The downwind side of the mountains

We did it! Up and over the mountains and here we sit looking at the welcome sight of miles and miles of plains without a hill in sight!

Day 5 was up and down the Selkirk mountains (summit 4300 feet) through Roger's Pass. For the most part it was a morning of gradual climbing although the last few kilometres made one of us remark "Never in my life have my legs felt like this!". There was little time for recovery as Day 6 up and over the Rockies (summit 5296 feet) through Kicking Horse pass. The last 4 km are up what they call "the big hill", steep enough that they have built these cool spirial tunnels for the trains to double back in to allow them to traverse the slope. Unfortunately there were no spirial tunnels on the highway... In fact there have been several instances of "train envy", as it seems the train tracks always get the most favourable grade. But despite (and likely because of) the challenges, the last few days have been quite the rush. It sure is fun to take the celebratory photograph at the summit sign and see the look on the people's faces when they get out of their tour buses at the top and see us with the bike. There has been lots of laughter over the fact that through it all, our only source of topographical information has been a schematic produced by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 reproduced in a pamplet we picked up at a tourist info centre. It has been absolutely central in both psyching ourselves up and providing relief for what is to come ahead and hasn't let us down.

In case the local topography wasn't enough of a challenge, Mother Nature has been doing her best to provide further tests with the weather and in the past few days we have seen pretty epic winds, rains and snow. The descent from Roger's Pass (which turned out not to be really much of a descent at all - the fact that these mountains don't seem to be very symmetric has been quite a disappointment!) turned very wet and very cold. And despite being soaked already, when the trucks barrell by to coat you in high pressure water and mud, you feel that much wetter. Approaching Kicking Horse pass the next day we faced a monster of a headwind: I liken the experience to what it might feel like to cycle into a brick wall while getting the wind knocked out of you. But both these days seem rather balmy compared to yesterday afternoon when we cycled downhill from Banff to Calgary in a raging snowstorm. So much snow fell the plows were out on Highway 1! We spent a rather low and soggy hour in a gas station variety store on an Indian reservation looking out on the winter scene. Spirits were lifted however by people pulling over to offer us rides (which we gratefully declined), by our "celebrity status" in the truck stop ("We saw you guys 100 km ago !") and perhaps most by the special treat of a night in a motel in Cochraine.

We are making lots of friends on the road. When we are slogging up the sides of the mountains often we get beeps or shouts of encouragement, sometimes even "hang loose" gestures out of windows. Also, lots of people like to ask us where we are going. Not wanting to be too over-confident this early into the trip it has become our company policy to reply "east" and wait for further interrogation.

Finally, I was expecting to have lots of time for deep thoughts as the legs turned over, over and over again but I'm finding what I think most about is food. We have quite the appetites and I have developed a bit of an obession with hash browns. I fantasize about them for most of the early morning cycle before our stop for second breakfast.

So now it is on to the prairies. There has been lots of fantasizing about flat roads and big tailwinds. We've mapped out the next week and we hope to be in Winnipeg in about 8 days time. Update from there, hopefully before!