A train and cycling trip in Western Canada

Tour the Canadian Rockies by rail and folding bicycle?

 
In autumn 2007, I did a one-month train and bike journey around British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba with fellow bike adventurer, Michelle Eisele. I was on assignment for Momentum Magazine and blogged 35 stories for my Adventures of Mitey Miss cycling column. I've republished the posts here for your information and enjoyment.

The Route - The Folding Bikes -  The Photos

View A circle tour of Western Canada by train and folding bicycle in a larger map

What happened to the "gonzo"?

What was it about a train journey into western Canada 

that yanked on my heart hard enough to make my eyes water? That wasn't the idea. When we first batted the idea around, Momentum editor Amy Walker and I played with a "gonzo car-free road trip" that would see me, a buddy, and a couple of bikes onto a few trains and into a few communities for laffs and blog stories.

I described the journey's "gonzo" mission to my friend Michelle and presented an intinerary: we would board the "Whistler Mountaineer" from Vancouver to Whistler, pedal around Whistler valley for a couple of days, then board Rocky Mountaineer's "Fraser Discovery Route" to head north and east to Jasper, Alberta via Quesnel. After a few days in Jasper, we could swap trains and step aboard VIA Rail's "Canadian" and head east to Saskatoon (in Saskatchewan), then Winnipeg (Manitoba). We'd spent a couple of days cycling around in each city and then take VIA Rail back to Jasper.

I warned her that in Jasper we'd go hardcore: we would clip panniers onto the Dahons and road-test the bikes on the 300-kilometer stretch of mountainous highway between Jasper to Banff. We'd leave our sleeping bags at home and stay at yet-to-be-confirmed Hostelling International wildernous cabins along the way. Once in Banff we'd get back on track and complete the rail circle almost a month later by climbing on Rocky Mountaineer's "Kicking Horse Route" to return to Vancouver via Kamloops.

What happened? Well, we did go somewhat gonzo: we rebelliously nibbled handmade chocolates in Rocky Mountaineer's dining car and sloppily sipped bubbly in VIA Rail's lounge. And we did get chided about our bikes by a tired station staffer who'd just come back from vacation.

I dutifully blogged it all en route and was keyboarding an edgy moment involving marinated chicken, coconut shrimp and Mount Robson when... I felt it happen. A tweak that signaled that something had climbed aboard, knocked aside my cynicism, softened my heart and would now make me go misty over mountains and renditions of "What a wonderful world."

My gonzo had gone sentimental. Traveller's magic ~ something I'd only ever experienced in faraway countries ~ had kicked in here, in my own country. I was grinning stupidly, trusting strangers, learning life lessons.

I realized that much of the landscape we were travelling through cannot be experienced by car or a bike and because of that, it is rare and gorgeous. I saw the dawn rise amidst rain forests and golden capped mountain peaks and light jade lakes that seemed impossibly green. Jasper sandbars, spruce trees and a mink-gray range of mountains framed a frost-blue Athabasca River. Eagles, bears and big-horn sheep came into view just metres from my train window, lingered, then continued their foraging.

I saw that ~ when slowed to twenty clickety-clack kilometres an hour ~ time could swirl and pause and then begin to tell tales backwards, like a Martin Amis novel? The train revealed the landscape that way: riding on steel rails, it could pull us back into rural, then rugged, then wild terrain. Canadian history slipped by the curved glass as quietly as the lodgepole pine and white spruce. It also gleamed elegantly in the panelling of a vintage dining car, or the polished steel of a 1950's era knob detail.

I realized that trains connect us to that, our coasts and communities; but they also connect us to what's inside. Inside the train, inside the heart.

The stories of a couple of Rocky Mountaineer attendants pricked my eyes, for different reasons. Sophie had invited her parents onboard for a treat because her mum was donating a kidney to Sophie's 17-year old son. When the train company heard about the procedure it told her that they'd treat her parents . Rob did commentary, and one afternoon I watched his face and hand gestures become soft as he talked about Canada's Chinese rail workers, their working conditions and the head taxes they were obliged to pay to bring their families here to join them. The story resounded for him and as a Canadian, he felt that it was important to share with the train's tourists how ours is a country of many cultures and connections.

On VIA Rail's westbound train out of Winnipeg, Dennis brought a car of passenger to tears as he sang and told us that this would be his very last trip as a VIA Rail attendant as he was retiring after 35 years of service. He and Karim had joined VIA as college students and even more than thirty years later, they still loved the train and the people they worked with.

I learned that when you step off a train with a folding bike under your arm, you can connect with a community and its bike culture within hours. The bike identifies you, and people will point you to the places you want to go almost without asking.

