Coldbike - Page 2 of 6 - Cycling and Kids, Sometimes in the Cold

Posted on 2018-03-20 2018-04-07

The Nordic Nap

When my kids were young, they took naps. Tadhg stopped around 10 months. Fiona would still occasionally nap until she was 5. Now this is purely anecdotal, but Tadhg mostly napped in a crib at home, while Fiona took part in what has been a tradition in Scandinavian countries for generations: the outdoor nap.

2009-09-15 13-27-24 0465.jpg — For safety reasons, dried mango was removed after the picture.

No matter what the temperature, I would take her outside to sleep after lunch. Usually, she would be in the bike or a stroller, but sometimes she would just lie down on the deck, or in a sled. Now I have a lot of experience with being outside, so I know how to dress a baby to be comfortable in -30ºC, professional driver, closed course, don’t try this at home, other fine print.

Yes, the thermometer says -32ºC next to that 7-month-old

sleeping outside at -30ºC (on a camping mattress for warmth)

There is a belief that sleeping outside may help children resist viruses, or improve their health, or just improve their sleep in general. I’m comfortable that at worst it does no harm. What I am certain of is that it can free a parent to get things done that otherwise might not happen during a nap. I often made trips to get groceries, to visit friends and relatives, and any other errands I wanted to do. I was never a servant to the nap.

Posted on 2018-03-13 2018-04-07

Lost Horse Creek Winter Overnight

Fiona and I had enjoyed the previous weekend’s trip to Shadow Lake, that Tania suggested we do a quick overnight to the campground at km 7.2, Lost Horse Creek.

Tadhg and I decided to bike, both of us generally prefer biking when it’s one of the options. Tania left herself the option to ski or walk, and Fiona was planning to either ski or ski with her other pair of skis. At the trail head, Tania opted to take advantage of the packed trail surface and walk.

With the weather above freezing, the way in had us down to our t-shirts in short order. Tadhg did leave his hat on.

Fiona and I decided to sleep under the stars to save time putting up our tarp and in hopes of seeing some Northern Lights (though chances were slim, the northern sky had mountains obstructing the view). We dug out a nice spot in the snow to put the tent up for Tania and Tadhg.

I was proud of getting up at 7:15 to make coffee (a pride that lasted until I found out it was time change weekend in the car home) Winter has the great advantage of being able to bring real milk for Tania’s cappuccinos, and I always feel better about serving real milk than even the whole milk powder that works reasonably well.

We gave Fiona and Tania a substantial head start while we packed up, but even with that, the bikes speed advantage over Tania’s walking, and the downhill trail meant that we passed them on our way down. It was a fun finish to a very relaxing weekend.

Posted on 2018-03-12 2018-04-07

My Path to Cargobike Nirvana

I think if someone was carving a gravestone for me the epitaph might read, “You got here by bike?” It’s certainly a phrase I hear a lot. I sometimes let it slip into the background as I bike off to the store.

Though I may not think much about it now, there have been times when I needed to deliberately structure my life to bring biking back in to it.

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When I first became a stay-at-home parent, I knew that I didn’t want my days to be a series of car rides. Not only did I not want to live in a rolling metal box, but I didn’t want my child’s first interactions with me to be with the back of my head.

Back then, I hadn’t even heard of bakfietsen, nor of cargo bikes of any description. I wasn’t sure that my Chariot trailer was the smoothest way to transport my delicate baby. While I used the Chariot a lot, it wasn’t quite the experience I wanted. So, I walked. I walked a lot. I pushed the stroller around town, some trips were as far as 20km each way. Any distance is walking distance if you have the time, and with a 10-month-old baby who didn’t nap, I wanted to fill our days with fun, and I had lots of time to fill.

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I knew that transportation by bike was great for saving money, fitness, and fun, but I hadn’t really solved the child transport piece of the puzzle. As Tadhg grew, I would carry him in the trailer or on a rear-mounted seat on my bike, but it felt like we were missing out on some of the fun. I would often revert to walking, and if pressed for time, I would take my car.

2004-10-08 16-22-10 22 — I do not endorse these poor fashion choices by me.

By the time our second baby came along, I had heard of bakfietsen being imported into Canada. I showed my friend an article, and she immediately ordered one. I have to admit, while I thought the concept was great, I wasn’t 100% convinced that they would work here. I suspected they were too heavy for our hills, over-geared for our hills, and too big to work well with our lack of infrastructure.

When my friend was put on bed rest, she “forced” me to borrow her bike. It was surprisingly practical. Though the brakes were underwhelming (some might say terrifying) and the gearing was too high, and the riding position too upright for my spine, I found myself using it a lot. I grew to appreciate it as a way to return the speed of the bike to my car-lite lifestyle.

After returning the bakfiets I went back to the trailer for a while, but it was clearly insufficient. I had been spoiled.

