when I realized I had made it here, I started celebrating and even ended up shedding a couple tears of happiness as I was incredibly proud of myself for how far I had come. I got to coast down to my campground for the night and eagerly started to think about crossing the final province of my cross Canada trip.

BC border

Continental divide

Distance Biked: 588.3km

Total Distance Biked: 7467.4km