In Saskatoon, staff at the Senator Hotel connected us with the 50-kilometre Meewasin Trail and the cafes it led to on Broadway Avenue. In Winnipeg , hostel staff directed us the Mondragon Bookstore, where members of the collective were preparing for the next day's World Car-Free Day festivities.

On the Icefields Parkway, proprietors of the Hostelling International cabins went out of their way to make sure there was a hot fire and extra blankets ready for the two snow-covered cyclists.

What is it about trains? I learned that like bikes, trains bring out kindness. They're slow and social and can tweak your heart when you least expect it. When you ride a bike or a train, you become historic and rebellious. You tell stories, you cause stories, and you write stories.

I ended up writing more than thirty-five stories about the trip in this blog. I hope you read them, but more importantly, I hope you get your self and your bike on a train line and try it for yourself. I'll meet you in the lounge car.

View 186 photos of the entire journey on Flickr or just the Jasper to Banff cycling section on the Icefields and Bow Valley parkways (65 photos).

Vancouver arrival by train

We're aboard the Rocky Mountaineer "Kicking Horse" route 

between Kamloops and Vancouver. As the Rocky Mountaineer slowly continues its journey westward along the shore of Kamloops Lake, we are talking about Canadian water, and how unexploited it is.

We're joking, of course ~ Michelle, myself, and the couple from Brisbane ~ but they are serious about how Australia has experienced record drought in this age of global warming. He surveys the lake which has remained undeveloped because it it rimmed on its north and south shores by railway rights-of-way, and agrees that one day, water will be recognized as being more precious than oil.

When the lake thins into the Thompson River, I catch him down in the open air viewing area, snapping photos with an enormous telephoto lens. "I work for the defence department," he jokes, aiming at an airborne eagle, "I'm bringing home photos of your water."
In fact the river is very photo-worthy at this point, and the midday sun even beckons a few more dome-dwellers out to better admire the river bank's steep and narrow sides. As the walls rise to canyon heights the deep green water rushing though the walls becomes frothy and turbulent ~ a draw for white-water rafters in the summer season.

The confluence of the Thompson and Fraser rivers in Lytton is a dramatic one: the Thompson's jade-green water slides into the Fraser's muddy brown, and over the intercom Rob tells us that at certain times of the year, you can see the two colours of water for up to four kilometres downstream.

At Cisco bridges, the CN and CP rail lines cross over the river at the same place, each jumping to the opposite shore. We pass a tiny cemetery by the side of the tracks and Rob relates the history of Canada's Chinese rail workers, their working conditions and the head taxes they were obliged to pay to bring family to Canada to join them.

I watch him as he talks, and his face becomes soft and his hand gestures suggest the poignancy of the tale. As a Canadian, the story resounds for him and he feels that it's important to share with visitors how many different cultures have contributed to Canada's railway and its history.

Rocky Mountaineer has won awards for the level of service it provides and as a Canadian on the train I particularly appreciate their "made-in-Canada" touches: menus comprised of regional ingredients, overnight stays in lessor-known towns (such as Quesnel on the "Fraser Discovery" route and Kamloops on the "Kicking Horse" and "Yellowhead" routes), and onboard attendants who live and work in the regions that they describe.

As the train moves further west and enters southwestern B.C.'s Fraser Valley, I'm struck by how familiar the scenery has suddenly become. I can no longer plead "visitor" to the land we travel through; the train is bringing me home, too. I point out blackberry brambles, cranberry fields and llama farms to the other passengers and I miss my sense of "otherness." While our perspective from the rails (rather than the roadway) is still a rare one for me, even that becomes more familiar when we enter the Grandview cut ~ a passage I've been through many a time on Skytrains and Amtraks.

I started this trip from the North Vancouver rail yards looking up and around me in wonder. Now ~ from the perspective of the second-level observation car ~ I am in the False Creek rail yards, looking down and over to the nearby Rocky Mountaineer station. We ~ all of us ~ are in East Vancouver, my neighbourhood.

The train has ever-so-gently delivered me to the place where I started. From here, everyday life welcomes me back and by all appearances, not much has changed since I left almost a month ago. The garbage strike is still on, Willy Picton is still on trial, and the front yard still needs raking. I descend from the rarified car and begin my return to regular life.

Mache catches my eye as Michelle and I get ready to wheel our bikes out of the station and onto Terminal Avenue. "Ride safe," she says, like the mother she is. I stop and turn to her. "You take care of yourself," I say thickly, "Good luck in November." I feel sad leaving the station, and so do what I usually do when I feel that way: I start pedalling. View photos.

Banff departure by train

What is it about trains that makes me go misty-eyed? 

This time it's not the way the sun shines on mountains, or the songs of a retiring attendant, but the story of a grandmother.

