Tour BC 2010
Day Zero:
After last-minute packing, logistics, and loading up the car, we left after lunch. We got a little lost looking for Simon Fraser University, but managed to stumble upon it at last. Our arrival felt friendly – cyclists are such a tiny minority of the population, and suddenly, we were among like-minded people. We reunited with people from previous tours, and had our new tandem bike admired. Bike check-in was quick, and we checked into our dorm room. SFU is quite isolated atop Burnaby Mountain, and people who cycled to the start were marooned up there for dinner, unless they wanted to do the 8% grade climb for several miles after eating. So we then shuttled three other people – one we had met from a previous tour, two who were new to us – to an Italian restaurant recommended by a friend of mine who is a local, and had a convivial dinner.
Day One:
Due to some sort of logistical snafu, the promised breakfast at the University never materialized after 45 minutes of standing around. We did a quick descent of the hill into Burnaby, had breakfast at a diner, and then rejoined the ride.
The day was long – 90 miles – but flat, flat, flat, more or less following the Fraser River.
Most of this first section of was a reverse of the end of the RSVP ride, which is a familiar course. The city faded into suburbs and then into countryside. We rode over the new Golden Ears Bridge for the first time, then through industrial parks, and then back to the countryside, mostly little farms and houses on acreage.
As the day wore on, it started to increasingly cloud over. A wind started, and then picked up, fortunately from the west, so it was helping propel us down the road. The tail wind and open flat countryside meant we were tearing up the road, cruising at 22 mph with little difficulty.
We pulled into the campground near Agassiz, where most of the rest of the group was staying, and got instructions as to how to find our B&B. It was only about a mile further, and soon we were stripped down, showered, and lounging in the hot tub. We dried off, got dressed, and got a lift from the B&B owner back to the campground, and feasted on roasted chicken, potatoes, salads, and a variety of desserts. We walked back to the B&B, and after assembling our things for the next day, fell asleep.
Day Two:
Rather than return to the campground, we had breakfast at the B&B. It was clear that the wind of the previous day had blown in a new weather system, different from the hot and dry days we had been enjoying before. It was now in the 50s and overcast. We just launched ourselves down the road, and it started to sprinkle. It then moved rather quickly to raining, and then to pelting down rain.
We left the agricultural lands and headed into the mountains. It alternated between showers and rain, and then began to clear by the time we reached Yale for our lunch break. We were seated at the picnic tables in the park in Yale, when another cloud burst put heavy drops on our heads. We all involuntarily shouted, quickly gathered up our sandwiches, fruit, and veggie sticks, and ran for shelter. I spent some time in the park’s ladies’ room, where there was a hot hand dryer. Women took turns holding their sopping socks, shoes, and gloves under the blasting hot air. Finally, I put all these items back on, and we got back on the bike, and headed back to the road.
For this section of the ride, we were on the Trans-Canada Highway, which parallels the Fraser River through a narrow canyon flanked by high mountains. One of the tourist attractions on this road is the Hell’s Gate, where there is a gondola that descends into the narrowest section of the river. When we went through this area when I was 6 years old, I desperately wanted to ride the gondola, but my parents said it was a waste of money. We biked on this same road two years ago, but didn’t do the gondola, because it was hot and we had a long ride that day. This time, more than 40 years after I first yearned to descend into Hell’s Gate, I finally got the chance.
Well, even with the Tour BC group discount, the gondola ride wasn’t worth the money – my parents back in 1968 were right. But it was worthwhile to do once in my life, maybe, and now I could say I had done it. We didn’t view much of the outside area because it was raining so hard, so it was mostly a gondola ride to their gift shop and café. Huddled in the café, next to a blasting heater, was a group from our tour. They had their bike gloves, shoes and socks off, in a dim effort to dry them. There was no sign of them having consumed any food or beverages, but the café wasn’t very busy, and the staff didn’t seem to mind. All of these riders were camping, and saw no percentage in getting to the campground early, only to sit in the rain – they figured they were better off there, in shelter and with the heat. We sat and talked with them for a bit, then returned back up the gondola to the top.