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I started looking for cargo bike options. I tried out a couple of longtails, I liked them, but I had been spoiled by the kids being where I could talk to them. I tried a few of the front-load options that were available at the time. I even tried a trike that separated into a stroller.

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I was weighing my options, when I saw on the bike forums that there was a guy in Eugene Oregon starting to build a new cargo bike that offered many advantages. The significant option for me was that it had a longer, less upright cockpit than the Dutch bikes. The geometry was much better for climbing. It was steel, which theoretically meant a bit of springiness and therefore comfort. It had a flatbed to which the sides of the box were added which gave it more versatility.

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I bought the bike on a leap of faith based on a video that he took of himself riding the bike. I got the bike in May of 2009, and have been riding it ever since.

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Now, 9 years later, I am still happy with that decision. I’ve taken the Cetma on tour, around town, on singletrack trails, and in every type of weather. Though my kids don’t ride very often anymore, it is still handy for shuttling them to friend’s houses and other short trips. We sometimes even use it for date night.

My friend Lindsay, a “newbie” after just 2 years has just written a review of her Cetma. She has much more information about it, and much less rambling prose.

Posted on 2018-03-06

Shadow Lake Fatbikepacking with Fiona

Every year I try to make it out on a couple of trips alone with each of our kids. The one-on-one time is great bonding for all of us. I try to choose something that will be at least some challenge so the kids can take some pride in it afterward. I have high hopes that I’m providing some opportunity for my kids to learn the freedom that nature provides.

In spite of our local school board’s efforts to instill fear of any cool temperatures in my kids, Fiona enjoys the challenge of a cold weekend. She was disappointed to hear that the forecast low for the weekend was -16ºC. “But I was hoping for cold!” she told me. Personally, I was thinking of how much easier it would be to not have to deal with the extra work that comes with cold. Putting on boots in the morning is so much nicer at -16ºC than -30ºC.

We’ve been on a few ski camping trips this winter, and I’ve been wanting to do some bike trips while the season is here, so I encouraged Fiona to agree to a bike trip. I had had heard good things about the Redearth Creek ride to Shadow Lake. Only the first 10km are open to bikes in summer, but in winter bikes are allowed as far as the lodge. (Shadow Lake Lodge is a beautiful historic backcountry lodge with individual cabins and a wood-fired sauna.)

We left the house on Friday afternoon, and after driving through a snow storm, (past many crashes, one of which I stopped to offer assistance to the driver) we arrived at the trailhead just after 4:45. We were riding by 5, which was good since at this time of year, the lights need to be turned on at about 6:45.

[click photos for larger version]

The trail was steadily uphill, but not overly steep, so I could ride almost all of it though conditions were a little loose. Fiona needed to push up many of the hills, the laws of physics dictate that 10 year old girls do not have the favourable power to weight ratio I have.

2018-03-02 18-31-48 5875.jpg — Just before we turned on our lights.

We weren’t there to race, so our many snack breaks and slow pace weren’t an annoyance, just a part of our ride. It did turn out to be the longest 7.2km in history though. I started investigating side trails for signs of the campground about 2km back from where the actual campground was. We were thrilled when we finally spotted the sign for the campground in our headlamps.

As per usual, few people had used the campground this winter. We placed a high priority on shoveling out the outhouse door to simplify visits later on. I often wish the National Parks outhouses did not have the front step exactly the same height as the door. It would be much easier to open the door if it were an inch higher so that we didn’t have to scrape every molecule of ice from the step. Since it was snowing hard, we set up our tarp, even though we had an ample tree well to shelter in.

There was a nice creek water source at the campground, and the approach to it looked very reasonable. I was, however, too lazy to shovel a path in the waist-deep snow to get to it, so we melted snow for our coffee, oatmeal and the day’s drinking water.

We took our time, and were riding our bikes by 11AM. Again, we weren’t racing, and since we knew that we had time to backtrack if we missed the campground, we didn’t even need to be vigilant, we just needed to enjoy the ride. We weren’t any faster than the guys on snowshoes who kept stopping to take pictures, but Fiona’s riding had benefited from a good night’s sleep and she was riding up some fairly steep sections of trail.

Fortune smiled upon us, and we encountered a woman snowshoeing just as we were to pass by the campground. She was surprised that we would even attempt to camp out in winter, but kindly showed us where the site was.

Our early arrival at the campsite left us with plenty of time to go for a short hike up to Shadow Lake proper. There wasn’t much to see on account of the heavily falling snow from overcast skies, but it was worth going for a walk and answering an extensive series of science questions from Fiona. Our discussion of the future of humanity did stray a little toward the preamble to the film “Idiocracy” but she was hoping to direct our evolution toward having 6 fingers per hand – because, “I’d love to have more fingers!”

We got back to camp in time to prepare supper in the light and then, after some reading by headlamp, we were off to sleep.

