The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Beautiful

GO THE DISTANCE. JULY/AUGUST 2008 www.ADvENTUrECYCLING.OrG $3.50

waypoints 8 cyclists kitchen 30 open road gallery 39

Plus:

Riding A doomed tRAil in nePAl

touRing bikes thAt ARent

anniversary issue:

Ten Years on the Great Divide Route

3a d v e n t u r e c y c l i s t j u l y / a u g u s t 200 8 a d v e n t u r e c y c l i n g . o r g

10 The GooD, The baD, The uGlY, & The beauTiful by Aaron Teasdale a minimalist, an epicurean, and their two companions explore the Great Divide Mountain bike Route and its many tantalizing side trips in the Canadian Rockies.

18 a GReaT DeCaDe on The GReaT DiviDe by Michael McCoy a look back by the creator of the Great Divide Route at the challenges that laid on the road, and the places where he did the same.

22 lasT RiDe on The annapuRna by Nathan Ward a search for hope and adventure on nepals most famed trekking route.

7/8:2008 contentsJuly/august 2008 volume 35 number 7 www.adventurecycling.org

d e pa r t m e n t s

07 CoMpanions WanTeD08 WaYpoinTs34 MaRKeTplaCe/ClassifieDs 39 open RoaD GalleRY

c o lu m n s

30 The CYClisTs KiTChen / Nancy Clark Eating well at home and on the road

32 CYClesense / John Schubert Touring bikes that arent. Or are they?

l e t t e r s

04 leTTeR from the eDiToR05 leTTeRs from our ReaDeRs06 leTTeR from the DiReCToR

is published nine times each year by the adventure Cycling association, a nonprofit service organization for recreational bicyclists. individual membership costs $35 yearly to u.s. addresses and includes a subscription to Adventure Cyclist, a copy of The Cyclists Yellow Pages, and discounts on adventure Cycling maps. The entire contents of Adventure Cyclist are copyrighted by Adventure Cyclist and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from Adventure Cyclist. all rights reserved.

our covera golden doubletrack leads through the Canadian Rockies along the Great Divide Mountain bike Route. photo by aaron Teasdale.

(left) harold Teasdale and Ron Gorayeb dodge cow parsnip during a Great Divide sidetrip in albertas peter lougheed park.

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the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful a Weeks Ramble on Canadas Great Divide

story and photos by aaron Teasdale

12 a d v e n t u r e c y c l i s t j u l y / a u g u s t 200 8 a d v e n t u r e c y c l i n g . o r g

The path beneath our tires forked and, as always, i longed to take the path less traveled. The problem was we knew noth-ing about this overgrown trail that peeled off into the wilderness, except our Great Divide Mountain bike Route maps descrip-tion of it as an alternate route to spray lake Reservoir. potentially very marshy. as some-one constitutionally incapable of sticking to predetermined routes, im easily seduced by such things as alternate routes, especially when, like this one, they circumvent busy and supernaturally dusty dirt roads. a pass-ing pair of mountain bikers one with a gashed shin, the other with what looked like a freshly broken nose knew nothing of the trail either, but enthusiastically offered, Whats the worst that could happen?

Wrong question (answer: broken things, grizzly bears). The right and tantalizing question was, Whats the best that could happen? how good and remote and inter-esting could it be? Thats the question that fuels my forays into the unknown. Thats the eternal question that lures me into the hinterlands, to glory and disaster, to a trips best and worst moments, again and again.

This trip would prove no exception.it was our first day on the Canadian Great

Divide Route. our group of four had pedaled out from the tourist-choked streets of banff, alberta that morning and i still clung to a goal of reaching an increasingly distant-seeming campsite that night. but, never being one to let the artifice of a schedule interfere with a quality adventure, in the end there was little suspense i was powerless to resist the alternate route.

bidding farewell to my father and our friends Ron and steve, who didnt share my enthusiasm for unknown and potentially very marshy byways, i followed the over-grown trail down to Goat Creek, forded its knee-high current, and was promptly alone in the wilderness. pedaling a dry, rolling doubletrack littered with wolf and moose scat along the base of the Goat Range, the green forest corridor delivered on every bit of its alternate-route promise. This is why i bike tour gliding silently through wild country never fails as an invigorating reminder of the raw beauty of life and our insignificance in its vast, timeless theater.

