Very cold.

I’m glad I trained for this adventure, the first couple of days have been very demanding, but I haven’t been fazed by anything so far.

floating logs.

 Day 1 out of Vancouver was a long day of 143kms. We followed the Fraser River – sometimes it was wide enough to look like a lake. They float logs down the river for the logging industry, and it was cool to see them being pulled by a barge.  Then we saw the longest train we have ever seen – it was an amazing 7kms long (so the train driver told us when he stopped for a coffee in a café beside the train engine). We stopped for the night in Hope. And we woke to rain.

About to start up Allison Pass in the rain.

Day 2 was climbing the notoriously demanding Allison Pass. 60kms of uphill. It was very steep for a lot of it, and cold enough to see your breath. Only 7 degrees and non - stop rain. It is supposed to be an area for Black Bear wandering onto the road. Apparently it is a natural corridor for their feeding. However I think it was too wet for them to wander on the road, so we didn’t see any; we did see several Deer though. Crossing the top of the pass, I felt hypothermic, and insisted on a motel in Manning Park to warm up and dry out.

Tomorrow we head to Keremeos which is a fruit growing area so hopefully we can ride out of this cold, wet weather into the warmth again.

Cold and wet and non stop hills.

 

Later: The ride down the pass was NOT down. It climbed up to the height of the pass three times before it finally went down. It was also wetter and colder than the day before – only 5 degrees today. The locals at Princeton say’s this weather is not normal. Need - less to say we froze. Luckily Niel remembered that he had packed shoe covers and woolly gloves. He had the gloves and he gave me the shoe covers, that made and immense difference and we were able to carry on. As we neared Keremeos, we could see just a tiny hint of blue, yeah what a relief, no need for an expensive motel, and we are back in our trusty tent.

The scenery has been superb it is a shame we didn’t take more photos, but our hands couldn’t get the camera out of the bag – our fingers weren’t working.