I don’t know if it’s the mountain air, the physical exertion, or some other factor, but I always sleep well outside. I awoke feeling refreshed and happy. Fiona had also had a great night, and other than some reluctance on her part to put on her cold boots, she was at her best and helped with breakfast and breaking camp.

We decided to start our day with a quick jaunt up to take some pictures at the Lodge. Conveniently, a kind stranger offered to take some “kind stranger” pictures of the two of us.

The trail back was mostly downhill, which we were looking forward to. We were somewhat concerned about the new snow that had fallen all weekend, but the trail was mostly rideable and with the weather cleared, we enjoyed much better views.

An interesting thing had occurred as the snow fell and the supply snowmobile from the lodge had passed up and down the trail, what had been a single trackset on the trail had become several. In a couple of places I’m afraid that we ran out of room and used the 6th or 7th ski track for ourselves, I know that I’d have a tough time being angry if I was on skis and was limited to even 1 set of tracks, so I hope everyone else feels the same.

The loose conditions allowed Fiona to practice her control skills. Though she acts modest, she has tremendous talent when it comes to keeping a bike going in snow. Of course, any time we get a chance to put in 3 consecutive days of riding, skills are going to improve. While Fiona had a couple of crashes, it was still a lot of fun.

I’d like to encourage others to go out and try this sort of trip with their kids, or on their own. Not only is it a learning experience and healthy physical activity, but it is fundamentally fun. With a little luck, one day we will get to a backcountry campground in winter and the outhouse door will already be shoveled.

Posted on 2018-02-20

Another Family Day Weekend

We have been going to Lake O’Hara for a couple of years on family day weekend, but this year we decided to switch thing up for a variety of reasons.

We considered skiing in to Mt Assiniboine again, but the forecast did not look promising in terms of seeing the mountain after what for us is a 2.5 day ski in.

Spray River from Banff to Goat Creek has been consistently good for us in that we’ve never seen people there that didn’t come with us, it is easy to bail from, it is pretty, and it super easy to ski or bike to.

We decided on 2 nights at the campground with a day trip up Goat Creek. Tania chose skiing over biking, the kids followed her lead, and since I didn’t really want to bike alone, I skied as well.

Tadhg and I towed sleds, he likes to avoid backpacks at all costs, I just had too much stuff to fit in my backpack.

It was not warm, but with our routine of using a fire to roast our burritos, then going for a walk before bed rather than sitting around a fire getting sweaty and telling our bodies to shed heat, we were quite fine as we went to bed near 10 pm.

Fiona and I were under the tarp as usual, and since the forecast called for cold, we had our -10ºC sleeping bags with our quilts over them and were toasty warm. When I looked at the thermometer at 8 in the morning, I was a little surprised to see it reading -23ºC (-10F). Fiona and I eventually got out of bed and made the trek down to the eating area to make coffee.

In what would turn out to be a potentially serious event, when I screwed my stove together, I failed to notice some ice that prevented the canister from sealing correctly to the valve. As the stove sat there burning poorly, I went to get some more snow to melt. As I was returning with the snow, I got to see the fuel that had leaked out catch flame. While unspectacular, I was concerned that if I just left the flames burning, it would heat the canister enough to become a big problem. I cleverly figured what the problem was as I was walking toward the stove, and quickly reached in and tightened the canister to the valve. Once the leaky canister was dealt with, the remaining fire quickly dissipated.

Now this would not have been very serious at all if not for the quantity of fuel that leaked out. In the absence of a scale to measure how much fuel was left in the canister, I have to rely on “the force” to estimate remaining fuel. The remaining fuel did not give me a comfortable feeling. I was certain that I would have enough for dinner, but not positive that Monday morning coffee was going to happen.

I advised Tania when I handed her her first cappuccino that we might have a fuel shortage. Neither of us was keen on facing a morning without coffee. While there is a fire pit at the Spray 6 campsite, making a cooking fire at those temperatures seemed a little onerous to set ourselves up for. We decided to do our day trip and then head home afterward. The choice was hardest on Fiona who would have liked to stay another night. We did get in a wonderful ski on a beautiful clear day.

Though cut a bit short, we still had a great weekend in the woods. When measured in fun, this was a great success. It also shows the importance of being willing to change plans in the event of unusual circumstances. We weren’t really in danger, but we also weren’t necessarily in line for the level of comfort that we wanted.

I like to think that I learn lessons when things don’t go exactly according to plan.

We did of course have the option of me skiing back to town to buy a spare fuel canister, but this was a family trip, and the trade of me missing the day’s skiing with them for a trip to town sounded like poor value. In hindsight, this was the correct decision.

In the future, I can consider several options. The best option is to be more careful with fuel, to avoid leaks. I should also have been making more of an effort to get to the river to fetch water rather than melting snow. Also, on a trip like this, would it really kill me to bring an extra 200g of fuel? I only had about 75g of spare fuel and I estimate that I lost about 100g.