Cmon, Dad, the alternate route is the

best! i said to my father as we met by chance near the Goat pond dam at the alter-nate routes midpoint. itll be great.

but thats the thing about rambles into the unknown theyre unknown. like a blind date, anything can happen. Thats part of the excitement. but blind dates can go horribly wrong (see: The Crying Game). With Dad at my side, the lovely grassy path promptly turned into a much-less-lovely grassy bog. pushing through marshes and portaging our bikes across deep, fast-flowing brooks, the route had become a micro-cosm of the potential and pitfalls of wilder-ness detours. id gone from having sunny, Thoreau-like epiphanies to dragging my father through a swamp in only a few short miles. Thats the thing with these explora-tions theyre never boring.

our plan for the week ahead was to enjoy a relaxed spin along the northern stretch of the worlds longest mountain-bike route, rid-ing 160-ish miles from banff, alberta south to the coal-mining town of sparwood, british Columbia, primarily through mountain val-leys, with one crossing of the Continental Divide at the trips midpoint. sure, we could

Waterside cruising. It doesnt get any better than the riding along Albertas Spray Lake Reservoir.


ride farther in a week, but ive never been interested in simply riding a bike quickly through a place i want to tromp up its mountainsides, loll on its riverbanks, and explore its hidden folds and creases.

We made a fire with driftwood that eve-ning near our campsite on the pebbly shore of banff national parks spray lake, short of my goal, but with a sprawling cerulean pool in front of us, peaks on all sides, and the lakeshore to ourselves it was so over-whelmingly beautiful that i couldnt have cared less. The fire was not only lovely and a great place to dry my and Dads soggy shoes, but necessary for dinner wed discovered shortly after arriving that our camp stove was completely nonfunctional. (note to self: check campstoves before weeklong trips.) Cooking boy scoutstyle over an open flame

not only made us feel gratifyingly rugged, but helped put things in perspective. as we sat on the lakeshore watching the last sunlight kiss the eastern summits, Dad said, its a pretty good day when the worst thing that happens is the stove not working. We all agreed that this was true. i decided not to mention our battle with the marsh, which was already feeling less disastrous and more heroic with each passing hour.

Dad and i have been taking backcountry trips every summer since i was 10 years old. for many of those years, Ron, my fathers best friend and a died-in-the-wool new Yorker, has joined us and provided both intentional and unintentional comic relief. steve was a newer friend of my fathers. a 65-year-old cycling maniac, he and my father were geezer-athlete kindred spirits who did things like ski across

finland together for fun. it quickly became apparent the next

morning that steve and i existed on oppo-site ends of the gear-packing spectrum. My priority is ultralight; steves is ultra-posh. i eschew panniers and trailers (too heavy), and consider a second pair of socks indul-gent. steve stuffed his trailer with a camp chair, a full-sized pillow, several books, and, shockingly, four bags of wine. fortunately, he proved more than up to the task of car-rying the extra weight, and it didnt take us long to see the beauty of having evening wine at camp.

our second days ride was the finest of the trip and one of the best, most scenic rides of my touring career. here the Great Divide Route follows a deteriorating dirt road, now gated and closed to cars, that wraps around the west side of the mountain-ringed spray lake reservoir. soon evolving into perfect touring singletrack, the route ducks into moist forest where wooden bridges delivered us across crystal-clear creeks, side explora-tions led to hidden waterfalls, and one off-route ramble (like i said: constitutionally incapable) brought me a glimpse of a moun-tain lion disappearing into the woods.

as we climbed up and away from the reservoir on a wildflower-lined doubletrack in the evenings golden light, we discussed where to camp. We camp where we camp, Dad said. Weve got no agenda were on vacation. The downside of this otherwise appealingly carefree philosophy was revealed when we overshot the reservoirs campsites, savagely bonked in search of a decent place to pitch our tents, and finally gave up, sleep-ing ingloriously off the side of a dirt road.

unfortunately there are no alternate

tower of Power. Theres no missing the coal mines in British Columbias Elk Valley.

