Today we rode from Elkford, British Columbia, Canada to Sparwood, British Columbia, Canada. Again we could enjoy a nice sunny day, not as warm as the days and that is all OK. Highlights of the day include seeing hot springs, saw a whole lot of cows and calves, nice single track.

Riding statistics: on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, day 3 on the route, it took 04:56h (03:45h moving time), between 08:00 and 12:57, to cover 47 km (29 miles), including 434 m (1424 ft) elevation gain, with an average speed of 12 km/h (7 mph), while reaching a maximum speed of 45 km/h (28 mph). During this ride the average temperature was 22 °C (72 °F) with a minimum of 6 °C (43 °F) and a maximum of 35 °C (95 °F).

Totals: So far, it took 0 days, 17 hours, 8 minutes, and 5 seconds of cycling time to cover 227 km (141 miles), including 2741 m (8993 ft) elevation gain, with an average speed of 13.2 km/h (8.2 mph).

The day started with a beautiful morning and a nice sunrise. Yesterday, just before we arrived at Elkford, we had to ride some difficult single track. The trail we were riding on is called The Elk Valley Trail. When we left Elkford this morning, we had to continued that same trail. After already a couple of minutes we saw two bike packers walking up a jeep road. Of course, we had to take the same road. Fortunately, it was not that bad that we had to walk, but it certainly was a solid warm up. The trail was really a nice one, and it was a mixture of single track and jeep track. It was never so steep that we had to walk the bike. The scenery differed, from dense vegetation, where we had to watch out for bears, and green open meadows with cows and calves. If you near the cows, they usually walk away. However, we also ran into a cow which was feeding two calves, one from the left side, and one from the right side. The cow looked at us like she warned us that we better wait until they were finished. So, we waited, and waited, and waited. After a while we got impatience and started to make a bit of noise. One calve stopped drinking and went to the other side. The other calve did not care at all. Finally, after some perseverance from our side, the second calve stopped as well and all three walked away. Far enough for us to safely pass. We also passed a hot springs, not the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen, but still impressive. The water was very clear, and the rocks in there were a nice mixture of blue and green. We already smelled the sulfur from a distance.

After two hours riding on the Elk Valley Trail, we came onto a paved road. First it was just a back road, a little later it runed into a busy road. Fortunately, it had a wide shoulder. We had to follow this road for about 3km, after which we could turn onto another back road. This road went downhill, for a long time, which we enjoyed. Unfortunately, there was again a brutal headwind. Which meant we still had to paddle, even going downhill. Eventually the downhill ended, and we had to fight the headwind on a flat road for almost an hour. Fortunately, the weather was still fantastic, and we enjoyed the scenery. At one point there was a trail starting from the side of road. It was not marked well, and there were a couple options. We got the wrong one, despite having GPS navigation. The trail we took became hardly passible after several hundred meters. We had to hike our bike, and it became adventurous. Fortunately, we were lucky finding the correct trail about 10 minutes later. The correct trail was just an easy-going single track through a part of a valley. We did need to pay attention to the trail surface since there were quite a lot of big holes, made by some animal. Eventually, the trail ended back on the same road where it started, only a couple of kilometers down the road, just before entering Sparwood.

We decided to stop for today in Sparwood. We were already more-or-less convinced that we would like to take the Flathead Alternate. If we would continue the normal route, we would have opted to continue. After asking around in the visitor center, checking the weather forecast, and making jokes on the remoteness, we made the final decision to take the Flathead Alternate. It was on our

wishlist

anyway. Sine we would be going to a remote area, we had to get food and drinks for a couple of days. First, we went to the local campground and pitch our tents. Then, we went back to the local town center for groceries, doing laundry, and eat a big wrap at the local Subway (where we briefly met the guy from Toronto again).

When walking back to the campground, big clouds started to come in. It turned out to be smoke from a forest fire. Visibility got worse, and it smelled like fire everywhere. Later that day there was such much smoke that the surrounding mountains, and even the sun, were not even visible anymore.

We used the evening for some more relaxing at a picknick bench at our camp spot, charging our electronics, and preparations for the next day. When I got into my tent later that evening, and into my sleeping bag, the lower part of the zipper broke. I had to fix it immediately before the zipper opened from the bottom any further.

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