(This is a ride that I did from 18-20 June 2009 and have just been too busy to get it up online)
There are few places on earth as perfect for cycling than the route from Jasper to Banff, south through the Jasper National Park into the Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. On three days, from 19-20 June 2009, Ellis Grossnickle and I rode the distance, with help from our friend Phil Ramey, who accompanied us in Ellis’ truck.
Here are some photos from the adventure:
This trip had its inception in a conversation that I had with Aaron Cosbey, an Albertan and a colleague of mine from IISD in Winnipeg, who I had asked if he might recommend a good place to go cycling near Calgary. I was planning to be in Winnipeg for the IISD Board meetings and meetings of several of the IISD teams through 16 June and was looking for a chance to explore some of the adjacent province and ride in the Canadian Rockies. Aaron suggested riding from Jasper to just outside of Calgary and I spent a few days trying to figure out exactly how to do this without support.
I mentioned the trip to Joe Barton, who said that he would be interested in doing the trip. Our original plan was to meet up in Calgary, rent a car one way to Jasper, dropping off supplies and clean cycling clothes in Lake Louise. We would spend the first night with our vehicle about 100 km south of Jasper and, the next day, drive to Jasper to drop off the car and begin our trip back to where we spent the first night. The idea would have been to have Fedex or DHL boxes at the overnight locations and we would express our clothes home, picking up the clothes we had left “pre-positioned” on our trip north.
However, as we discussed this on Facebook, Ellis read about our plans and asked if he could come along. He was planning to be in the area with his truck and thought we might be able to share the driving and riding between the three of us. The idea of having a support vehicle, particularly in June when the weather could suddenly turn wintry, seemed like the good idea.
All was proceeding smoothly until about three weeks ago when Joe fell while descending Lincoln Gap in Vermont, separating his shoulder. Joe had to cancel but Ellis’ friend Phil volunteered to ride his motorcycle to Calgary and serve as our SAG driver for the trip.
On Wednesday, 17 June 2009, I flew in from Winnipeg and we met at the Calgary Airport, stashed my bike box at the Sheraton Four-Points outside of town, bought up some beer and drove to the Columbia Icefields Parkway Chalets to spend the first night.
DAY ONE – JASPER TO GLACIER
Early Thursday morning we left our belongings in the Chalets and drove with our bikes to Jasper for breakfast. Using our mobile phones, we went war-driving down the main street and parked at the Whistler Inn, which had a strong wi-fi signal. The waitress got us the online password and the three of us set up our laptops, checking stock prices, accessing mail and chatting with colleagues. We had to get three things filled-up… gas tank, stomachs and Internet. By 9:30 we were on the road, Ellis and I on our bikes and Phil driving the truck leap-frogging us as we headed up toward the Athabasca Glacier.
This is the first day’s map.
Unfortunately, Garmin only released at the end of the week the firmware upgrade that fixed their problems with corrupted TCX files. I had been having problems with my Edge 705 for the last month, losing ride data from some wonderful routes. It was very frustrating to find at the end of both Thursday and Friday’s rides that all of the heart rate, elevation, wattage and speed data from those days had been lost. However, after updating the firmware while i Lake Louise on Friday night, the 705 worked perfectly on Saturday. Not much to do now.
The route from Jasper to the Columbia Icefields is about 100 km and rises from just less than 1000 meters to just above 2000 meters in a rolling up and down route the mostly works upwards. After a lovely breakfast in Jasper we rode throughout the day, arriving in the mid-afternoon.
This is the shot looking west towards the Athabasca Glacier. Ellis took this shot from the parking lot of the Icefields Chalet as I was cresting the climb.
DAY TWO – GLACIER TO NORTH OF LAKE LOUISE
This is a shot of the Icefields Chalets, a great place to stay if you are cycling this route. We ran into a number of other cyclists who were doing the same route.
On day two of riding, we started after 9:00 am, following a nice breakfast and rode up to about 2200 meters before the big descent.