I normally bring 2 fuel canisters with me on winter trips, in this case, I had used up the mostly empty canister on the first night. I had felt that since I had plenty of fuel, there was no need to be thrifty and I could just use up the canister. Next time, there will be no frivolous (fuelish?) wasting of even the dregs of the canister.

I had also expected to be using fresh milk for cappuccinos, which saves fuel. I had not insulated the milk jug though (I usually do), so it froze solid on the first night. I will continue to hang my food bag at night, not just for bears, but for rodents, who will spoil a food bag very effectively overnight.

It’s worth thinking about bringing my white gas stove as well. While it is a bit more complicated to use, it is much easier to tell exactly how much fuel is left in it. Had we been going to Mt Assiniboine, I would have been carrying both stoves (or possibly an alcohol beer-can stove), I like to have a backup because of the greater isolation of the trail. I would bring only a small fuel canister for the butane stove and consider it emergency backup. The white gas stove (I have an MSR Whisperlite) is also way more functional below -30ºC (I also have an arctic pump for mine) where the canister stove works, but is very slow.

Posted on 2017-09-13

Multi-family Kid-friendly Bikepacking

Our friend Lindsay suggested one day that we should do an overnight bikepacking trip with our families to celebrate the start of the new school year. I never pass up an opportunity to sleep outside, so I was definitely in. We each told a few friends about it, and before long what we had thought would be only be us and another couple of people turned into a full campground. I blame Lindsay for being so famous.

Side note: Lindsay sent many of you here to read my capture of the energy and essence of the trip. I’ll try not to let her down [pulls out “Writing English for Dummies” book].

Our friends were diverse in experience, backgrounds and ages. We were all experienced cyclists, but some of us had not been bike camping before. A few of us had been on Megan Dunn’s bikepack.ca family bikepacking trip during the summer, a few of us were people we knew from social media and hadn’t met in real life.

Though I myself like some of the more technical trails, I wanted this trip to be accessible for novices. That way they wouldn’t hate me for my trail selection. I also wanted it to be a not-to-distant drive from Calgary, and to provide enough challenge that the kids and parents could feel that they had accomplished something. Lindsay and Des were planning to bring their cargobikes, so I wanted to pick a trail that would be compatible with them as well.

When Tadhg and I had toured the newly-built Romulus campground (it replaced the one that was washed away in the 2013 flood) we thought it was very nicely done, with the hiker section being just as nice as the equestrian side, and the food area being separate from the sleeping area. The trail in met our criteria, and so it was what we recommended.

2017-07-30 16-28-52 3201.jpg — The fancy new outhouse at Romulus

We met at the trailhead at 11:00 AM parent time (11:45) and loaded up the bikes. We started riding some time around 12:30. Everyone spent some time getting to know each other as we rolled up the trail.

Bikepacking with kids in tow is best described as slow. Kids like to stop to look at flowers, push bikes up hills, push bikes down hills, have snacks, tell you how tired they are, have more snacks, complain about the lack of snacks, well, you get the idea. Suffice to say that we broke no speed records that day. We did get lots of time for the parents to speak among ourselves (mostly bike talk, this was a pretty bikey crowd).

The stars of the show were the babies. My friends Andy and Ellen had their 8-month-old twin girls along. They towed them in their chariot with their gear distributed between the trailer and their panniers. This was the twins’ first overnight camping trip, so we were pretty excited to have helped ~~indoctrinate~~ encourage them to bring their kids out camping.

The kids all had their usual lines about how tired they were, how far it was, and how steep the hills were, but their energy levels once we got to camp belied the difficulty of the riding. A 10-kid game involving bears, wolves, horses, and a lot of chasing took up most of the camp time, with the exception of all the eating of course. I have been on trips with parents before where there were structured activities for the kids. I am both too lazy to carry items like bored games, and all of the information that I have read shows free play to be valuable for learning and physical development. My kids often play with the toys in the backcountry: rocks and sticks, make crafts with the supplies in the backcountry: rocks and sticks, use the sports equipment in the backcountry: you guessed it, rocks and sticks.

With such a bike crowd, it was no surprise that the kids’ bikes were all good quality light bikes. The parent’s bikes were a quirky assortment. Alex and I had our Krampus 29+ bikes, mine a singlespeed, which were overkill for this section of trail, but are versatile enough that both of us use them as our main bikepacking bikes. Ray earned some cred with his dump-salvaged Trek turn-of-the-millennium hardtail which was in excellent condition, especially considering its $0 cost. There was a fleet of long-tail cargo bikes present, mostly Xtracycles, a couple of MTBs, and Tania, Andy and Ellen brought their fatbikes. The three trailers were a fat-tired Burley, the Chariot child-carrier trailer, and Ray had a salvaged trailer that had seen better days but worked fine to carry their stuff. Arguably, the most suitable bike for this trip was Jeremy’s Surly Big Fat Dummy, a longtail fatbike destined to carry his children and gear across many sandy, snowy, or really any kind of adventure they choose.

