You know some days riding are just special and it is these
days which go down in riding lore as one which stories are told. Maybe in the middle ages the minstrels would
have written songs about them. We don’t
have minstrels and instead we have the internet and blogs.
The day started off at 7:00 am with us crawling out of our
tents into a rather chilly 46 F (8 C) morning.
As the sun was just up we figured it we might as well have a good
breakfast. Denny’s sounded good and the
portions are huge. There was no way I
was finishing the Lumberjack Slam with bacon, sausage, ham, scrambled eggs,
hash browns, sour dough toast , pancakes and coffee. However I made a good stab at it.
I had plotted the route on the Garmin however I couldn’t
find the route on it as we had deviated from the route to go to Denny’s so we
wandered about in an industrial area until we stopped a pick up truck and asked
how to get to the Cranbrook to Kimberly bike trail. Simple answer was turn right at the next
intersection and pick it up just be for the railroad tracks.
Once on the pathway it was beautiful sailing along a
perfectly paved, rails to trails route. This route is called the North Star
trail and covers 15.5 miles (25 kms). It
is generally up hill to Kimberly however being an old rail line the grade never
exceeded 3.5%. This must have been
pretty steep in the steam locomotive days.
We crossed an old trestle which had concrete sleepers laid over the ties
making a perfect cycling surface. Once in Kimberly we spotted an A&W and head straight in for a
frosty mug of root beer. It just gets better and better.
Recharged an re-hydrated Ken and I headed off to Ta Ta
Creek. There is a little tail wind help
so we are feeling pretty pumped. The
road has just been resurfaced and is absolutely perfectly smooth asphalt. From Kimberly to Ta Ta Creek it is 20 miles
(30.5 kms) and it is all downhill. Over
the distance you lose 2970 feet (905 m).
Once on the downhill we hardly turned a pedal over. While I never kept any stats on what we
averaged I am sure that is was north of 25 mph (40 Km/hr). I do know that I hit a top speed to 40 mph
(64 km/hr). What a total blast. I am not sure when we have had such a great
ride.
The section down to Fort Steel was totally uneventful in
comparison to the wild ride we just completed. It was approximately 20.5 miles
and started off flat but soon turned into a bunch of mostly uphill rollers. We
were starting to feel the miles so we stopped at the Fort Steele trading post
and campground store where I enjoyed a 600 ml bottle of ice cold Grape
Crush. Now honestly when is the last
time you sat down with a giant ice cold Grape Crush on hot day? It was superb.
The last leg into Cranbrook had a bunch of larger climbs
however we had only 11.25 miles (18 kms) to go so we put it in gear and head
for home.
Once in Cranbrook we stopped at the grocery store where Ken
went in and picked up some supper. Back
at the campground Ken cooked supper which turned out to be Italian sausages on
buns washed down with a fine bottled vintage courtesy of Sean and Bike Dreams. An absolutely perfect finish to a marvellous
day!
Terry
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