/,$048,*/(

14

routes yet for the dusty and heav-ily travelled smith-Dorrien Road that links banff national park to peter lougheed provincial park. (Good news: a local trails organization is working on a trail extension from lougheed that would offer an entic-ing alternative.) The mountain scenery is head-spinningly great enough that its easy to forget youre on a crappy road until another air-conditioned car of tourists blasts by and sends a sun-blotting, nostril-clogging, eyeball-coating dust cloud into you.

fortunately, once we reached lougheed park a paved off-road bike path led us on a deliciously serpentine route through the woods to the belton General store, a typical tourist shop where we hoped to find a camp

stove of some kind. Cooking over fires was slow and took away our drive to have lovely things like morning tea. What we found at the belton store challenged our deeply held moral principles and nearly caused a fracture in the group. it was a Coleman stove. a large, heavy stove with a full-size burner that screwed onto the top of a football-sized propane canister. i showed it to my father, who had been making an effort to join me in ultralighthood.

no way, he said instantly. i cant buy that.

at this point, steve walked up, saw the stove, and said, Well, yes, were getting that. ill carry it. Thats a nice stove.

Dad resisted and there was a silent pause

as everyone looked at me. i had to admit it would make cooking easier. plus, steve was willing to carry it. besides our self-respect, what did we have to lose? Dad, defeated, shook his head in Coleman-induced dismay and muttered, after all that work to get lighter.

as we apportioned one of steves wine bags that night at our hike-in campsite on the shore of Kananaskis lake (a stunning return to campsite glory after our unimpressive digs of the previous evening), Ron saw the tower-ing Coleman camp stove for the first time.

Wow, look at that! he said. now thats a stove! better than that wussy stove you brought, aaron.

admittedly, the stove did rock. We

a d v e n t u r e c y c l i s t j u l y / a u g u s t 200 8 a d v e n t u r e c y c l i n g . o r g

gated at both ends. This jail for cyclists was named the most scenic in the U.S. by incarceration Journal.


whipped up a gourmet (by our remarkably low standards) freeze-dried dinner in no time, savored our cup of wine, jumped naked into the lake to rinse off the days copious dust, and watched the sunset paint the cir-rus-streaked sky blazing rose before tucking into our down cocoons and nylon shelters for the night. i was hopeful for the next day, as the route promised to deliver us from the tourists wilderness of alberta national parks to what i hoped would be the more remote wilderness of british Columbias elk valley.

The next day, the fourth of the trip, delivered a climb up what our map all-too-accurately described as a virtual wall over the 6,443-foot elk pass and across the Continental Divide. (Whats this? Ron said. no one said anything about a virtual wall.) The route here follows a powerline corridor which had been recently buzzed of all trees as a certified nature geek who relishes escaping the hum of modern soci-ety, i did not celebrate this. but powerlines or no, by coming over elk pass wed left the Rvs behind and now stood on the brink of another world.

The head of elk valley is over 40 miles of dirt road from the nearest town, and for the first time since the little-traveled shores of spray lake, it felt as if we were someplace remote and out of easy reach. This was good. even better was that the head of the valley harbors elk lakes provincial park, a hidden gem of the Canadian park system. Camping there, on the shores of elk lake, proved the finest single decision of our trip. a magnificent sprawl of high mountains draped with glaciers that feed pure mirror-surfaced lakes, its wilderness at its most awe inspiring.

since staying there forever wasnt a prac-ticable option, we decided on two nights and spent our layover day hiking to the foot of a giant glacier-melt waterfall, petain falls. as we finished off steves wine around the campfire that night, Dad said, The problem with places like this is that you want every place you go to be as nice.

i agreed there werent many places as nice as this. im just looking for places that are unspoiled, i said. places that still have some wildness in them. Minutes later, as if on cue, a bull moose lumbered through a small meadow and bedded down not 100 yards from our campsite.