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This summer has been extremely dry, and so the trail in was quite dusty. Much as we were enjoying hanging out together, we were all glad to have the rain start in earnest around 8:30 PM. Not only would the moisture consolidate the trail for the ride out, but it was a great way to encourage all the kids to bed. The rain on our tarp is a familiar sound to me and so I was quickly lulled to sleep.

There is always a risk of a kid not sleeping on any trip, usually on the first night as they adjust to an unfamiliar setting. This was no exception and one of the twins (we won’t mention which) was reluctant to do any sleeping. The parents were heroically tolerant of this, I suspect they might even take her on another trip.

The ride out is predominantly downhill. Thanks to the rain, the dusty trail had consolidated and was much easier to ride on going out than coming in. Even the least experienced riders had gained some extra confidence, though some of them were more tired than they had been on the trip in.

I am very happy at how well this ride turned out. From meeting new people, to seeing different gear and styles, to enjoying the creativity and open minds of the children, it was a great success. We were talking of more trips even as this one was unfolding. There have been requests to join next year’s ride should we make it an annual event. I am overwhelmed by the positive response this has received. I am flattered that others think that the things I like to do are fun.

Though this was not a major adventure, nor a life-changing experience, it was something that I hope the kids will remember. I feel it has strengthened bonds between the families and given us all new ideas. Thanks to all of you for joining us.

Posted on 2017-08-06

Piecemeal Bikepacking with Tadhg

We were dropping Tania and Fiona off for a 4-day weekend in Radium and so the logical idea was to challenge ourselves with the Kootenay Gravel Grinder route. We were a week late for the race, and we’d be days off the pace, but it was in the right place, and from what I hear, a nice route.

The forecast 35ºC heat sounded a little discouraging.

Fortunately, the very rad Megan “Evil Moose” Dunn was putting on an overnight family bikepacking trip on behalf of bikepack.ca on our “home trail” the Elbow Loop. Though Tadhg was going to be the only teen on board, I didn’t want to miss a chance to meet other bikepacking families. I figured Tadhg’s babysitting experience would serve him well.

We decided to take the easy way in so that we could leave the car in a good position to follow Megan’s overnighter with another, longer ride.

We always think of the hike up to Elbow Lake as a bit of a slog, but as Tadhg grows, more of it becomes rideable for him. Our 7km ride in to Tombstone campground was done in just under half an hour, I felt like going for an out-and-back ride somewhere just to have been riding my bike for a bit of time.

[click pictures to embiggerate]

We set up our tent, and were just discussing moving it to a more open area to get out of the stench of horse droppings (the campground is used by equestrians, who apparently have no rules or desire to do any cleanup after their horses) when Megan and her gang arrived.

They had made it up the Little Elbow side of the trail in about 5 hours, which sounds slowish but is actually pretty good time for a family. When there are a 4 and 6 year old riding a tandem attachment and their own bike, the speeds drop pretty quickly.

Later in the afternoon another family arrived on foot with their 1-year-old baby in a backpack. This was definitely a hardcore group.

Once the tents were set up in a more open area of the campground, thoughts turned to food (and the kids started playing tag with each other). I had my new “recipe” rice:

2 cups instant rice (with salt from rice instructions)
1/2 cup roasted cashews
oil from rice instructions in separate container
1/2 cup coconut milk powder
1 tbs curry powder
Add water according to rice instructions and let sit for 5 minutes (10 minutes if above 1500m)

The coconut milk powder really boosts the calorie count and the cashews add some valuable protein to this tasty dish. I plan on adding dehydrated vegetables to future versions.

As we finished dinner, Jeremy and Chris arrived, Chris’s 8-year-old was under her own power on a 24″ wheel fatbike while Jeremy had his Surly Big Fat Dummy with his daughter as cargo (and pusher on steep hills). They had experienced some traffic and other delays, and had come up the much harder Big Elbow side. Their 5 hour time was a substantial accomplishment.

I struggle to find adequate words to describe how much I liked this group. I knew Megan was the real thing in a world of phonies. It turned out that her buddy Katrina is pretty much a force of nature. She and Mike’s son is the kind of kid I like to be around, energetic, patient, intelligent and fun-loving. Jeremy and Chris were justifiably proud of their daughters. It took a lot of effort for them to ride/push in the harder way. It really is easy for me to like bikepacking parents, I hope to do something with them again soon.

For our second day, Tadhg suggested that we do the 40km loop, and since he had bonded with the younger boys, we opted to escort them out and then giv’er back to the campsite for our second night.

Mom-to-be bikepacking.

Mike Rocked the pack-mule bike and trailer.

Katrina is my new bike hero.

