Parklife

Days 15-19

We're now deep in the heart of the Canadian National Parks in the Rockies. Getting here from pretty much on the West Coast in Hyder, we passed out of the Cassiar mountains and onto the Yellowhead Highway to ride East, going from forested mountains to farmed flatlands and then back to mountains again as we approached the Rockies. The traffic has increased steadily along the way too: whereas in Alaska we could ride for half an hour without seeing another (non-wildlife) road user, we're now never out of sight of another vehicle.

The first sign of the real Rockies was Mount Robson; an imposing pyramid, it's the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies and still in British Columbia. Just a short hop on from there and we were into Alberta, and Jasper National Park where we had our first “rest day”. That means the first day on our trip that we haven't packed up the tent and put it up somewhere new. Instead we knackered ourselves out by hiking some of the spectacular trails in the park among some stunning peaks, glaciers and wildlife!

Yesterday we drove the Icefields Parkway - a truly awesome stretch of road between Jasper and Banff with hundreds of glaciers and spiky mountaintops on both sides, and a few thundering waterfalls and deep canyons to stop and walk around.

Here in Banff we're now having our second rest day. We're actually resting today because we're exhausted and it's raining outside (and we've found a great little cafe with wifi)!

Weather extremes

We've been learning about our temperature comfort range the last few days, leaving Stewart in a wet and chilly12C and then heading East into temperatures up to 35C in the space of just a few days. The low end of that is fine with all our warm and waterproof gear on (and we could have added another layer or two), but over 30C starts getting uncomfortable with a hot sun and a high humidity level, even after we'd peeled off the thermal and waterproof layers (once we realised how hot it was getting!). We're starting to get a bit concerned about the Nevada desert in August...

Since arriving in Banff we've also experienced the heavier end of the rain spectrum. We had a massive thunderstorm last night that just went on and on. We sheltered in the tent with puddles forming around us for about an hour and a half, but hunger eventually drove us into town and then we got soaked on the bikes. The waterproof gear works, but it seems like it does have a limit after which the moisture finds its way in round the edges!

So hopefully the moderate weather will return and make this camping malarkey more comfortable again. The only upside of the rain is that as we can't possibly cook our own food we've had to resort to the local eateries for all of our meals – shame.