G0211_QT_2advCyclist.indd 1 5/15/08 12:13:39 PM

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The next morning we loaded up the bikes and headed down the elk valley Road. bordered on both sides by mountains vaulting 5,000 feet from the valley floor, the elk valley is both rugged wilderness and, thanks to huge coal deposits and a thick blanket of timber, home to a host of miners and loggers. as we gradually pedaled down the valley, passing a pickup truck now and again, smoke began clouding the air. We would later learn a forest fire was flaming out of control in the mountains to our west. a ranger in lougheed had told us that alberta was closing the mountains on their side of the Continental Divide, the mountains to our east, to all human entry because of fire danger. fortunately for us, british Columbia had banned only campfires.

a long day of riding with more pow-erlines, buzzing helicopters of unknown ori-gin, fresh logging clearcuts, ever-thickening smoke, and temperatures in the high 80s (which always saps my will to live) had me fuming over these industrialized wild-lands and left all of us desperate for a decent campsite. after several recreation sites turned out to be trash-strewn and shoddy,


W W W x I R O N D O N K E Y x C O M

Self-Guided x Guided Groups x Custom Tours

in

IRELAND x ENGLAND x ITALY

we pushed on, everyone tired and worn out, to what the trusty map described as a nice meadow. When we reached it we found a very nice meadow indeed inhabited by a beat-up camper truck that seemed to be functioning as a kind of giant speaker for pounding 70s rock. Three dirty-faced chil-dren played on a rope swing and marveled over our bicycles, but the mysterious

and now surely deaf inhabitants of the shadowy camper did not emerge from their rocking lair. i was crestfallen. as a certi-fied campsite snob, this was my worst-case scenario. surveying the land around us, i realized why the mountain across the river looked funny the entire top of it had been flattened. it was a coal mine, a mountain-decapitating coal mine. We may have been

When to gomid-June through September is your prime window.

getting thereWe drove, left a van in Sparwood, and Kootenay Taxi (www.kootenaytaxi.com, 250-423-4409) shuttled us to Banff. If fly-ing to Calgary, check the Great Divide pages at www.adventurecycling.org for other shuttle options.

ResourcesMount Engadine Lodge (www.mountengadine.com, 403-678-4080) is a cyclist-friendly backcountry ref-uge near the foot of Spray Lakes Reservoir.

gearA review of gear for the Great Divide can be found at: www.adventurecycling.org/gearforgdr.

nuts & bolts: great divide Canada


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in the same valley, but we were a world away from elk lakes park.

battling despair, i walked to the far end of the meadow where i found a campsite just out of aerosmith range. a decrepit picnic table slumped into tall grass and a yellow road grader sat parked about 50 feet away, but there were good tent sites that over-looked the river. it would do. as evening cooled the smoky air, and we washed up in the river and cooked over the towering stove, our outlook improved. We took in the aspen-ringed meadow, the mountains beyond, and the curves of the river below. a kingfisher flew by and swallows darted across the surface of the water, gulping insects and singing swallow songs. The coal mine became interesting, the rocker children played on a rope swing, and i began to realize that maybe it doesnt all have to be pristine. and maybe thats what makes bike

travel enlightening you experience it all: the beautiful and the scarred, the tragic and the inspired. and there we were, sitting on the ground and taking it all in, four more people in this wild toss of mountains, rivers, mines, and 70s rock.

We slept well that night to the sounds of the river until 6 a.m. when someone revved up the road grader outside our tents. My bitterness over this subsided, however, as soon as i emerged to the sight of a blue, smokeless sky. after a fine instant-oatmeal breakfast, we jumped on the bikes for the last full day of the trip, the elk River Road delivering us into the prefab-suburb-plopped-in-the-wilderness mining company town of elkford, where the route led us out of the valley bottom and into the eastern foothills. our wheels rolled past bits of coal on the roadside, as a steep road paved smooth for the mining trucks climbed the valleys

side and led us under the concrete silos and smokestacks of a coal-washing station. it was jarring there, surrounded by forest and mountain, and we didnt linger.

soon after, the route turned onto a dirt road where we met a man in a well-used ford bronco. his tanned face radiated enthusiasm and, after almost hopping through the roof of his truck telling us about all the great camping in the area, he asked us the last thing i expected: have you gone up the road to see the mine yet?