Over scrambled eggs and wild smoked salmon, Mache tells me why she and her husband are on this train from Calgary to Vancouver. She is the mother of Sophie, one of the onboard attendants on duty on this trip, smiling and bending over our table to serve pink grapefruit juice and warm croissants.

Sophie arranged to have her parents on the trip as a special thank you gift. Her son needed a new kidney and his grandmother, Mache, had a healthy enough kidney and was a good enough match that she could ~ and in November would ~ donate a kidney to her 17-year-old grandson.

When the folks at Rocky Mountaineer's head office heard why Sophie was booking this trip for her parents, they told her to not worry about it, it was their gift to her and her family.

Mache looks calm and elegant when she tells me of the upcoming procedure, but I can tell that it's been a long struggle for the family and this is a much-needed two days of togetherness for Sophie, her mum and her dad.

"I'm the first choice," Mache says of her kidney, "because I'm almost as good a match as Sophie but," she pauses and gazes over at her daughter laying down a plate of hot cereal, "Sophie's kidney will come after mine, if it's needed in a few years."

The train has been heading northwest along the Bow River, retracing the route Michelle and I had cycled just a day or two earlier. Here in the Kicking Horse Pass, we are closer to the river and will continue to follow rivers as the trains climbs to the Continental Divide past Lake Louise, through the double spiral tunnels burrowing into Cathedral Mountain and Mount Ogden, and then descends again to accompany the Columbia River to the base of its source, Kinbasket lake. We'll cross the Rocky, Purcell and Selkirk mountains in a day, coast through a five-mile long tunnel and slow down to pay homage to the Last Spike that completed the railway and connected the east and west coastlines.

Past Revelstoke and into the Shuswap Lake area, we'd sight wagon-wheel sized osprey nests built on dummy railway poles, and hear about how Kokanee salmon ~ disoriented by their distance from the sea ~ would reside in the area's huge H-shaped lakes as if they were the ocean.

The train would stop and wait on a side track for one of many freight trains whose schedules took priority over the passenger trains. The pause would give us a moment to contemplate the vastness of the lakes' surfaces; or the nerve of a black bear that shuffles past orange-vested switch workers; or the goldness of an aspen leaf; or the thickness of clouds slipping down from the Monashee mountains like a thick blanket bringing night.

As the train runs into darkness, I can see that Sophie's parents have forgone socializing with other passengers in the dome car in order to sit in the front row closest to their daughter's service station.

Occasionally she'll speak to them in Greek ~ possibly catching up on family news or just to share an extra snippet about a point of interest. They had awoke at 4am to sit on their daughter's train and wouldn't get to bed for another nineteen hours.

"How are you doing?" I ask Mache as we disembark to head to our respective lodgings in Kamloops. She looks worn-out.

"Pooped!" she says with a wry smile, "but happy to be here." View photos.

Banff - arrival at Rimrock Resort

"You know," I say to Michelle as she dries her hair,

"I can now understand the expression, I could get used to this." We're not just in Banff, but at Banff's Rimrock Resort Hotel. Just recently built, the 346-room accommodation clings to the side of Sulphur Mountain and towers over the valley and surrounding mountains at 5,200 feet.

It's a stone's throw from the Upper Hot Springs and the Banff Gondola, but at this moment I am delighted to be exactly where I am: in my hotel room, feet up, tucked into a wing-back chair, sipping port, wrapped in a thick white bathrobe, gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows at a sun that is performing a veil dance over the Bow Valley with the misty clouds that hang between Mount Rundle and Cascade Mountain.

We've cycled 300 kilometres between Jasper and Banff and done without showers, hot water, and electricity for roughly six days, and this guilty pleasure doesn't feel very guilty.

Today's ride was short and bittersweet. The white-barked, yellow-leaved aspens marked our route along the Bow Valley Parkway like guide lights, and they seemed to glow and shimmer more intensely the closer we got to Banff ~ and the end of the cycling portion of the trip.

Except for one rainy, snowy day; three steep hills; and a couple of really windy valleys; we'd enjoyed a perfect cycling journey on ~ whodda thunk it? ~ folding bikes. I sip a few fingers of port, pull out my new dress out of my pannier, and give it an awkward iron. We are to be civilized again.

Up at the Primrose dining room, we would toast our achievement in champagne Bellinis, then good red wine. I'd slip a morsel of perfectly seasoned Alberta beef into my mouth ("It's saltimbocca," I'd tell the chef who visits our table), then follow it with a fork-full of burnt-onion mashed potato.

Tomorrow the Rocky Mountaineer would carry us slowly back home to Vancouver. We'd be fussed over and I would probably get misty-eyed over the beauty of our green rivers and yellow mountains. But tonight it's all about the white of terry towel, cloud veils, and soft sheets. Home will have to wait for another 72 hours. View photos.

