Day 8, Wasa to Fernie, BC

In view of the fire in Glacier Nat’l Park we had to make a decision about which way to go, plan A or plan B.  Plan A was enter the US on the east side of the park and ride the Going to the Sun road.  The road is closed as I type this, but they say that they’re getting a handle on the fire.  Still, no predictions and our schedule put us riding the road on Thursday.  Plan B: enter the US on the west side of the park and ride south to the west entrance to Glacier and intersect with our original route.

We went with plan B, reluctantly.  But that required quite a bit of re-routing and figuring out where we are going, where we are staying.  We think that we have it figured out.  See below.

We had a fairly long day on the bike today but it was dry and, kind of warm after the sun poked through the clouds, so it was a great ride day.  We left our rabbit friend at Wasa Lake Motel at 0700 and headed south, following the Kootenay River.  

He's really big and fat!

When we got to Fort Steele, we had a long descent and were screaming downhill when the navigator-in-chief (Lorie) said that the GPS says “Off course!”.  By the time we stopped we were at the bottom of a long, steep hill.  We checked the GPS and our maps, and it looks like we just flew by our turn to the left.  Dang!  More map checking and we decided that the best thing to do was to continue on our current route, then take another road to intersect with our planned route (and turn off the GPS so it stops beeping at us!).

Fort Steele BC -- we missed our turn while checking out the town

The best weather so far, and beautiful country

The Kootenay River (flows south, the Columbia flows north) 

The detour was actually really pretty and both of us thought that if you closed your eyes then opened them up, you would think that you are in Central Oregon: pines, alfalfa fields, farms and forested hills.  It is really beautiful.  And lots of white tail deer that acted like deer ought to: they ran as soon as they heard us coming.  In fairly quick order we reconnected with our original route and continued toward Fernie.  We stopped at Jaffrey, a small town along the way and had coffee at First Perk, a great little diner there.  It was a welcome stop and we chatted with a group of cross country mountain bikers who were just finishing a trip.

Onward to Fernie and the temperature rose nearly to 24 degrees or so – it was just the first time of this trip that we’ve ridden without arm and leg warmers.  We started following the Elk River, which flows into the Kooteney and which must be good fishing judging by the number of drift boats.

The Elk River

Made it to Fernie

But as we got closer to our destination the thunderclouds started building, warning us to not get complacent.  We are staying at the Fernie Alpine Resort, which is the base to the ski area (which is one of the best anywhere! – you need to ski here because there is tons of territory and vertical and never a crowd).  But the place we are staying is a few km up a pretty steep hill.  It seems like that is a common theme for our end of ride.  Anyway, we got almost to the lodge when the rain started, but not enough to get us soaked.

Our room is uber big and fancy – check it out:

Our abode

Yeah, that's Das Bike in the fancy room (don't tell the owner!)

Nice

We just beat the thunderstorm by a few minutes!

We got showered and cleaned up, then started implementing Plan b.  Here’s the short story:

1. ·      We rented a car at “rent a wreck” in Fernie (call it “Das Car”);
2. ·      We are stashing Das Bike in the owners closet in the lodge at the ski area;
3. ·      We are driving to Waterton Lakes Nat’l Park (back in Alberta), which is just across the border from Glacier Nat’l Park;
4. ·      We’ll stay at Waterton Lakes for 2 nights, then drive back to Fernie at early – thirty on Thursday;
5. ·      We trade Das Car for Das Bike, then ride down the west side of Glacier to Eureka, Montana (crossing the border at Roosville).

That all works in theory, so we’ll see how it works on the ground.  We had some help from some really great people in re-doing the plan, especially the woman who runs the rent-a-wreck in Fernie, who went above and beyond to help us figure it out.

Oh, I should mention that our navigation problem today added about 10 km to our ride (total of about 120 km) but cut nearly 350 meters of climbing.  I think that the wrong route was the right route!.  And we’re cooking dinner tonight, too!