This is the view, looking south from the descent just south of the Athabasca Glacier. Most of the road was similar to this. As you can see from the day’s profile the day was a big descent, a gradual downhill and then some serious climbing later in the day.
By around 3:30 in the afternoon, the weather had closed in and the rain began. Since we had the vehicle, we decided that it might make more sense to head to the Post Hotel in Lake Louise and then drive back to this location (about 20 km north of our final day’s destination) the next day.
Here is Ellis packing it in for the day as the rain was beginning to fall.
Heading south into Lake Louise in the rain.
It was a good decision, as the rain began falling with some intensity as we drove for about twenty minutes to our lodging and a round of drinks by the fire in the hotel pub.
DAY THREE – NORTH OF LAKE LOUISE TO BANFF
True to our word, we loaded up the truck early on Saturday morning and back-tracked to the exact point where we had abandoned our ride on Friday afternoon when the rain hit. And, because the gods abhor hubris (and we were very proud to have traded the rain for what we thought was going to be a lovely Saturday morning) the rains started again as we drove north. In fact, we laughed when I made the comment in the truck when the rain was a light mist that, “at least we don't have a heavy rain” and suddenly the rain started falling in sheets. Very eerie.
Never underestimate the value of good intelligence. As we were getting ready for the day’s ride in the lobby of the Post Hotel, I had overheard the desk clerk speaking about the road that ran parallel to the main highway. I was sure that we would be stuck riding on the shoulder of Highway 1 with four lanes of RVs and huge trucks. However, when I spoke with the desk clerk he showed us the way to get on Bow Valley Parkway, which runs parallel to the main road and is, undoubtedly, one of the world’s best bicycling routes!
And, so, the yellow line is where we rode, starting back north of the Post Hotel in Lake Louise and Bow Valley Parkway runs along, but not too near, the highway.
After downloading the firmware update for the Garmin Edge 705, it finally started working correctly on day three of this magnificent ride. Obviously they fixed the corrupted tcx file issue (and the unit has worked flawlessly over the last two weeks since this ride.) Here is the GarminConnect.com link for the day’s ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7353968
Someday, Garminconnect.com will actually finish the incorporation of the best features from Motionbased.com into their site and offer the ability to insert HTML code into blogs (one of the best motionbased.com features before they were acquired by Garmin.) But, for the time being, here is a shot of their main page. The elevation profile for the day says it all. The ride was a long, slow, gradual descent along the Bow River.
Ellis took this as I was posing with my bear whistle, which I had only blown one time for real when I had seen the black bear the day before. No bears on Day Three, although there was a grey wolf lurking by the road that Ellis spotted.
Lots of other cyclists on the road doing what must have been a lovely long climb up to Lake Louise.
Day Three was simply the most beautiful day of riding that I have had in many years. The rain cleared within the first half an hour and the day was sunny, 15 degrees and mostly all downhill for three hours of easy cycling. After two days of long climbs and many hours in the saddle, it was the perfect ride for the last day. I now understand why everyone had said that the best way to ride this route was to go from Jasper to Banff. It was not for the winds, which mostly blew from our westerly quarter, but the first day’s climb was nice and gradual, the middle day’s ascent was manageable, but the last day was pure cycling heaven.
As the Bow Valley Parkway ended, intersecting the main highway just about five kilometers north of Banff, we decided to end the ride with the memory of cycling down Bow Valley rather than semi-trailers blowing past us at 120 km/hr for the last little stretch. So, we loaded up the bikes in the truck and headed into Banff for beers and lunch at Earle’s.
Ending in Banff as a good choice and much better than my original idea of riding all the way into Calgary. That would have been a lousy extra 100 km and added four hours or more onto the ride on the shoulder of a busy highway.
We checked into the Four Points Sheraton and Ellis and Phil went off to pick up Phil’s motorcycle in town. Adventure complete and I flew home, leaving the guys to their truck/motorcycle trip through the Rockies.
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