Bow Valley - Castle Mountain by bike

"Acch," says John as we all stare at his knees, "Ah dough'n laak taahts." 

John is from Manchester, England and he arrived at the Castle Mountain hostel (halfway between Lake Louise and Banff) about the same time Michelle and I did.

While Michelle and I spent the day slowly peddling a crispy fall's 30km along the Bow Valley Parkway's curvy and scenic roadway, John cycled about 120 kilometres from Radium Hot Springs on just a breakfast and chocolate-chip cookies. He's on a silver Marin bike with just a couple of red Ortliebs on the back. He doesn't like tights ("taahts"), but he does have a bottle of white wine which he is glad to share it with Michellle, myself, and Tony the hostel manager.

Tony--an avid cyclist who'd run the hostel for the past eight years--is in a generous mood. a group of 28 Christian men have taken tover the hostel for the past couple of days for fun, fellowsip, and junk food. They left behind a couple of meat-covered Domino's pizzas, Costco-sized muffins, and cake--but no booze.

Tony offers all hostel visitors some pizza but doesn't get many takers. Michelle's a vegetarian and is preparing a mushroom-and-snow pea pasta for the two of us, John only wants two pieces, and a new visitor from Bowen Island (who I naturally take for a vegetarian) cryptically says she is "Inuit and freegan," but doesn't grab at the beefy pizza.

"Eskimo Girl" (as Michelle and I come to call her) will be circling Canada and the U.S. by car to investigate eco-retreat business opportunities. She talks glowingly of swimming with dolphins, and reverently describes a moment when a sea lion nudged her foot.

Having come from a week's worth of "human-animal contact in the wild is bad" messages in Jasper and Banff National Parks, I ask her how she reconciles the destruction such encounters can lead to, with human-dolphin "encounters"? She says that she' been a micro-biologist, then a Parks Canada employee; and considers the Parks as "sacrificial" areas so humans can learn about animals.

I'm not sure if she's out-smarted me or if she's full of shit, but the conversation's gotten a little too West-Coast-woo-woo for me and reminds me that we'll be back in Vancouver in a few days. I grab a cloth and start washing dishes while Michelle tag-teams the conversation. It turns out "Eskimo Girl" isn't actually Inuit at all, but said so to mess with our heads.

The hostel is warm and cozy, thanks to Tony's fire and a loan of sheepskin slippers. Everyone settles into a mellow mood and I promise Tony and John that they can try out the fully-loaded Dahon folding bikes tomorrow, if they're nice. View photos.

Lake Louise - hostel, bears, departure

I awake to the smell of pancakes.

I stumble from my room in the Lake Louise hostel and into the shared kitchen to make tea, but it is full of people frying sausages, flipping pancakes, and chewing muffins.

"Good morning!" a fellow calls out heartily, "Would you like some pancakes?" I look over at him groggily and say thanks, but I just woke up and just need a cup of tea. I make my tea, sit down and learn that this group of twenty-four is Edson, Alberta's Rotary Club out for their annual Lake Louise hiking weekend.

Rotarians ~ as well as Lions, Kiwanis and Masons ~ are better known as community service clubs, but this rebel faction from the 8,000-person town between Jasper and Edmonton has added a little extra fun to its agenda, thanks to trip-leader and pancake-flipper, Vic.

Michelle wanders into the kitchen and looks a little disoriented, seeing as I'm sitting at a table surrounded by food and Rotarians. Vic (a marathon runner) spreads a thick layer of peanut butter on his pancakes, then tops it with a generous pour of molasses.

"Try it," he coaxes, "If you're going to ride your bikes, you'll need the energy." I pass on the peanut butter but give the molasses a chance. It tastes of vitamins and anise. Today we'll be turning off the Icefields Parkway and riding the quieter Bow Valley Parkway towards Banff. It's two lanes and no shoulder, but motorists must slow down to 60km/hour for cyclists, sight-seers and other wildlife.

Later, at the Banff National Park Visitor Centre in Lake Louise, I learned that Canada and I have something special in common: we love hot springs.

In 1883, three railway workers found a natural hot spring at the base of Banff's Sulphur Mountain. It took only two years for federal officials to claim the 26 square kilometres surrounding the hot springs a "reserve," and only two years after that to increase the protected area to 673 square kilometres, name it "Rocky Mountain Park" and thereby create the first park in Canada's National Park system.

It was also, points out Banff National Park literature, the "birth of tourism." The federal government created an infrastructure of roads in the park because by 1911 "motoring" was considered a type of recreation that should be allowed.

