Yeehaw Rail Trail!
A very pleasant diversion and a great day
Ride Summary
Distance: 41 mi / 66 kmClimbing: 1240 feet / 378 m
Descending: more than I climbed, anyway :)
Difficulty: Easier
Sitting by the lakeshore is peaceful. Today was a good day! I remembered that I enjoy riding bikes and I can stop to smell the flowers especially when my path (and the flowers!) are more than 3 feet (1 meter) from passing cars at highway speeds and I made a different plan for tomorrow that I don't dread (I was dreading tomorrow's ride!)
Today started off easy, first and second breakfast at local-recommended Deadwood Junction coffee shop. Then got packed up and rolling before 9am even though I took my time reassembling my gear (including my clean, completely dry clothes from the sink-wash and outside-drying) in the hotel room. Rolled up the trail for a mile out of town, and the trail crossed the highway and there I found a graffiti tunnel where I decided to head back to the road based on what I could see of the trail ahead. This turned out to be a mistake based on what I learned the next day: the trail between where I got off for some highway miles, and then back on, was reportedly just as good as the part I super-enjoyed at the end of the day, that is: with a gradual climb and no traffic. But, at this point, I was still shy and unaccustomed to the surface on the trail, whereas the surface on the highway was a known quantity that wouldn't leave me having to walk for miles, which was my concern about finding a sufficiently inhospitable trail surface 5 miles in...
my favorite graffiti, Samus Araon from Metroid, 15 feet up a sheer wall.
I stayed on the highway for a handful of miles before switching to the delightful Columbia & Western Rail Trail. It was effectively "the next part of the Kettle Valley Rail Trail" as they met up - in the town of Midway! I'd tried a bit of the Kettle Valley Rail Trail in Midway yesterday, and found that part of it too sandy and overgrown for me to ride on my heavy mostly-a-road-bike...but not this new rail trail! Both railways are defunct today; there is no rail through this valley anymore since the road lets trucks bring in goods and maintaining the railway was pretty expensive for just occasional freight use since the roads got all the tourism as well once completed and connected to the rest of the country.
I stayed on that rail trail all the way into my destination "town", pretty much a ring of homes surrounding much of Christina Lake, and as all rail trails are, it was a delightful 2.2% or less grade up and down, meaning that I could coast or pedal easily downhill and I never had to walk going uphill, for something like 35 miles! Mid-ride, the town of Grand Forks straddled the trail, and there was a pub in the old train station. So of course I stopped there for lunch!
It was at lunch where I was pondering changing my route for the rest of the day and especially for tomorrow, from the highway to the rail trail and the waitress thought that was a good idea based on her experiences on the trail a few (?) years ago. She claimed it was flat and would go around the gnarly climb the road went through, and while it will go around...upon researching a bit, it is still a pretty steady climb for 20 miles just on a rail trail, instead of the road. I swung past the bike shop to ask about the feasibility of my plan and the shop guy said that if I had ridden the trail thus far today, I'd be fine to make it over that trail on my bike. Yay for local expertise!
The new route is a bit less climbing (600 feet or so less), which will be nice. It will be bumpy (compared to the paved highway), which is to be expected, but really bumpy for 50 miles could be pretty tedious and some folks online warned me it was tooth rattling on a bike like mine. But so far today - I rode a good portion of the same trail - it wasn't really bumpy for the vast majority of the ride. I'll have to see tomorrow, and make a decision on the spot; there is a bail point or 2 to switch over to the highway if I am fed up within the first 10 miles, but then there's no bail point for the next 40 miles and I may not see anyone - so I have to be feeling good to do the long loop away from the populated world of "places I could easily hitch a ride from", which proximity is definitely a comforting safety blanket! But something I am sure of is that I have been dreading the 4000 foot highway shoulder climb, assuming I'd be walking a lot of it as it gets steep or the shoulder gets too narrow, and so...walking some of the rail trail should be a lot nicer (if I have to)! And I suspect I'll be walking a lot less, since it will never be "too steep", only potentially too bumpy (or maybe there will be things I have to portage over/around, like streams or trees down on the trail). But on the third hand, I think I'll get some more cool tunnels and trestles too! So I am pretty well decided...
The ride out of Grand Forks was frustrating as the town had big chunks of the trail under construction and not signed well; I ended up walking around several fences I know I wasn't intended to trespass beyond, but I was also frustrated and just wanted to get back to riding in the increasingly summery (warm, sweaty) sun. Finally made it out of town and was amused to then, for a moment be riding some overgrown doubletrack and my panniers (which ride low and wide on the front of the bike) were just whacking the grasses nonstop, but my legs weren't; no harm was done.
Upon arriving at Christina Lake, I set up camp in a large RV park where tent camping was an afterthought, but was directly lakeside and pretty peaceful nonetheless...and then went for a quick swim in some cool but not cold lakewater (pictured below). I got great gyros and a milkshake for dinner, and now just enjoying the view and the sound of waves on the beach...
This was the best milkshake of the trip so far, so I (later) got greedy and went back for a second one - but by the time I went back for it, they were out of ice cream to make it with? C'est la vie! (see how I'm practicing my French for Quebec later this summer?)