I was hoping to get up super early, but only ended up getting out regular early today. The cabin was still warm, and over night it had filled up. It ended up that the floor was totally full and people were sleeping on the deck outside, and some more had camped nearby. I wasn’t the last one out of the cabin, which I counted as a win, though I didn’t beat a few of the folks I was hoping to get a head start on.
The trail was much more ridable than the previous couple of miles. There were a few stream crossings and a couple of steep technical decent, but nothing outrageous. The worst part of the morning was a tricky single track section that wasn’t well marked. It didn’t even seem like the right trail at the beginning, but according to the line on my GPS it was the closest route. I know a few people ahead of me took the wrong route, which ended up at the same dirt road. Even though my tracker wasn’t sending out 5 minute updates, I still didn’t want to get DQ’d for following the wrong trail.
Eventually the technical trail gave way to a nice rolling dirt road. It was still early when I got there, but I realized I still had over 30 miles and one big climb to go before I got to Fernie. The section before the big climb was fairly easy and a little boring compared to yesterday’s scenery.
Finished with the ‘flat’ section, I missed the turn to climb up and over to Fernie. I backtracked and started climbing. A few other racers caught up to me while I was backtracking and we climbed up and over together.
Over the climb and onto pavement I headed to the closest restaurant on route, which happened to be McDonald’s. I got there in time for breakfast, and then ate and stayed until the menu kicked over to lunch. I got some cheeseburgers to go and stuffed those into my bags. I remembered seeing some YouTube video about how McDonald’s cheeseburgers don’t seem to decay so I thought they could withstand a day or two in my seat bag.
Back off and riding after and admittedly extended meal brake, I realized that the race route this year followed the alternate that we toured back in 2013. It was a pretty boring mixed surface section until the route broke away from the section I was familiar with. It was fun to ride some of the sections I thought I wouldn’t see again, even if they were kind of boring. I was still having some doubts about the navigation on my GPS so I had a few sections where I had to backtrack, and realized I was on the right track the whole time. Maybe next time I’ll believe the line on the map.
The afternoon turned out to be a lot hotter than I expected and I ran through water very fast. I had to stop several times to fill up my bottles, and dip my buff in the cold streams in an attempt not to overheat on the climbs. Even though I was coming from California, the Bay Area hadn’t hit these temperatures consistently yet during my training rides. I was starting to wonder if I would be able to handle the next couple of days, and who knows if I could make it through the desert sections if I couldn’t even hack it through the ‘cool’ Canada intro.
I kept plugging away and eventually the temperature started to come down. My stomach was still giving me grief, possibly because of whatever I ate before the start that gave me trouble or maybe it was heat related. Whatever the case I was still suffering some indigestion. Thankfully I was able to stop near Butt’s cabin, a place I would have stopped had it been later in the day. Unfortunately there was still lots of daylight left, so I just had a couple cheeseburgers and headed back out. My next destination would be Wigwam campground, or somewhere there-about.
At Butt’s cabin there were a few racers that turned up, or were already there and we all decided to push on a bit further together. It was fun to ride and chat with folks knowing that we would soon be even more spread out and groups like this would become more and more rare. Little by little our group started to break apart and it was down to just Brandi and myself riding together. We both wanted to get to Wigwam campground and stop for the night. Some of the others had decided to stop already, or were farther back still.
As the sun was setting we started descending down toward the campground near the river. I came around a turn and saw two bears sitting in the road. Not quite sure what to do I stopped fast, skidding my tires on the gravel. That was all the alert the bears needed and they both ran off into the woods. I waited for a bit and Brandi caught up to me before we started riding again.
We made it to the campground as the last light was fading. I did camp chores, and tried to set up my bivy on some flat ground for my first night ever sleeping in it. I probably should have gone through a test run or two to see how I actually felt about sleeping in it. It turns out I’m not the biggest fan of bivies as a shelter for multiple days. As an emergency shelter I think it makes a lot of sense, but for a multi day trip, even a race, it just doesn’t work for me. I’d much rather lug the extra weight to have a bit more room, and a lot less condensation on my sleeping bag than what I ended up dealing with to try and save some weight.
This first night, and subsequent nights in the bivy, really made it hard for me to feel comfortable pushing a little bit further each day if I knew there was a hotel or lodge where I could stop a bit shorter. That extra bit of comfort in staying dry and knowing that my sleeping bag would be dry for tomorrow night would have been good piece of mind so I could push longer into the night.