Auto travel immediately impacted the development of what would become a 6,641 square kilometre parkland. Today approximately eight million people enter Banff National Park each year; 92 per cent of them by private vehicle. Visit the Park's info centre in Lake Louise and you get a sense of the implications: like Jasper National Park, many species of wild animals ~ some listed as at risk ~ live in the park and also use its valleys for moving and feeding, including elk, caribou, wolves, cougars and grizzly bears.

In particular, about sixteen female grizzly bears comprise the park's total grizzly population of sixty and choose the Bow River's watershed as their area of choice to raise their cubs. Grizzlies don't mature until their ten years of age, and then only have one or two cubs every four or five years. The success of their breeding cycling is a indicator for the health of other species in the area.

According to Parks Canada's bear info, until the early 1980's "grizzly bears suffered high human-caused mortality" largely due to "poor garbage management." Road and rail mortalities didn't help. Unfortunately, with their native habitat made fragmented by human development, the seemingly easiest way for grizzlies to survive was to travel along major valley floors like the Bow Valley ~ the same valleys that humans use for their own travel.

Michelle and I would be cycling the Bow Valley Parkway for the next couple of days and Parks staff cautioned that the Parkway's lack of fences would allow us ample opportunity for "wildlife viewing." Said one Parks Canada booklet, "Make noise...cyclists who travel quickly and quietly along trails are most at risk of sudden bear encounters."

Michelle and I had no intention of surprising a grizzly sow and her cubs. When we did turn onto the sixty kilometre stretch of valley roadway, we kept our eyes peeled and maintained a leisurely pace to Castle Mountain hostel. View photos.

Lake Louise arrival by bike

After a night at Mosquito Creek hostel, my bike is frosted with a night's worth of snow and the water bottle is solid ice. Michelle reports that while the Icefields Parkway is bare, the shoulder ~ where we'll be riding ~ is snowy with slippery sections. We tuck in, linger, and let the sun warm and push snow clumps off trees and by noon, we figure the twenty-five kilometres into Lake Louise are safe. Better than safe, they are gloriously downhill. We ride the shoulder but discover that when the bikes pick up speed, regularly-spaced lateral cracks in the pavement bump and throw the bike's wheels as if we were coasting on railway tracks.

We coast into the village of Lake Louise at a relaxed pace and aim for the Lake Louise Alpine Centre hostel. The hostel is pure pine lodge clubhouse ~ with big, raw, hand-joined beams; a vaulted ceiling; fireplaces in common rooms; and vintage details such as archival photos, a mountaineering library and furniture made entirely of twigs.

The hostel seems luxurious with simple amen ties: electricity, hot water and an on-site cafe. A quick turn around the "village" (two gas stations, a sports shop, a post office, a bakery, a market, a liquor store and about four souvenir shops) tells us we can either eat posh, or eat pub food at post prices. We return to the hostel for pub-priced pub food.

At the cafe, we get chatting with a couple who will be attending a veterinarian conference tomorrow. "It's minor, really," he says, "You gather twenty-five people in a meeting room and order sandwiches, and they call it a 'conference'". They tell us they'd like to try biking with their four-month-old. He's a chubby, sturdy fellow and I agree that a bit of time on the bike would give him a thrill. View photos.

Icefields Parkway - Mosquito Creek by bike

Thirty years ago, 18-year-old Allan got on his bike 

and rode from Vancouver to Tijuana. Gear was heavier then, so he packed light and divided the trip into two sections. Hiker-biker camp sites cost two dollars and much of the roadway lacked a shoulder.

Today, Allan manages the Mosquito Creek wilderness hostel, and tells visitors his specialty is "germ warfare" ~ just to get them talking. When his contract with the hostel ends, Allan is talking about reprising that Vancouver-to-Tijuana trip ~ with his 18-year-old son.

"That's a very cool story," I tell him, "You could write about it for Momentum Magazine" I mistake the look in this eye for bashfulness. "Well, actually, I used to write a column myself," he says.

Back when he lived in Cochrane, Alberta, Allan won a seat on city council and figured the best way to explain local politics to the people was to write about them in the local newspaper.

We talk about hopes, dreams, and politics awhile and I turn to head back to the dorm cabin. It's been snowing all evening and ~ with Mosquito Creek gurgling sluggishly in the background ~ it looks like a Christmas post card out there. Only ~ it's September and we're supposed to be cycling into Lake Louise tomorrow. We've already summited Bow Pass in heavy snowfall and already had to duck into the Num-Ti-Jah lodge for not one but two cups of blood-warming hot chocolate.

I crunch through frozen puddles and clumps of snow and thank heaven that the heaters heaters in these wilderness cabins kick ass. View photos.

