2007 Trip to Canadian Rockies

August 4: Saturday, arrived in Banff.

Day 1 of ride, August 5, Sunday morning in Banff. Group of 23 bikers and 2 leaders (both women - cool) met for first time. After admin meeting and sorting out the bikes, we left for a 26 mile ride around Lake Minnewanka and Up to Mount Norquay Ski Resort with a return to Banff for the night. Total elevation gain of 1750 feet. Pictures below are only a few miles into the ride, in Banff, looking across the Bow River to the Banff Spring Fairmont Hotel.

I think the picture below is Lake Minnewanka (with Jim).

Day 2. Monday August 6. This is start of day 2. 38 miles with 1896 feet of elevation gain. We are riding from Banff to Lake Louise. We met around 8:30am for a "route rap" and to fill our snack bags. We all had to wear that reflective triangle on our backs.

This is our sag wagon (van and trailer).

Bow River with a train on the way to Lake Louise.

In my BoBBie outfit on Day 2.

Day 3: August 7, Tuesday. We have a 43 mile ride from Lake Louise to Bow Lake. Elev gain of 823 feet. Below is Moraine Lake at the start of the ride.

Below are some of the women riders on the trip: Lies, Angie, me, Cheryl, Suzanne, and Diane (in front of Moraine Lake).

After leaving Moraine Lake, we head out of Lake Louise and get on the Great Divide Road. No cars allowed. We were advised to stay in groups of 4 or more and make noise to prevent bear attacks. We never saw a bear. This was a very cool 7 kilometers of riding (all our tic sheets were in kilometers, when in Canada, do as Canadians).

Below is Jim and Rebecca on the Great Divide Road.

Jim and I at the parting of water on the Great Divide. Creek on the right goes to Atlantic Ocean and creek on the left goes to the Pacific (I think).

We make it to Bow Lake, but its raining and we don't get in much of a hike. The red roof dome building (below) is the Num Ti Jah Lodge. That's where we spent the night. No tv, no phones except a satellite pay phone. Only 25 rooms (our group took half of them). A great chef and wonderful food. I'd like to go back here and take a hike all around Bow Lake and up to the top of Bow Falls (I didn't take a picture of the falls because the rain was blowing into my face and camera when pointing in that direction).

Not my best photo, but gives you a sense of the weather at the moment.

Day 4, Wednes August 8. 46 miles to the Columbia Glacier and Icefields. 2480 feet of elev gain. It's 5.5 degrees C (we figured about 40 degrees F) at 8am. It starts to rain. We leave for this ride in the rain around 9am. Although the ride has an overall 2480 ft elev gain, we have about that much loss, right at the beginning. In the rain, over about 17 kilometers. It was nasty. Some riders sagged. We made it to a restaurant at 41 kilometers, had hot cocoa, and all bought dry socks (see below).

Below is where we ended the day: at the Columbia Icefield Chalet. We had to climb up the 2480 feet over the Sunwapta Pass. 8-10% grade at the worst, not too bad, except it started to rain again and got really cold about 1/3 the way up. But it was very neat at the top. The rain stopped, the sun kind of came out, and we had a little descent into the Chalet.

Day 5, August 9, Thursday. We have a 68 mile ride with only 403 feet elev gain to get from the Icefields to Jasper. It was allot of downhill. It didn't rain, sun came out, but it was chilly at the start of the day and I didn't take off much of my layers until 11am-noon. We all wore shower caps over our helmets the day before, and started this day with them also. No one was too quick to remove them, they helped keep our head warm. You can see I'm wearing lots of layers below.

Below are some elk we saw on the way into Jasper. We weren't supposed to stop and take photos; we had seen some big horned sheep earlier in the week (they were on the side of the road and we had to ride by within yards). But a bunch of cars were stopped to photograph the elk, so we did too.

On Day 6, Friday August 10 we skipped a 10 mile ride and just got ready to catch the shuttle bus from Jasper back to Banff. About 4-5 hours. It was neat to ride back on some of the roads we had biked up on. We mostly biked on the Bow Valley Parkway. There was tourist traffic, but 6 foot shoulders. It wasn't bad at all.

Below are pictures of Jim and I walking along the Bow River back in Banff just below the Banff Spring Hotel.

Saturday August 11 we woke up and the sun was shining; and there was snow on the mountain tops. We were in Banff and would be catching a shuttle to Calgary to fly back to Orlando on a redeye. We got some nice pictures at the hotel.

Below is Banff Springs Golf Course as viewed from the hotel terrace. We want to go back and play it.

One last photo of flowers and Jim before we board the shuttle to Calgary.