Day 15 – 92km Kicking the Horse’s ass

Camping at the kicking horse campground was a little chilly, got down to around 6 degrees that night but our sleeping bags and extra layers kept us warm through the night. We mentally geared ourselves up for what we believed would be our most intense day yet. 28km through kicking horse pass up to Lake Louise.

We started the day off with a little off-roading/bushwacking shortcut to get back on the highway and then up, up and away we went. About half an hour into the hill we reached a blasting site and were detained for 20minutes but while we were there we got chatting with a man who informed us that we were already most of the way up the mountain and it was all downhill from there! What a surprise, we had been waiting for the beast of a mountain to rear its ugly head but really we had almost reached the pass! We decided then that we may as well continue on and instead of ending in Lake Louise we would pedal all the way to Banff.

On our brief stop at the bakery in Lake Louise to refuel we met a girl riding her bike to Quebec, she was riding 200km that day and wild camping! What an inspiration for us to see her doing that on her own! We invited her to join us since she was planning on following a similar route and hopefully we will meet up here in Calgary and continue on together!

The ride into Banff from Lake Louise was stunningly beautiful and quiet since we took the Bow Valley Parkway a much less used roadway. We saw more cyclists on that route then we had on the entire trip thus far. I guess that is a very popular day trip route since the road cyclists were just zooming by us as fast as can be.

That night we camped above Banff at the Tunnel Mountain Village, and a village it is – we estimated there were probably as many tents there as there are dwellings on Pender! That being said the sites were still spacious and there were lots of trees! We celebrated our last night all together as team BC with a tasty dinner and some red wine and ciders. After that it was quick to bed since the next day’s ride would be our longest yet, but that’s a story for another day…