After the long day yesterday and Kicking Horse Pass today, I decided that I would keep it relatively short and stop at Lake Louise. That's "only" 85km for the day.
I got a bit of a late start this morning but was heading out by 9:30am. Just outside of Golden the road tips up at an 8% grade right away. For the first section, you are still kind of in Golden and they have built a nice bicycle path instead of having to merge into traffic.
Then the rain started. Before leaving, I had debated about wearing full rain gear. It was only partially cloudy. 20 minutes into the ride I could see big, black clouds in front of me and I was getting drenched a few minutes after that. I was glad to have the full rain gear but it was still cold. I was cold for most of the day.
It has been a lot of years since I've been across this section of road and it has been improved immensely. The first 10km or so used to be very steep, windy and very dangerous. It's still steep but has been straightened out and good guard rails have been added. Further on it has been made into 4 lanes and takes a completely different route. A nice new road with wide, smooth shoulders. It was a long climb but it went by quickly.
The next 3 hours were just a slow grind climbing slowly towards Field, BC. The last hour or so was spent climbing the 6% climb east of Field towards Kicking Horse Pass and the BC/Alberta border. That last bit was tough. I think I was still feeling the climbs from yesterday.
I was about an hour late for my rendezvous with Rochelle and lunch. I guess I didn't estimate the climb well today. After lunch it was a fairly quick, mostly down hill ride into Lake Louise.
That was the last of the big climbs. Tomorrow should be a fairly easy trip to Canmore followed by Calgary the next day.