Throughout this section of highway, we went through a number of tunnels dug into the rocky cliff side. The tour required to have a red blinking light on, and a couple of the tunnels, the longer ones, required us to push a warning light for cars to alert them to our presence. The final tunnel, the longest one, was being re-asphalted. Normally, at this time of the year, this route would be quite hot. We rode this section two years ago when we did the Gold Rush Trail, and it was easily in the 90s when we were there. As we rode through the construction zone, which was radiating molten asphalt, trapped in the tunnel, I thought how deathly horrible it would have been to ride through that during normal conditions. Instead, while the fumes were not exactly a treat, the hot asphalt was actually pleasantly warming. Further, because we were allowed in by a flagger, we got to ride through the tunnel without fear of passing motor vehicle traffic. When we exited the tunnel, we had the immediate shock of cold rain. David actually got a little hypothermic from the descent, despite his jacket and wool undershirt, and it was fortunate we had another climb so he could warm up again.
Since we weren’t camping, we saw no point to go to the campground where the others from the tour were staying – we forged on to our hotel, located in the town of Boston Bar, about 2.5 miles down the road.
The hotel was something else. It burnt down in 1948, and was rebuilt thereafter, and I believe that beyond the addition of wi-fi, no change or improvement has been rendered to the place since about 1970. Everything in the hotel was worn down or broken. There was a phone jack, but no phone. A heater, but no heat. A bracket where the smoke alarm should be, but no smoke alarm. The water coming out of the faucets, we learned later, was not potable. Two of the four electrical outlets were non-functional. The bed was small, lumpy, and broken down. Upon arrival, the woman at the front desk, who was both ditzy and spoke minimal English, rummaged through piles of little slips of papers, trying to find our reservation, and finally gave up and just wrote up a separate slip – only to find the original slip later.
The whole place would be an utter disaster except the proprietors were extremely hospitable and went out of their way to help all the Tour BC people who were staying there – for example, the woman running the place put everyone’s bike shoes in the dryer and tumbled them dry. And also, the place was clean. Further, if you sat in the café within a 15 foot radius of the cash register, you had free wi-fi, and various people out of our group, after hot showers and changing out of wet and muddy bike gear, got on line, or read, or drank tea, and hung out while the rain came down.
Late in the afternoon, the rain finally slacked, and David and I went for a little walk around the town, crossing the railroad tracks and walking across a bridge over the river. A local advised us that bears had been spotted on the road and for us to be cautious. Eventually (no bear in sight) we turned around, and headed back to Boston Bar. We did see a dead tree filled with vultures – maybe a dozen of them – which made us think that maybe a deer or some other animal had left a carcass. It started to rain again.
With the reappearance of the rain, going back to the camp site, where our dinner was being served, was not in the cards. Too bad, too – we heard that the food at the campsite was excellent, they ate indoors at the Tribal Center, and then were entertained with native drumming and dancing. Instead, we returned to the hotel and ate at the café. The food was marginal, but our alternatives were slim. We hung out with various people from the tour at the café, since there wasn’t much else to do, and then finally went to bed.
Day Three:
This was the day that we were supposed to be cycling through BC’s hotspot – often the place with the highest temperatures in the province. However, with the passage of the storm through the area, while there was no more rain, it was cool and overcast. We set out with David wearing his jacket and I my arm warmers. We rounded Jackass Mountain, which is an exposed and thirsty climb, without suffering at all. By the time we reached Lytton, our lunch stop, it was still cool enough to have choosen sunshine rather than shade for the consumption of our sandwiches.
With the crossing of the Fraser River at Lytton, the vegetation changed abruptly. We had been cycling through coastal mountain forest: firs and hemlocks; and cedars and big leaf maples in the wetter places. Now, just by crossing the bridge, we were in sage and ponderosa pine country. It also suddenly warmed up, and we were riding in the brilliant sunshine.
After a long climb out from the river, this next section of the ride had lots of ups and downs – we’d climb to the top of one hill, swoop down, the intoxicating scent of sage in my nose, and glide part-way up the next hill, crank and crank, and then swoop down the next. It was an exhilarating roller coaster ride on our tandem.
Finally, we pulled into Lilliooet. It was a brief sprint up from the river into town, and we checked into an exceedingly bright and modern motel in comparison to our previous stay in Boston Bar. After cleaning up, we ambled back down the hill to the campground by the river, had some beers, and chatted with other people on the tour. We had dinner, and David had a massage from one of the massage therapists who travel with the group. Then we walked back up into town. I fell asleep three times on my crossword puzzle before I finally put down the book and put my head on the pillow.
