Yukon Ho!

June 20, 2006

July 12, 2006 on 5:20 pm | In Uncategorized |

Biking time: 12:15PM to 6:30PM
End: A gravel pit North of Bob Quinn
Distance: 74km
Still very relaxed from our hot tub and sauna fest, we slept in this morning and then headed to the restaurant fort breakfast. What a great way to start a day of biking. After finishing our food, we took full advantage of the free coffee refills before hitting the showers. By the time we started packing up the tent it was after 11. As we finally started biking away, I remembered that I’d wanted to check our tire pressure for a few days, and knowing we had a mountain pass to cover in the morning, I figured it would be a good time to do it. Unfortunately after topping up my rear tire, I pulled the damned valve clean out of the rim, ripping a hole in the tube. Oops. So we ended up staying at Bell II an extra half hour while I replaced my tube and topped up our other three tires.

Finally we were off. The morning ride was fantastic, as it wound through the mountains passing over a few streams and creeks. We were worried about the morning ride because we had read that it would take us through Ningunsaw Pass, which sounded like a mountainous climb. What we couldn’t figure out was why the pass was claimed to be 466m when our starting altitude at the lodge was over 500m. We had figured it was either a typo, or we’d be subjected to a valley descent followed by a clim bover the pass. Turns out the pass is really just the location after which the streams feed into the Ningunsaw river instead of the Bell-Irvine. So most of the morning was downhill, a welcome break from yesterday. For about a half hour we followed beside the Ningunsaw River, and its twisty current that looked amazing and gave me the urge to ride down it in a tube.

As the road turned away fro mthe river, we were forced back uphill, part of which was ridden against the wind and into the rain. Awesome! We passed by Bob Quinn, a small trailer community where seasonal road workers set up camp. Past Bob Quinn, we hit some very patchy sealcoat and spent the rest of the day doing the same thing as yesterday: climbing a hill after every corner. After 70km we were ready to die, so we started looking for somewhere to camp. We stopped at a gravel pullout and made dinner, then continued on to find a camping spot down the road so that the bears wouldn’t be able to find us at the end of their delicious dinner-scented rainbow. After a few minutes, we saw a sign for a Brake Check ahead, which said only one thing to us: DOWNHILL. We checked out the grade warnings, and discovered that we were about to be treated to a 10km downhill stretch, but that it would be followed by a 5km uphill stretch that appeared to end at the same elevation as the start. We started down, knowing that we would not climb the other side today, and 1km into the descent we spotted an RV parked in one of the small gravel quarries next to the road. So in we swooped and met Marcel, Ed and Wolf, three road workers who were just finishing up. We found out that Marcel was living in his RV on that site during the job, so we asked to tent there. Of course it was no problem, and he even stored our food in his truck for us. So even in the middle of Nowhere, BC we were able to find someone to camp with, and an entire bear-proof dump truck to store our food in. Stop worrying, Mom!

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