When i answered no, that we werent interested in seeing the mountain-devour-ing ecological disaster zone (shortened, politely, to no), he said, with no letdown in enthusiasm, You should go up there! its something to see.

it was a surprising collision of world-views. he had nothing but pride in some-

continued on page 38

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thing i saw as a calamitous blight. surely it helped that his entire community was on the mines payroll, but he clearly loved the out-doors as much as i did and our split on the mine was a good reminder that we all view the landscape through a personal lens. it was only later that i would learn that coal mined in the elk valley is metallurgical coal used in the production of steel meaning we couldnt get too bent out of shape about the mines imposition on the wilderness when our bicycles might not exist without it.

There was certainly no denying the beau-ty of the valley we pedaled that afternoon. it was a glorious cruise our best day of riding since spray lake as a downward-trending, wildflower-lined road undulated along the side of fording River, finally cross-ing it and bringing us to our last great tan-gential temptation. a little-used track veered off the main road into thick forest. our map showed it as line Road, and it appeared to hew close to the river and reconnect with the main route farther on. The entrance may

have been overgrown, the guy in the bronco may have looked blankly at the map when id shown it to him, but, as we all knew by now, to resist it was futile. We pushed in.

The air cooled in the shadowy forest, ripe thimbleberries lined the trail, and we pedaled and pushed into the unknown. being the last night of our trip, we were on a special quest for the right campsite, a grand camp-site, a site with views over mountain vistas

that could live on in our memories long after the trip had ended. it was no small order, this last nights campsite, and we had already rejected the bronco guys recommended sites as too hemmed in and well used. Then the overgrown road emerged from the woods to the edge of a high, grassy bench, studded with cinnamon-barked ponderosas and overlooking the twisting river 100 feet below and the mountain front beyond. The concrete silos of another coal mine in the distant valley bottom even seemed ironically appropriate. another side-cut had paid off. Wed found our site.

after pitching tents on the edge of the precipice, we found that the evening had another adventure in store as we watched, horror-stricken, while our stoves mega-canister of fuel slowly and steadily sputtered out. Given its tremendous size, wed naively assumed, like loggers and hunters of centu-ries past, that it could never run out. now we were stuck with uncooked and highly anticipated tortillas, sausage, instant beans, and taco seasoning wed hauled up from the

grocery store in elkford. We let the tragic consequences sink in for a minute before the debate began: to build a fire or not?

sure, campfires were banned and the grass, twigs, and trees around us were dan-gerously dry. and, yes, the entire mountain range a few short miles to the east was closed to all human entry because of fire danger. and we had to admit that wed been riding through the smoke of an obviously large

forest fire just the previous day. but neither Dad nor i have ever been what you would call big rule people. in the end, after i implored the group for several minutes, common sense prevailed. We started a fire.

extremely carefully, of course. in an area cleared of vegetation with rock retaining walls for safety. and our dinner was saved. it was the best dinner of the trip, too, munched with gusto on the lip of the bench while herons floated over the river below. as we took in the landscape and the mountain faces reflecting the sunsets glow, it occurred to me that the beauty of these journeys is simply being out in the open vastness of the world, the expanse a sharp contrast, even an antidote, to the walled-in, climate-controlled nature of our regular lives. We drank deeply of the mountains that evening as we relaxed on the bench, soaking in the elixir of the wilderness with the extra relish and hint of melancholy that flavors the final night of every bicycle adventure.

as we packed our bags at camp the next morning, i said, Well, guys, should we just say to heck with it and keep riding the route all the way to Mexico?

Gosh, wouldnt that be fun? Dad said.it sure would, said steve.only if i can take a bath first, added

Ron.over 2,500 miles of Great Divide Route

lay to our south, beckoning, with their countless opportunities for exploration, heartbreak, and inspiration half a conti-nent laid bare. but they would have to wait; our ride was coming to an end. (no alternate route wed yet found could deliver us from our workaday world back in the land of elec-tricity and walls.) as we pushed off for the final time of the trip, a hawk cried out from its treetop perch and flew along with us, as if saying goodbye, while roadside moose prints turned to horse prints turned to sidewalk as we followed backroads into sparwood and our van. Then, all that was left was the easy highway drive back to Missoula. There were just a couple side roads i wanted to check out along the way...

When not occupied as deputy editor of this maga-zine, Aaron Teasdale can be found (with great difficulty) exploring remote places with family and friends.


longing for heads. Three helmets watch forlornly as their vulnerable owners enjoy wine at camp.

continued from page 17

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