Ride Summary

Distance: 30 mi / 48 km
Climbing: 1972 feet / 601 meters
Descending: similar
Difficulty: medium low
Link to workout in Strava

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I took a rest day in Radium Springs, so let me tell you about yesterday's ride. Yesterday, we woke up with an epic view after the thunderstorm and rain had passed. I cooked some oatmeal, and ate while regarding the mountains. Here's a timelapse video of me breaking down camp. I'm still figuring out best placement for camera for most shots and in this case, well, I guess the real show was the mountains :). All the faffing with tent bits was trying to get them to dry out before packing it up since I won't camp for a couple days; it mostly worked. You can see Albert breaking down his camp next to me. We definitely took advantage of the emptiness of the campground's surrounding sites, as it is still early season here.

We didn't get out of camp for quite awhile since we knew we had a short day and the hostel check in at our destination wasn't until 4pm. Otherwise we can pack up much faster ;). Looking at today's route, I had planned to go around the lake that we'd be riding near all day on the far side, which was not where the highway went. Since the day before had rewarded the side road usage (after penalizing us a little for picking the trail out of town), and RidewithGPS' heatmaps showed that many more cyclists went that "back way" than the highway, I pressured Albert into trying the far side of the lake rather than the sure-thing, direct-route highway. This required riding out about a mile in the opposite direction of our intended destination, to the south (we're headed north right now). This is maybe the first "pure" backtracking (rather than sidetracking) I've had to do on the trip? Maaaaybe I made a wrong turn a couple weeks ago and had to backtrack, but if so I've already blocked it out of my memory...

Google maps in Canada is not always great at showing where the bike paths are, so we had a nice surprise when that road (which would have been much nicer to ride on than the highway shoulder anyway - only a few dozen cars passed us in an hour and a half) turned out to have an excellent offroad, paved path paralleling the road the whole way - for 20-odd km! If the "alternate" road was good - the path was GREAT! Fresh pavement, mostly kept the road in view, yet was far enough away that we didn't have to smell any exhaust, and it had great views and fun signage. Also, someone had put the Mr. Potato Head style "face pieces" on at least a dozen trees along the route, which we took some joy in locating and pointing out to one another. While we rode, we saw exactly 6 other trail users - 4 cyclists and 2 people in a mini truck clearly out maintaining the trail (which was indeed very well maintained).

Path ended in the towns of Invermere/Windermere which are at the north end of the lake. (The lake turned out to be Columbia lake, which is the headwaters of the Columbia river. That river flows about 3 miles from my home, dividing the states of Oregon and Washington...and empties into the ocean not too long after...though it takes 2000 kilometers / 1200 miles or so to make the trip from here to there!). Albert wanted to go to the cheap grocery store and had figured out where it was, and so we decided to stop there and also find lunch in the neighborhood. Fortunately in the neighborhood was Poutine Queen, which served us some amazing poutine (amazing not just because I had gotten hangry by the time we biked (well, he biked, I walked) a big hill up to the side of town where the grocery store was, but objectively great poutine!). This fuel powered us well into the evening.

We pulled into the very small town of Radium Springs, essentially a highway intersection with an information stop/mini-museum, a few shops and houses (but a good public library, which I am taking advantage of today!). We got into the hostel a bit early "er, your beds aren't ready, but you can drop your stuff and use the kitchen & facilities", took the time to do some laundry at the laundromat, and then biked the 2.5k straight uphill to get to the hot springs.

The springs are a national park facility, open for everyone to use and well maintained. We spent an hour or so soaking in the giant warm pool as the cold rain fell, before we finally got hungry enough that we were motivated to bike down through the much-colder-now-that-we-weren't-in-hot-water rain, to a fine German dinner. Dinner was a little bittersweet because it was also a goodbye; Albert was heading out on a long day today, but the campground I would need, so I could split that long day (~90 miles with ~6000 feet of climbing is more than I think I can handle) is only opening on thursday - 2 days after our arrival! Lucky thing we found this out, because I almost rode out with Albert with the intention of stopping before him at this campground....which I would have been bitterly disappointed to find closed. Yay for visitor information centers which are in pretty much every small town around here, since they gave me the news while I discussed my plan with them.

So, we said our goodbyes, and I had time for a nice chat with Lori in the park while I watched the sunset, and I looked forward to my last day off until I meet her in a week! Next week will be a lot of hard, daily, riding, but I've got several hostels booked between campgrounds to allow for me not to have to be in a sleeping bag in my tent for a week straight...

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