Miteymiss's blog

This useful, amusing, and sometimes poignant collection of 35 short stories chronicles my one-month autumn train-and-cycling journey around western Canada. As blogs usually do, entries appear in reverse chronological order onscreen, so if you want to read the stories from the beginning, go to the very first entry titled "Mitey Miss does... North Vancouver". What's the idea with this trip?

Well, a careful examination of a map of B.C., Canada reveals that there are two active rail lines in the Province. They're used mostly by freight trains, but it is possible to use them to do a good sized circle of the province by passenger train, if you get creative.

Both Rocky Mountaineer Vacations and VIA Rail Canada offer passenger service between Vancouver and Banff, but on examining the schedule I discovered that VIA Rail departs Vancouver in the late afternoon and crosses the mountains in the dark! Rocky Mountaineer ~ on the other hand ~ is a private company and more set-up to break the distance into two day-time sections.

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.

(To read the stories from the beginning, scroll down to the first entry titled "Mitey Miss does... North Vancouver".)

What is it about trains that makes me go misty? 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.

"You know," I say to Michelle as she steps out of the shower, "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. The relatively new, 346-room accommodation clings to the side of Sulphur Mountain and towers over the valley and surrounding mountains at 5,200 feet.

"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 H.I. hostel (halfway between Lake Louise and Banff) about the same time Michelle and I did.

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.

I'm at the Lake Louise hostel, and I smell pancakes. I stumble from my room 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.

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. By noon we figure the twenty-five kilometres into Lake Louise are safe. Better than safe, they turn out to be gloriously downhill.

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 speciality 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.

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.

Riding towards Beauty Creek hostel, 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 too ~ 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.

You can only get here by foot, and only if you've strayed 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.

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.

"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.

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.