Icefields Parkway - Rampart Creek by bicycle

The day starts with a "false flat" along the river ~ a road that appears flat, 

but you find yourself struggling, as if you're climbing a hill. You are. After that, the real deal kicks in ~ four kilometres of ten percent grade made more challenging by bikes that have run out of hill gears.

You find some reprieve at the summit ~ as well as glimpses of mountain goats, bighorn sheep and car drivers who run Michelle down in their attempt to pull over and photograph the terrifyingly tame animals standing on the side of the road.

"Excuse me," you say through the open window of a idling car, "While you're appreciating nature, would you mind turning off your engine?" The driver looks at you blankly, then mutters something about his weak battery.

You bundle up for the downhill cruise into the Columbia Icefield valley, but are hit by glacier-fed winds that are so strong that they stop you dead in your downhill coast.

As you near the castle-like tourist centre, the wind magically changes direction and literally pushes you towards the centre's parking lot. The weather and terrain mellows as you approach the Rampart Creek hostel, where manager Owen and a small Moose Network tour group start up a warming campfire.

This wilderness hostel makes do with solar panels and a well-appointed sauna complete with candles and a gravity-assisted steam-bath shower. You've gained altitude and lost some heat, but at this moment, you feel as if you're at the most luxurious of hotels. View photos.

Icefields Parkway - Beauty Creek by bicycle

Riding towards Beauty Creek hostel in Jasper National Park,

 the mountains experience a personality shift. Their slanted layers and folded corners drop away and the range becomes a pure line of pointy, sharp triangles.

With them, the weather shifts ~ first sun, then rain, then sun again to dry our jackets while we chew on surprisingly good burgers at Sunwapta Falls Resort's cafe. Our road levels and flirts with the Athabasca River, dancing with its riverbanks in a sensual afternoon tango.

We roll into the Beauty Creek hostel and settle in nicely. Laura offers us chocolate chip cookies, juice boxes, and chocolates left behind by a cadet group. We heat up kettles of water and carefully balance basins and bars of soap to our dorm for an old-fashioned sponge wash.

Like the other hostels along the Icefields Parkway, Beauty Creek is rated a "wilderness hostel" ~ there is no electricity and no running water. None of this is an issue to a car traveller, but we've been on bicycles now for two days and warm water ~ no mater how you get it ~ is a necessary luxury.

After about 55km of mountain pedalling we figure $23 is a reasonable price to pay for a warm cabin, fresh linens, a cozy kitchen and all the chocolate chips cookies we can eat. View photos.

Icefields Parkway - Athabasca Falls by bike

You can only get here by foot, and only if you've stayed off the path 

beaten by hundreds of thousands of car-and-tour-bus passengers before you. The Athabasca Falls are about 30km south of Jasper on the Icefields Parkway and they ~ and the deep, pot-holed chasms and channels that the mint-blue water has cut ~ are truly spectacular.

But as dusk sets in and the sun's light gets golden ~ as the three parking lots empty of RVs and buses ~ what really moves Michelle and I to silence are the square rocks that form a rough beach at eh Falls' downstream, where the frothing water turns placid green and ready to begin its flow northwards to the Arctic.

The small beach area has become an impromptu sculpture park. Inukshuks have sprung from the ground ~ handmade towers of balanced flat rocks. Some are tall, with surprise round elements, some are short with double pillars and hearty cross-slabs. there must be at least fifty of them, created by wanderers, artists and sight-seers who know and love Canada's West Coast.

We solemnly step around the waist-high formations, as if we were touring a cathedral. Mount Kerkeslin towers over us to the east, and is reflected in the pool of water.

We've chosen to stay in this area for the night and step across the road to return to the Athabasca Falls Hostel. It's past 5pm now, and Madeleine should be back to open the cookhouse and put some logs into the stove for some evening warmth. View photos.

Jasper - Hostelling International

I'm in Jasper, talking about Mexico. 

Scott's been managing the Jasper H.I. hostel with his "right hand man" Nadine for about 5 years. It's a bustling 84-bed converted ski lodge located south of town and on the way to the Jasper Tramway. It's been bustling since Michele and I lazily took a shuttle up the 5km steep slope to the hostel.

So bustling, in fact, that at about 9pm in the evening, one of the front desk staff slips a new-agey music CD into the lounge area sound system. Like magic, says Scott, the bustling visitors quieten down, begin yawning and stretching, and quietly head to their dorms in time for the 11pm "quiet time" curfew.

Scott tells me that he and Nadine will be leaving for Mexico in about four days, for a guilty-pleasure week at a family-run all-inclusive hotel, then two months of unhurried, backpacker-ish, travel.