Next-level parenting.

From experience, I can say that the 5 hours it took us to get out to the trailhead was a very decent speed for a group that included a pregnant woman, a dad with trailer and panniers, a 4-year-old on tandem attachment and a 7-year-old. The level of whine was impressively low as well.

Our trip back up the other side with just the two of us (mostly unladen) was just under the 2.5 hour mark, including a stop for second lunch and investigation of the newly refurbished Romulus campground. This was always our favourite of the loop campgrounds, but the new version has a much improved hiker section, so that the equestrian and hiker sides aren’t the posh equestrian and the rustic hiker sections. I can’t wait for it to open.

The fancy new outhouse at Romulus

Monday’s ride back to the car was uphill, so it was slower than the way in, the plan was to move the car to Sawmill, and then ride the High Rockies Trail to Goat Creek trail and then down to the backcountry campground near Banff town.

I had heard on Friday an interview with the designer of the High Rockies trail in which they discussed how beginner-friendly it was. There was also discussion of how much flow it had. There was even mention of bikepacking, though I was dubious. Previous sections I had ridden were fairly smooth, so I was a little surprised when it became clear how much climbing we were doing.

The reality is that the trail is designed to follow contours and drain well, so it isn’t quite as beginner as I was expecting. Tadhg has no pump track experience, so the constant dips sucked his speed away rather than giving him a chance to pump. The trail flow is also at faster speeds than he could manage with a loaded bike.

Since we had the car option, I decided that we needn’t suffer quite so much and so we turned around after 45 minutes or so to return to the Sawmill Parking lot. Conveniently, we may have missed a bear closure on the trail just ahead of where we were. The more downhill ride back to the car was much easier than the ride out.

A look at the map and a car ride took us a bit further up the trail. Buller mountain seemed a reasonable place to start and be able to get into the campground by nightfall. The trail was still difficult, but Tadhg was getting the hang of the wavy trail and keeping some of his momentum. After nearly 18km, we came out to a spot near the road and had a good look up the valley. We saw virtually nothing. The smoke was getting quite thick and was obscuring our views of the mountains. We then made the decision to pull the plug on the adventure. Neither of us were in the mood to ride through a smoky mess with the accompanying dry throat and stinging eyes.

On the way back, we did shortcut a section of the trail by taking the road, but the dusty gravel held little appeal, and we were soon back on the trail. All total, we rode roughly 60km for the day which isn’t a bad number for the types of trails.

I do not want to seem like I’m disparaging the High Rockies Trail, it is extremely well-designed, especially given the difficult area it travels through. My main issue with the High Rockies Trail is its lack of campgrounds. There are essentially no campgrounds (a couple of car campgrounds at the south end) for the entire 80km of trail. Since few people (and no beginners) have it in them to ride 160km of the trail as an out-and-back trail in a single day, the lack of campgrounds is a significant oversight. If there were campgrounds at the North end and two other places along the trail, they would go a long way to making the trail bikepacking friendly. I’ve heard that I wouldn’t have this issue if I didn’t have my family to slow me down, but realistically my family don’t move much slower than the average adult, and approximately no hikers will go 80km between campsites.

As it sits, the High Rockies Trail is a great collection of day rides. I might one day ride it as a very long day, but as a hiking or bikepacking trail, it fails miserably until some campgrounds are built along its length. Perhaps making the Mt Rummel campground year-round would be a good start.

Posted on 2017-08-03

Back to the Rockwall 2017: Revenge of the Porcupine

Last year’s hike to the Rockwall was spectacular, but trail conditions were a little questionable, and the weather ranged well into the adverse zone with snow, sleet, hail, wind, and rain. We thought we would have another go at it this year to see if we could top our previous experience.

There were many emails warning of bridges out and deadfall and avalanche debris on the trail. We weren’t overly concerned, since last year featured whole days of mostly climbing over deadfall, routefinding over large expanses of snow, avalanche debris, and the very same bridges missing.

We were very concerned about the possibility of smoke obscuring the views, but we saw pictures and heard reports that it was clear, so we went ahead with our trip in spite of some trepidation. It is way less fun to do a world-famous hike when you can’t see the world-famous mountains – we experienced that at Mt. Assiniboine and had no desire for a repeat.

We ended up having the luckiest hike in history. We lucked out on weather, though if we need to complain, a couple of days were too hot and sunny. We were also fortunate that the smoke was elsewhere, and the views were spectacular. The trail crew had been hard at work to clean the trail debris, the missing bridge was a trivial wade across the river, the sun had melted most of the snow, and there was less deadfall for the whole hike than we experienced some days of last year.

[click pictures to enlarge]

One of our ideas for going in later July was that the wildflowers would be in bloom, and we certainly were treated to some impressive displays.