Day Four:
We got up super early – 5:30 – and joined the rest of the group in town for breakfast at 6:00. We then got on the bike and hit the road. It was bright and sunny. This was the start of an incredible day. The elevation gain for this ride was the same as the previous one – about 6000’ – but it was not a roller coaster ride of ups-and-downs, where some of the ups were helped by the downs. Instead, we started along Cayoosh Creek, and almost immediately began to climb. We were now headed on a little-used road into the snow-capped mountains. We went about five miles, with a grade of no less than 10%, and often ranging up to 13% and even 15% in steepness. We got off and walked the bike once, through a washboarded dirt construction area, but otherwise ground up the hill on our tandem. Then we had a huge rush, barreling down an equally steep slope, down into canyon, crossed Cayoosh Creek, and started to climb again.
We got to the first water stop, 12 miles in, at a campground around 9:00 AM, where they had started a fire, it was so cold in shady trees. We scarfed down cinnamon rolls and some fruit, and resumed our trek. It never was quite so relentlessly steep for as long as that initial climb, but still, it was up and up and up and up. The river rushed and roiled, sometimes just alongside the road, sometimes deep in the canyon below. David and I took frequent breaks, taking in high calorie snacks and water.
By 11:00, we were riding along Seton Lake. The scenery was stunning. (You can see what this looks like from this video, shot from a motorcycle: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x78wte_motorcycle-riding-along-side-cayoos_auto .) We continued to climb. As we got into higher elevations, a greater variety of wildflowers appeared: lupines, Indian paintbrush, Turk’s head, and columbine. You could smell the high elevation spruce. The pavement became smooth – the road surface had been rather dicey, but we had heard that the area near the summit had been repaved in the last two years. We came to Duffey Lake, a large alpine lake, and took some photos. We climbed the next grade, and we were at our lunch stop, overlooking the lake, shortly after noon.
We ate some really rather inadequate turkey salad wraps, considering the calories it had taken for us to get to this point. I had four pieces of shortbread to fill in some corners. Mindful of the eventual descent, we had Barry, the tour’s mechanic, re-examine our brakes, and after some futzing around, determined that we were good to go.
We now just had the final ascent. We went up and down, up and down, and then just up. Blasts of air, chilled by icy creeks or maybe even the snow and glaciers above, came at the bike at different angles unpredictably. Stands of spruces were interspersed with meadows. The peaks of the snow-covered mountains were close. We passed by a Quonset hut and some snow removal equipment, and David said that he thought that might be the summit. It was about 2:00 PM. There was a brief drop, and then another rise, and then the warning signs about the road grade (11%) for the descent. A place for trucks to test their brakes. It was now about 2:15.
We were ready. We started down the hill. There was no up any more. Just down. Down down down. David worked the brakes, keeping our speed under 40 mph. Down down down. My ears popped. Two-thirds of the way, new warning signs appeared – the grade was now steepening to 15%. David navigated some deep switchbacks successfully, my ears popped again, flying now, and then: we were at Lillooet Lake. About a 3500 foot drop. 8 miles from the pass to the valley floor. Less than 15 minutes to complete.
We pedaled along through the valley a bit, but then took a break – just needed, “a whoa, that was incredible” moment to collect our wits and drink some water. After the arduousness of the climb and the mind-bending sudden drop to the bottom, our pace through the ranchlands along the lush vegetation of lazy river was languid at best. We almost missed the turn into our hotel, just before entering Pemberton.
After cleaning up, we walked into Pemberton proper, and had a substantive snack. David had a beef dip sandwich and fries. I had a huge plate of chili chicken wings, a Caesar salad, and a pint of lager. After completing this, we walked to the high school where the rest of the group was camped. We hung out with our fellow cyclists – I helped some other women consume a bottle of red wine, and we swapped some stories of the day. Then we went in to dinner, where I had a plate of pasta and meatballs with cheese, more salad, and some rhubarb and berry meringue dessert. We then toddled back to the hotel, perhaps the fanciest of our stay, where we soaked in the hot tub with some other members of the Tour BC group, until it was time to finally turn in.
Day Five:
This was supposed to be sort of a rest day. We only had 21 miles to Whistler. We left late, and took a number of breaks. It was mostly a climb up though, and we were still pretty flagged from the climb to Cayoosh Pass the day before. We got a little lost on the bike trails in to Whistler, and there were some words and exasperation between stoker and captain, probably due to fatigue and lack of calories. We finally pulled into the campground around noonish.
