Cycle Canada, Day 7, May 11/06

May 11/06, Thursday Day 7    738 Kms

Motel in Golden, B.C. ~126 Km's ~8:00 Hrs.

- @ Roger's Pass Summit - We've come 45 Km's in 3:45. At least 42 K of it was up hill. That plus the 25 K up from Revelstoke made for a 70 K climb. Now I know what those truckers were laughing about yesterday. The last 3 miles was brutal. I had expected a few crashes and a few close calls but nothing quite this crazy.

Doug has contacted Rob, Jane and the clan  to meet us in Lake Louise tomorrow (Saturday) for the 50 K ride to Banff then a trucking to Calgary for the weekend. Sounds good. We need to make 88 Km's today (Friday). Hard shell helps. Pizza too.

There's a monument at the top of the Roger's Pass. The highest point on the Trans-Canada. When we got there we were both on the verge of weeping. "It's all down hill from here, buddy. All down hill from here." We split the Tusker beer I'd given Doug to carry at the beginning of the trip. I'd carried this beer up Kilimanjaro a few months earlier and the highest point on the THC seemed like a good place to drink it. My half went straight to my brain. We took a good, long break at the cafateria at the summit and charged one of the camera batteries.

It's funny, but without my notes I don't really remember most of the climb from the campsite to the summit. I remember the last kilometre or two and straining to keep going. At some point near the top (either the 'Summit 1 Km" sign or when the monument was in sight) Doug had enough energy to take off and push to the top. I was working near the ragged edge and was happy to just keep my pace to the top. Doug beat me there by at least 200 yards.

I don't know how steep the slope we came up was but on the way down the other side I remember thinking that the eastern side looked a whole lot longer and steeper and I was glad that we'd come from the west.

The encounter with the truck was crazy. We'd zoomed through several snow sheds with open sides and I was having a good time. I saw the sign that warned of a "Dark Tunnel" ahead and thought, "I know how to deal with this." Just as I do when I wake up in the middle of the night to pee, I closed one eye. I thought that with one eye pre-adjusted to darkness I'd be able to see okay in the tunnel.

Nope.

The down hill side of the tunnel is just about 2 lanes wide. People had been driving on the left and the lane was clean, the right shoulder area was covered with gravel. Perhaps the result of winter sanding that hadn't been cleaned up yet. I thought Doug went in on the gravel. I chose the pavement. I was only a few seconds in and the light faded to nothing. Openning my second eye didn't help. All I could see was the little postage stamp of light in the distance with Doug's silhouette in the lower right. I was scared at first but then though, "I can see there's nothing between me and the exit so I won't hit anything. If I follow Doug I shouldn't hit any potholes." I relaxed a bit.

It's funny but when the truck came my only thought was that the folks back home would be disappointed that I'd been killed so early on the trip.

It turns out that the gravel on the shoulder was a good thing because it let me know to straighten out before I hit the side wall at 60 or 70 Km/Hr. Still I didn't know how far into the gravel I was or how close to the wall I was drifting. Once again, it was like being on a roller coaster, you can't do anything so just relax.

Once out of the tunnel Doug and I stopped and compared notes before continuing to the bottom.

Something no one mentions is that after you coast for 40 minutes down from the highest point on the Trans-Canada you then have to climb back up to the second highest point on the Trans-Canada. The day finished with another good down hill run then about 20 Km's of flat to Golden. I was so beat that I almost couldn't make the 1 block round trip to the beer store; but I forced myself.