Today was a long day. I was on my bike at 6:45am this morning. It was about 6C so I bundled up. It was about 70km to the summit of Rogers Pass (1330 meters, 4320 feet). It was surprisingly easy. I was there by about noon. The picture to the right was taken by a Dutch tourist as I was attacking the last hill before Rogers Pass. He ran into us in Golden and gave us this photo.
Rochelle made lunch and I took off down the other side of Rogers Pass. It was a steep road with lots of potholes and snow sheads so I couldn't go very fast. I think that I took a lot of life out of the pads on the disk breaks going down that hill.
This was followed by brisk cross head winds and another sequence of large hills that turned out to be considerably tougher than Rogers Pass. That took a lot out of me. Finally, when I had crested this pass (I've not found the name of it) I could see into the valley that Golden is in. Unfortunately it was full of big black clouds and lots of rain. I wasn't really dressed for rain.
I ran into rain about 4 times heading into Golden although it never lasted more than about 10 minutes at a time so I didn't get too wet or cold.
I finally arrived at our camp spot in Golden at about 5:45pm MDT (Mountain Dailight Time -- I passed the time zone line on that last uphill) and an odometer reading of 155km.
It took a lot of me. I can tell because I'm cold and Rochelle is not.
We had some mechanical issues with VanGo. The latch that holds down the popup roof seems to not hold well and it came loose today while Rochelle was driving. As she was fixing that, a cable in the sliding door broke. I had to take it apart and now we have 2 screwdrivers that help us open the door but only from the inside. I think that VanGo will require some TLC in Calgary.
Tomorrow's ride will take us over the Kicking Horse Pass. It is about 800 meters (2600 feet) of climbing but it has a bunch of 8% grades so it's going to be tougher than today. I think that we may cut the day short and stay at Lake Louise, just at the bottom of the other side of the pass. It's also supposed to rain a fair bit tomorrow in the area so the 83km will be plenty!