On our third morning we were were alerted to the presence of a bear by some other campers. The bear had come between the two eating areas of the campground after circling the one where we weren’t. We made some substantial noise and the bear left. Our last 5 minutes of hiking were also enlivened with a bear sighting, this time an adult bear about 50m to the side of the trail. We again made some noise, this time with the safety latch of the bearspray off, and we made it to the car with the bear having been last seen heading slowly away from us.

2017-07-24 09-45-22 3862.jpg — The bear, as seen from our breakfast table

There was the porcupine attack…

I awoke at 1:45 AM to a gnawing sound. I looked out the mosquito net to vaguely discern a shape that was possibly gnawing on Fiona’s flip flop. I bravely attempted to retrieve or bat the flipflop away from the (blurry) large-cat-sized rodent, possibly a large marmot? Fortune smiled upon me once again. The rodent was not a skunk. I am 100% certain of my mammal identification because my swipe at the sandal was interrupted by the pain of a couple of porcupine quills stabbing into the backs of my fingers.

Once I had painfully removed the quills from my flesh, (the backs of fingers fortunately don’t have too deep of flesh before the quills hit bone) mopped up the blood, and calmed down a little, I wanted to go hunt down the porcupine to take a picture of it. I am pretty certain that it was very cute, even though it did a number on the handle of Tania’s hiking pole handle (its actual chewing victim, not the flipflop). Fiona would have no part in the chase, “Dad, it isn’t cute, it’s a porcupine!” For his part, Tadhg was concerned about possible venom in the spines and asked “What if it comes back to eat us?”

The porcupine wounds cleared up, and I hope I have learned an important lesson about finding the flashlight before lashing out at vague shapes in the night.

Posted on 2017-08-02

Valhalla BC Provincial Park

Fiona got a chance to spend a few days with her cousin and Grandma, that meant that Tadhg and I were in the West Kootenays of BC for 5 days and wanted some adventure. Tadhg had a foot injury from helping me to re-roof our house, so he was favouring kayak as the mode for our adventure (my wrist and arm injuries didn’t rate).

Valhalla Provincial Park is about 20km of shoreline on Slocan Lake and was reasonably close for us to make it our destination.

Tadhg did all of the steering of the (rudder) kayak. He absolutely loved our days when we encountered strong winds and big waves, he said it was really fun, and type 1 fun, not our usual type 2 fun.

I’ll keep the text to a minimum, but my summary is very positive. Waterfalls, hiking trails, forest, First-Nations pictographs, fish, forest and much more await the visitor to this gorgeous park. The campgrounds are beautifully maintained. We will be back.

Posted on 2017-05-25

Milk River Paddling With Fiona

Fiona spends more time outside than the average room full of North American kids. She’s a veteran winter bikepacker and much more. So I had to take her seriously when she asked to go on a paddling weekend with me for the May long weekend.

After asking around and doing some Google “research”, I decided that the Milk River from the town of Milk River to Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park was going to be a good choice for us. My friend Tyler highly recommended it, and I read several blogs’ trip reports that made it sound fun. It sounded like it might offer a bit of exciting rapids while still being beginner-friendly enough for a 9-year-old. It looked more-or-less within the capabilities of our Innova Sunny inflatable (in hindsight, our Helios might have been the better choice) kayak so I wouldn’t have to rent any other gear.

My original plan was to drive down on Friday Morning and start paddling on Friday afternoon, but at the last minute, I decided that a night in Milk River would make for an easier start. I booked a couple of campgrounds and a car shuttle, we packed, and we were off.

The Milk River campground was like a ghost town when we arrived, with only some local teens chopping wood (I thought they worked there). Fiona spent some time exploring (and found frogs and garden gnomes) while I put up the tent and cooked. Since we knew there would be some car campgrounds and heavy winds on our trip, we decided to bring our tent instead of our usual tarp.

Fiona continued exploring and found a snake in the morning while I was drinking coffee and packing the boat. She calmly kept away from it, but had me come to see it since she knows I like snakes. It was a large garter snake sunning itself before slithering off to eat some vermin. One of our goals for this trip was not to get bitten by a rattlesnake.

The river started calmly enough, with small riffles and many rocks that we could run into. I started showing Fiona a bit about reading the river to know where the rocks are and also where the shallow water and slow current is hiding. There was an abundance of birds on the shores and in the water as well as the many cattle on the area ranches.

The arid prairie offered few trees, but was made interesting by the variety of shapes and heights of the riverbanks. They were essentially mud that had been carved by the river and there was lots of evidence of the river changing its own course through erosion of the banks. As the day wore on, the cliffs got higher and the rapids got swifter, but they were very manageable as long as you took some care to find your way between the plentiful rocks.

It seemed like no time later (it was in fact about 2.5 hours) when we came around a bend to the first night’s campground, Gold Springs Park. Super friendly and helpful, I really liked how much care the owners clearly put into this RV park. There were several tent sites down near the water, and they were super handy for getting our stuff to and from our boat. In fact, I brought the entire boat up to our site.

