We woke up after a lovely sleep in our Warmshowers hosts house. The bed was super comfy.
Roger and Laura made some nice coffee and breakfast. We ate together talking all things cycling, touring and politics. Our values are definitely aligned. Roger has two very nice tandems a Cannondale and a CoMotion.
Today’s route was basically a pyramid of straight up and straight down. On these climbs there are no bends to get some rest.
We were following the longest continuous rail climb in Canada to then drop us in Lake Christina. It was in the 40’s again and it was a tough old day. 60 miles over a pyramid pass. The descents do not give you any rest as there are piles of deep gravel and rocks to avoid so you can’t just blast down.
We went over some cool bridges.
We went through some smaller tunnels before we got to the big boy!
The big boy is called Bulldog Tunnel it is 1km long. It is pitch black and cold inside even though outside it was over 40 degrees.
There were lots of beautiful views but I have to confess I just wanted to get up and over. I was finding the temperature and the constant climb hard, real hard. It needed to be 20 degrees cooler for me.
We got chatting to loads of enthusiastic people that would give us words of support. Stephanie was lovely she was so chuffed it was our first time doing the trail and I think she might now plan her own long distance trip. Some guys in a ATB let us taste their Huckleberries and told us where we could find them.
It was a relief to see Lake Christina. I needed a cold Coke or two.
When we got into town we saw a pizza store where we ended up getting our tea. Before that though we called at the ice cream shop that has over forty flavours.
We are stopping at Lake Christina Pines campsite and it is ace. They have a pool and are doing breakfast so we don’t need to cook in the morning. The owners were super helpful and gave us some ice cold bottled water as they could tell we were a bit frazzled.
Our camping spot is ace, we have our own sink, table, charging point. It is a nice site.
As we are in front of schedule we might have our first rest day here and stop for two nights.