After building my bike up yesterday, I had planned on doing a quick shakedown ride to Canmore to buy supplies. Having been to Banff before I knew that everything there was just a little bit more expensive than outside the National Park. Heading to Canmore and doing the first 10 miles of the route seemed like a good idea, not only to get ready to do the long push tomorrow for Day 1, but to make sure I put my bike together correctly.
I got a small group together, Tim and Steve, who I’d met the day before. Tim was staying in the same dorm at the YWCA with me, and had been building his bike up at the same time, and his friend Steve who had just gotten into town last night, but was staying in a different hostel. We all packed a few things on our bikes and headed down to the trail.
The ride was fairly uneventful. I was excited to remember so much of this first section, and it seemed to be a little easier than I had remembered. It helped that I wasn’t riding a fully road-style loaded mountain touring bike. The miles ticked off pretty quickly, only the first 12 or so were on the track for tomorrow anyway. Along the way we even met two riders coming into Banff from Canmore for tomorrow’s start.
After we got off the trail we started climbing the wide and somewhat washboarded Smith Dorian / Spray Lake Road toward Canmore.
The road is wide and dusty, and there were a few cars driving along the road. It was a nice preview of the kinds of roads I’d ride on in the coming days.
We made it to the top of a little hill and enjoyed the downhill into Canmore. We made our way downtown toward a bike shop, and found there was a farmer’s market! We had some lunch, and walked around. Then on the way out of town we stopped at the grocery store and filled up on supplies. It was getting a little later in the afternoon and some rain clouds looked like they were rolling in, so we decided to take the easy way back. There’s a paved bike route that runs between Canmore and Banff, which is mostly railroad grade and easy to ride on.
On the way back Tim’s glasses broke, and we spent about 30 minutes trying to find the lens that flew into the grass on the side of the trail. Steve eventually found it, and though Tim would try to fix the frames with super glue later back in Banff the other side of the frames would crack the following day, rendering them totally useless.
After we got back we made a huge pot of noodles in the hostel kitchen to ‘carb up’ for tomorrow’s (first of many) long day. With dinner taken care of I went through some final preparation, and climbed into my bunk to try and get a little sleep. The nervousness was starting to set in, and it took a little while to fall asleep.