Fiona had a great time playing with different kids. We had a couple of rain showers, but not enough to dampen the fun. We had our usual burritos, but did not fire roast them since I didn’t want to buy firewood in such a sparsely treed area. The park has a playground and a small oxbow lake for recreation, so it is a convenient place for a kid to have fun.

The following morning we hit the river around 11 after a great night’s sleep. We met some motorcycle tourists from Canmore while eating our breakfast in the wind shelter at the park. They had some good tips on packing light and were a really fun bunch.

The river was fairly consistently faster than the first day. My routine question to Fiona as we would approach a section of rapids was, “Should we take the easy way, or the fun way?”. She inevitably chose the fun way, so we spent a lot of time speeding past the cliffs and dodging out to avoid rocks. Our kayak was really designed for flat water, so every wavy section that we hit required bailing upon exit. The thing we missed most was taking pictures of the impressive cliffs and of the river itself, my camera stayed in the dry bag for most of our boat time since I couldn’t paddle, keep the camera dry and take pictures at the same time. Fiona did take some video though and I hacked it into a YouTube video (<–yes that is a link to the video).

We had been threatened with 7 hours of rapids so I stowed Fiona’s paddle for the day thinking that it would be safer to maneuver the boat alone. The rapids were definitely easier to negotiate alone, but tremendous fun, we were almost disappointed to come to the Poverty Rock water access campground after a mere 5 hours. It did mean that we had a lot of sunlight left in which to dry our clothes. We had dry-pants and dry-jackets, but I had not worn mine since it was too warm. Fiona said I looked like I had been for a swim while wearing my clothes.

The Poverty Rock campground was quite popular, a couple of families were there as well as two other groups who were paddling the river. Fiona of course made friends with some people who it turns out were summer camp staff, no doubt trying to stay away from the 9-year-olds that would be their work for the next few months. They had great patience and looked at all the photos Fiona wanted to show them on the iphone that she was using as a camera.

Fiona and I walked up to a viewpoint after dinner and took some pictures of the view up and down the river. I suspect that Fiona’s crouching to take pictures of flowers was where she picked up a tick. She was wearing permethrin treated tights, so it is unlikely they crawled up her legs. It was also where I managed a cactus encounter. I was leaning down to take a picture of Fiona when I put my hand out for balance, on a barrel cactus! To take the weight off my hand, I lifted it and sat down, on a prickly pear cactus! Fiona had to pull a few of the spines from the seat of my pants. Fortunately there was no video, or I might be the star in the YouTube hit: “Man Sits on a Cactus.”

hand-wounding cactus

ass-biting cactus

Surprisingly, some trucks, one with a trailer, drove down to the water-access-only campground and camped for the night. Other than giving a weird feel to the campground and their constant trips up and down the road (why?) they seemed mostly harmless. I would have been more annoyed if they had stayed up late being loud. As it was, I was already up at 7:30 when they began their pilgrimages up and down the hill in their 4x4s.

Our Sunday paddle was reputed to be the easiest, so I handed over the rear seat and gave Fiona back her paddle. It took her some time to get the knack of handling the boat, but she paddled us through the most difficult part of the day. Her arms were getting pretty tired by the time she switched places with me, but she seemed to have fun and enjoy the responsibility. The section she paddled was by no means flat, and she had to pay constant attention to steering the boat.

I took over near the entrance to Writing-on-Stone park and the imposing hoodoos of the park are impressive indeed. It is very typical of the badlands and is world famous for good reason. Soon we were seeing hikers on the trails through the park.

By the time we “planned” our itinerary for this trip, the car campground at Writing on Stone park was long ago booked up. If weather had been worse, I suspect that some folks would have left, but as it was warm and sunny, no sites had been vacated. Fiona had us go to the beach for a short time so she could go for a swim. I had a chance to talk to Wes and Cheri about kids and outside and fun, while Fiona played building in the sand games with their 3 younger kids. I thoroughly enjoyed our brief time together, they had tremendous knowledge of the area as well as some great insight into some aspects of parenting (like homeschooling) that have always fascinated me.

During our time on the beach we were treated to an appearance by a bull snake. Fortunately, Wes knew what it was, since I really only know garter snakes and I can tell rattlesnakes if they rattle or bite me. It created a great commotion on the beach.

The long drive home meant that we didn’t get home until 10:30pm. After her shower, Tonie was asleep within seconds after promising to wake me up at 8:30 AM with a double espresso. Instead, she woke me up at 9 with a tick (remember the tick?) that she found on the back of her neck. Once the tick was removed, coffee was served.

The Milk River area is one that I have mostly overlooked until now, but I will definitely be back at some point. There seem to be plenty of gravel roads, so I have high hopes that someone will tell me about a great bikepacking route that we can try some time.