Yes, yes – the rain has gone away (obviously listening to little Johnny) & stayed away for most of the last ten days. I’m still working weekdays at the Banff Center – although that project is supposed to wind up this week, so with a bit of luck I’ll get some more work after that. I’ve been riding so much I’m having trouble remembering the rides last week. Tuesday last was the Highline trail again, I think. We climbed up to the trail proper from Quarry Lake & rode west to east. This route up was pretty good – not all switchbacks & all manageable in the middle ring (for me at least) – it also looked like a gnarly ride down that would flow together nicely. This was a shorter ride than riding up the Three Sisters way or riding up to Riders of Rohan – we were back in an hour & a half. Still a good ride – & Alex seems to be keeping up with me a lot more on the downhills. It’s amazing what a regular riding & a decent pair of tyres will do for the confidence.

I went & saw the tree that I rather ignominiously shoulder-barged in the rain on Friday after work. We were back at the G8 trail on the other side of the Bow Valley. This time we managed to string the loop together in the correct way & it was really quite enjoyable. Of the four rides that line the hills on the Canmore town limits, this is by far the easiest with not a lot of climbing (comparatively speaking). But that doesn’t make it any less fun & a great way to unwind after the week at work. We crossed the walking trail up to Grotto (which we hiked up a few weeks ago) & headed out to the extremities of the trail that we didn’t find last time, enjoyed some nice sweeping corners down a small gully, looped around & headed back to Cougar Creek (the starting point) before cruising home via a small jump park. There were plenty of easy log rides to do, & a quite a few jumps of course. The jump park was overrun with ground squirrels, which were quite amusing.

A group of seven of us went for a little hike on Saturday afternoon. Driving past Banff on the Transcanada, we turned west at Castle Junction on to Highway 93 to walk to Arnica Lake. It was only five kilometres to the lake & only 350 m (climbing) – but having to descend first to Vista Lake, lots to look at & a larger group we took our time.

Looking back across the Bow River to Castle Mountain

The alpine Arnica Lake still had a layer of ice on it – which we amused ourselves with trying to land rocks on it, alas it was too thin.

After watching most of England’s unfortunate exit from the second round, Alex & I headed back to the Heart Creek parking lot. We had a slightly more ambitious loop planned for another beautiful Sunday. We started by retracing our path of two weeks previous & heading up to Jewell Pass. We never worked out why we saw so few people out & about – only a few climbers in the parking lot & a couple of hikers on the trail early on were all we saw before we reached the top of the pass. Having been rather uncomfortable on the climb from the recently inflated rear tyre, I let a little air out before what I knew was going to be another fantastic blast down Jewell Pass – & it was, unfortunately I got a snakebite half way down – grrrr. After changing that tube, we carried on down to the power lines & finally met some more people out enjoying the countryside.

Having found another geocache, it was a ten kilometre ride up the valley to Nakiska Ski Area. Mostly we followed the power company access track, which was mostly pretty annoying gravelly rutty uphill. We could see over to Baldy Pass which we rode over last weekend – it’s over there just to the left of the right-hand peak:

Getting quite hungry by this time, we followed the cross-country skiing trails up to a bridge that we spied on the map boards (a quick side note – many of the recreational areas around here have great little & simple map boards at most intersections, so convenient). It was a long climb (mostly because we were hungry I suspect) to the bridge – & the bridge wasn’t even a bridge, it was a culvert with no troll underneath (the falls just downstream were called Troll Falls). Nonetheless, we had lunch & carried on up to Skogan Pass. It was reasonably gentle climb (middle ring – all day in fact) up to 2150 m over seven or eight kilometres of the road.

After passing through a little residual snow we took the little side trail up to the top of the pass for some great views over the Bow Valley. There is Canmore down in the distance:

The Three Sisters – centre & just right of – not quite as impressive from this angle

It was mostly power company access road for the descent – with a little bit of annoying climb to mix it up a bit. It was a good fast descent – my bike computer had somehow come back to life – I spent a lot of the drop over 45 km/h & almost hit sixty at one stage. In parts the trail narrowed a bit & near the bottom we met a couple of groups of hikers – thankfully on wide open sections where we could see them in plenty of time to slow down a little.Back down near the TransCanada highway, we still had a little way to go to get back to the car. Given the choice of the highway or the TransCanada Trail – we took the singletrack. It started off pretty mellow, & then started climbing up above the highway & got quite tricky with lots of roots, rocks & steps. By this time we were getting pretty tired (over five hours out by then) & a lot of the sketchy looking obstacles were walked over. There was some neat soft moss around that was good for resting on:

Pushing up a long rockface for a minute or so I was glad to reach the top, but also noticed my recently replaced rear tube was getting a bit soft. Stupidly, I ignored it as it wasn’t long until we reached the car. Of course, I got another pinch flat within fifty metres. Alex left me to patch it alone as he seemed to think he was going a lot slower than me. I patched two holes & then enjoyed the singletrack until we hit more fire road & a big climb & I noticed that my tyre needed pumping up again (I found a third hole on the inside of the tube in a different place this afternoon) – this was just getting frustrating. I eventually made it back to the car shortly after Alex – that last section ended up being close to seven kilometres of the most technically demanding trail we had had all day, not the best when you are already a bit tired. So in the end that was a six and a half hour adventure, fifty kilometres, 1600 m of climbing & two flats to keep my hand in at pumping up tubes.