Here, the food was excellent. We had a fine restorative lunch. We then pedaled in to Whistler Village, and after some navigational errors, found our hotel. I had heard from other riders with the tour that they were planning to hike in alpine meadows after a gondola ride, or go zip-lining through the trees, or rent mountain bikes and go crashing down the hillsides. We had different plans: after a shower and some loafing, we puttered around Whistler Village. We had an early dinner in town on an outdoor patio, and then decided that we didn’t even have the energy to see a movie. Instead, we continued general loafing, reading, writing, and watching TV for the rest of the evening.
Day Six:
The next morning we packed up, and returned to the campground, where we had perhaps the best breakfast of the tour. Then we were off on a mostly downhill-y rollers ride to Squamish – just the thing that tandems eat up. The only impediment was a strong headwind, which caused us to pull over at some of the viewpoints and take a break. There was much more traffic on the highway, but for the most part it had a good surface and wide shoulders. We had a fair bit of time, so at the morning water stop, we did a walk in to Brandywine Falls (even in our cleated bike shoes) and took photos. We also had an extended lunch at Alice Lake – hanging out with people from the tour. The lunch was probably made from the same place at Whistler – just super yummy by my standards. While it was warm and sunny, the wind was too strong to be tempted to go for a swim at the lake, but I did wade in to about my knees, which was refreshing.
We rode in towards Squamish on back roads, and as we got closer into town, we asked for directions to the hostel where we were staying. We got directions to the wrong place twice, and finally found someone who knew where the place really was, and gave us good directions as to how to get there. However, we missed a turn or two, and made supplemental inquiries (and got a map) from the Visitor’s Centre. All in all, we rode back and forth a couple of times on the wrong roads and added a few miles on to the day.
The hostel staff consisted of a really nice young woman, and the she-devil from hell, who should not be working in the hospitality industry. We were present for the shift change, and the contrast couldn’t have been sharper. We hoisted and then locked up the bike on the second story balcony, then hauled our luggage up to the third story. There was no air conditioning, so we opened up the window to let the strong breeze blow in and cool down the room.
After cleaning up and changing, we walked up and down the old main street of Squamish, and then to the camp site of the rest of the group. We had a hearty dinner, and they had a raffle of various prizes. I got lucky, and won a large beer cooler! I was particularly fortunate, as I was neither cycling home from the tour nor flying home, so I’d have no difficulty transporting my prize.
Day Seven
It took awhile for us to pack up and get our luggage and bike down, so we pedaled into breakfast a little late. It was just as well, as the only starch offered was a sort of savory bread pudding with ham and bacon. I am fond of bread pudding, but this concoction was a little greasy and not high on my list. However, since we were late, we were allowed to eat the left-over waffles that were reserved for the vegetarians. These filled in the corners and we were ready to ride.
The morning’s ride was on a busy highway. It generally had good shoulders, but there was just a lot of traffic. At this point, it was up and down and up and down, alongside beautiful fjord-like Howe Sound, with mountains rising straight up from the water. I was happy to get off of the highway to get to our lunch stop at Horseshoe Bay. We ate lunch in the park and watched a big ferry dock, unload, and load. As we pedaled up and out of town, we could hear the ferry’s horn announcing its departure.
The road out of Horseshoe, Marine Drive, was definitely suburban, and it was clear we were now really returning to the city. Marine Drive reminded me a lot of the ride around Mercer Island – big fancy view homes, hordes of cyclists, and lots of ups and downs and curves around. The urban density increased, and then it was the most stressful cycling of the day – up and over the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing Bridge. The approach had a ton of traffic, the space for us to ride on over the bridge was very narrow (40 inches in places - barely enough room for someone with wider handlebars to ride just by oneself!) and shared with pedestrians, and then there was a steep switchbacked descent onto a sidewalk and through an underpass when we were done. After that, we took a break just so I could recover emotionally. Anyone with an anxiety disorder should avoid the whole scene.
We then had to navigate the last few city streets, again a reverse of some of the RSVP route we have done in the past. Someone sure sold a lot of white metal fencing and wavy balcony railings to the residents of this neighborhood. We finally made it to the foot of Burnaby Mountain. After all the climbs we had pedaled on this trip…we got on the 8% grade, and started working it. Three miles later, we were at the top. We circled around campus, and rolled into the parking lot where our car and the luggage truck were waiting for us.
The end seemed sort of anticlimactic, after all those miles. We said a few goodbyes to the people around. We decided not to seek out the shower in town, but just sort of clean up and change at the washroom. We loaded up the car with the bike, the beer cooler, and all our luggage. We then found our way back to the main expressway to the border, a little more efficiently than we did on our way in, and drove home.