I call up my website on his computer, and tell him about the surf camps at Todos Santos, the Mayan ruins in Belize, and the beach-side hostel on Isla Mujeres. He is psyched and I find myself in an odd place ~ surrounded by backpackers of all ages and nationalities here in arguably one of the most beautiful mountain towns in Canada; and reminiscing about Mayan civilizations in one of the most beautiful mountain towns in Central America.

I bid Scott good-night, and leave him to his maps and plans. Michelle and I start the bicycle portion of our trip down the Icefields Parkway next.

Jasper arrival, chat, and a flat

"Hey," said a loud American voice on the Jasper train platform, 

"Is that one of those collapsible bikes?" I was unfolding the bike and repacking my panniers to prepare for our six days of cycling the Icefields Parkway. Michelle had wheeled her bike over to Freewheel Cycle to get a sense of what had caused her abrupt puncture in Winnipeg.

Blue Ortliebs panniers were splayed all around me, not to mention Michelle's Norcos, two helmets and miscellaneous bags and containers. "Yes, it is," I said patiently over my shoulder.

"What's something like that cost?" he asked, stepping closer.

"Well, folding bikes range in price from $200 to $1000," I answered, "Do you want to see me fold it?" I asked him, pausing.

"Oh yeah!" he gushed.

"That'll be ten bucks," I fired back, with a gleam in my eye.

Fun times at Jasper's Freewheel Cycle

"Um, do you mind if I step in there and see how you get the tire back on?" Michelle asked Al the mechanic at Freewheel Cycle.

"Well, sure," he answered, "Since you asked so nicely." I laughed, thinking about the guy on the train platform.

"You're a nice one," I joked with Al, "when I worked at a bike shop, the mechanics would charge $10 to let you watch, and $20 if you asked any questions."

"Yep," he said, "We're the nice ones."

Jasper-bound aboard The Canadian

This morning on the VIA Rail dining car, I chose a seat

opposite a much older couple from Mississippi. They both stared at me blankly after I sat down, until I asked if they'd had a pleasant night's sleep.

"We're getting off at Jasper," he said by way of an answer. "Can't wait to sleep in a regular bed."

"Oh, well," I offered soothingly, "You can sleep in a regular bed the other 361 days of the year." He stared out the window then looked at me steadily.

"Do you know the difference between whiskey and beer?" he asked. I broke into a big grin and played along, glad for a bad joke. "No!" I answered, "What's the difference between whiskey and beer?"

"I don't know either," he said, "I think whiskey is distilled and beer is fermented, but I don't have a clue ~ don't touch the stuff."

"Wine is made from grapes," croaked his wife, who'd been silent up til this point. I looked at her, and Michelle tried to neutralize the bizarre conversation by suggesting that Canadian whiskey is made with rye.

The conversation petered out after that, and the Mississippi couple fairly bolted for the door once they'd finished their maple-nut ice cream.

Winnipeg to Jasper by train

Aboard VIA Rail's "The Canadian", heading west 

from Winnipeg to Jasper, we meet Dennis. Dennis has grey temples, but the mischievous eyes of a ladies man. He got on the train at Winnipeg, same as us, but ~ he announced after we'd all stepped aboard ~ this would be his very last trip as a VIA Rail attendant as he was retiring after 35 years of service. He and Karim rounded all of us into the lounge car, and Karim poured champagne all around.

"You'll want to stick around," Karim told us with a gleam in his eye, "Dennis has a wonderful voice and he'll sing for you without asking." Sure enough, once the bubbly was poured and the train had started Dennis serenaded us with "Day-O", "It's a Wonderful World" and "Only You." He moved from person to person, smiling, looking into their eyes, squeezing hands and touching shoulders. Those who weren't teary-eyed sang along.

Even I got a little misty, and wondered why he was singing such sad songs. View photos.

Winnipeg - Friendly Manitoba

"Psssssssht." 

We'd barely pedalled five blocks away from the Winnipeg hostel and Michelle's panniered Dahon sprung a very sudden leak in the back tire. We were headed to the VIA Rail station to catch a train back to Jasper in a couple of hours, and the station was far away enough that pushing the fully loaded bike on its rims was not an option.

Other options? Catch a bus? No bike racks. Catch a cab? No cabs, it's Sunday. Hitchhike? Hmmm. Nearby, a City of Winnipeg employee was pulling a fat rubber pipe out of a street hole and loading it into ~ his van. I pulled off my helmet and approached him.

"Er, hello," I greeted him, "I wonder if I could ask a rather odd favour...?"

Ten minutes later I rolled up to the station. Michelle was already there and was loading her bike and gear onto a baggage cart. Gary had just dropped her off and was steering his van out of the intersection. I gave him a wave and he drove off to carry on with his work day.

"What a nice guy," I remarked. "Yeah," said Michelle, "He actually apologized because the van was greasy ~ he laid down a jacket over the pipes so the panniers wouldn't get dirty.