To round the weekend off with a bit more exercise, we had a short game of social soccer on Sunday evening – can’t think why I was a bit sore climbing up the stairs to the roof this morning at work.

Tonight’s been a nice quiet Monday night recovering from the weekend & a strenuous day at work moving too many heavy steel doors. Really all I’ve done is cook a proper meal (my first in almost a month I think, Alex & Megan at pre-natal classes) & made some muffins – Canadian ingredients must be slightly different as they are not quite as good as normal & it’s a really easy recipe. It also seems that Canadians have not heard of self-raising flour, so I had to make some myself (thanks Yahoo Answers).

To more interesting things – Saturday was forecast for rain, but there wasn’t too much of it to discourage Alex & I driving to Lake Minnewanka (said as if Minnie Mouse had married Willie Wonka) – which is approximately opposite Banff over the Transcanada highway. Lake Minnewanka was the first scenery I saw really in the area – Megan took me out there at the start of my January/February trip. The main the difference now is that the surface of the lake has returned to the liquid phase. I’m still undecided which is more beautiful – summer or winter; but the weather on Saturday wasn’t always so nice. We started the ride in the rain & then snain made itself felt. By the time we got to this river after five minutes the sun had come out again.

The riders crossing the bridge finishing their ride looked decidedly muddy – we were about to find out why. The surface of the only real hill of the ride was dirt that was now quite slick & slippery. The mud wasn’t deep, it was more surface water that was running down the trail (it’s never a “track” here) & splashing up to meet up one’s bike, feet, legs & clothes. It did mean however that the climb, which wasn’t particularly steep compared to the ones earlier in the week, was quite difficult as the rear tyre would often slip on roots on small step-ups (I’m still not rating High Rollers that much, even when they have been relegated to the rear). The top of the ascent took us back to the top of a bluff above the lake & for the drop down to the lakeside the trail changed suddenly to being very rocky – it wasn’t too steep, but it was dry & the babyheads (before anyone asks – rocks about the size of a baby’s head, they make for much more interesting riding as they tend to move & send you directions that you didn’t really have in mind) were great fun to negotiate. Not many rocks here for Alex to get through:

The rest of the trail to the warden’s hut (our turnaround point, at about twenty kilometres) was within about twenty or thirty metres (altitude) above the lake, so it wasn’t too strenuous – but still a lot of fun. It’s a very popular trail & we passed many hikers & bikers on the way. As I was at the front for most of the way out I spotted lots of squirrels & deer diving off in to the foliage as I surprised them.

I’m pretty useless at yelling out at blind corners to let bears know I’m coming, but I was pleased not to see one & have to put my new bear spray to use. The trail was pretty smooth for the most part, but there was a good creek crossing that only turned out feasible in one direction.

It was about ninety minutes after setting out when we reached the hut (a little delay for a mechanical – one of the pins holding the parallelogram together in Alex’s rear derailleur thought it a good idea to work its way a fair way out).

Sitting snacking on the side of the lake (which is a good couple of metres lower than it should be – still waiting for the summer melt) we watched clouds roll in up the lake from the direction we came & within long we were getting wet without having to go swimming. So it was back on the bikes again & shortly after it dried out. We got most of the way back without precipitation, but as we were climbing that rocky bluff some nice big drops started falling – by the time we had worked hard to get to the top again, it was proper wet again. That made the final downhill even more fun as we got soaked, muddy & the slipperiness made for some exciting riding. A great day’s ride, even if I do now have to find the time to give my bike a bit of a clean (I’ve been spoilt – I haven’t had to clean it after all the previous rides of the last three weeks).

It was a bit of a late start (1100) for our hike on Sunday as some of us had been out to a late movie & then hit the nightlife of Canmore (tongue firmly in cheek there – Canmore is pretty small, still it kept me up until two). Megan, Alex, Zara & I were off up Grotto – which is opposite Lady Mac over Cougar Creek on the east side of the Bow Valley. This is the highest of the hikes that we had attempted over the last few weeks – the summit is at just over 2700m. Yesterday dawned with the best weather we have had for ages – & the first couple of hours of hiking were uncomfortably hot (the highs don’t seem to have got out of the teens for the last couple of weeks – which is fine by me, great riding temperature). There’s not too much to say about the hike, we walked up a very steep path for ages, then got out of the trees & in to a little snow & walked for quite some time up to the top of the ridge. Due to our late start, leisurely pace & frequent rests/food-stops we didn’t push on for the last thirty-forty minutes of ridge walking to the summit. I think I was the only one disappointed by that, but it was getting late (1530 by the time we turned around) & if I forget just how steep the walk is, I’ll have another go in a few months’ time when all the snow has melted. The walk down seemed to take forever, as it was very steep – mercifully, the trail was pretty good & there was not much sliding/falling involved. All in all, it was an eight hour hike. Here are a few pictures from the day – I hope no one is getting sick of seeing all these.

Alex, Zara & Megan with Lawrence Grassi on the other side of the Bow Valley

Canmore with Lawrence Grassi on the left, Rundle on the right – you can just see the road going up to Whiteman’s Gap in between the two, it doesn’t look such a big bike climb now.

Above the trees now, looking southwest

Looking over the ridge, northeast-ish