"Awww," I grinned, "Manitoba really is friendly."

Winnipeg - World Car-Free Day

According to the University of Winnipeg's student newspaper

The Uniter, Bogota, Columbia has closed off the entire 7-million people city to private automobiles to observe a type of World Car-Free day called ciclovia. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, citizens got on their bikes, paraded with a marching band, occupied a car dealership parking lot, closed off a street block, jousted tall bikes, and played street hockey ~ all thirty of us. View photos.

Winnipeg - Hostelling International

Michelle, Kira and I have just finished breakfast sandwiches 

at Stella's Cafe and Bakery in Winnipeg's Osbourne Village. It's gray-skied and drizzling outside, and Kira comments that it looks like a "Vancouver day."

We compare Osbourne village to Vancouver's Commercial Drive, and Kira describes how the neighbourhood that the hostel now occupies ~ like Vancouver's Mount Pleasant ~ is "in transition." She picks her words carefully when she talks about the blend of people who live, work and roam in the Ellice and Kennedy area; but when the topic moves to the hostel and its renovations, her eyes light up.

"It's hard to see it now," she says of the hoarding, tarps and paint cans, "but it is going to be really, really nice." When H.I. Winnipeg took over the Downtowner Hotel, it also assumed ownership of its pub and restaurant. The restaurant, she says ~ motioning to Stella's bakery-cafe atmosphere ~ will be like this: cheery and informal with big windows filled with light.

And the hostel itself will be two floors of dorm and private rooms, each with their own bathroom and each appointed with brand new beds, bedding, rugs, hooks, lamps, and lockers. The current car-port courtyard on the ground floor of the former motor lodge will be filled in with green space, complete with cedar decking, a BBQ, birch tree artwork and ~ thanks to a neighbourly commitment from nearby Manitoba Telecom Services ~ fifteen new bicycles to rent to visitors.

We muse on how maybe the hostel is kind of symbolic of its neighbourhood and Winnipeg in general. You get a sense that there are lots of "in transition" pockets that are just waiting for a little patching.

We bid thanks and goodbye to Kira, who's given us a list of must-do's before we leave: the limestone columns and naked "Golden Boy" at the Legislature Building; the Italian cafes in the Corydon district; the Natural Cycle bike shop and Mondragon Bookstore in the Exchange district; and the bike paths along the Red and Assiniboine rivers.

We head towards the Legislature Buildings and a bicycle poster catches my eye: tomorrow is World Car-Free Day and the Winnipeg bike community is hosting a ride, street festival and car-bashing!

"You know what?" I say to Michelle as we quicken our pace on Osbourne Street, "I think there's gonna be some celebratin' and agitatin' in our future."

Winnipeg arrival

For some reason, we're taking about beer--again. 

Michelle and I are in the "Lo" pub ~ a venerable booze-can of a place that has been renovated and re-decorated by its new owner, Winnipeg's Hostelling International (or "Hi" ~ get it?).

H.I. is the largest accommodation provider in the world, and a non-profit at that. In June of this year, the Winnipeg crew packed up their 36-bed home-style hostel and moved into the former "Downtowner" hotel - a cubist structure that was all mod cons in its glory days, but had since faded into seedy repute thanks to off-sales, day rates and "questionable activities," as one H.I. staffer put it.

Needless to say, the nearby businesses and senior residences were pleased as punch when H.I. took over the place and began gutting it for a fresh start. Executive Director Dylan Rutherford, bar manager Dave Falade and the rest of the staff started by shutting down the troublesome bar off-sales and tearing out the beer-soaked carpeting.

Now visitors can relax in a lounge with comfy chairs, a fireplace, old movies, local artwork, and cheap local beer. A sign over the bar reads, "Drink Locally, Think Globally," and Michelle and I are doing just that a few hours after our arrival. We're joined by Mark (the hostel's manager), Kira (marketing), Dylan, Dave and a couple of friendly pitchers of Fort Garry ale.

Dave explains that for every glass of the local beer that's sold, the hostel will donate twenty-five cents towards KIVA, an organization that pools loan applicants from developing nations and offers them micro-credit. The rates of success have been high, says Dylan, better than mortgage load repayments in the U.S.

Dave suggests we sample another local beer called Half Pints at the King's Head pub in the nearby Exchange district; and Dylan suggests we first sample some Ethiopian food at the Kokeb Restaurant ~ just across the intriguing Discreet Boutique sex-toy department store.

Michelle backs out, pleading a previously-booked engagement with the Winnipeg Scrabble Club, and Kira departs not too long after that. That leaves me on a Thursday night in Winnipeg, with a group of smart and funny guys who ~ like me ~ like to drink beer. Oh dear.