The next day we had breakfast at a bakery in Radium Hot Springs, before heading north on Hwy 93 towards Castle Junction and Lake Louise. The first part of Hwy 93 cuts a steep, narrow, twisting path through a canyon, and I stopped to take a hero shot at the 11% grade ahead sign. Sarah stopped just in front of me while I was composing the shot, which gave me a perfect view of the near disaster which developed.
Approaching, in the oncoming lane, was a convoy of vehicles, including an 18-wheeler. In my mirror, I could see another 18-wheeler coming up from behind. Because of the traffic in the oncoming lane, the truck coming from behind had nowhere to go, and was forced to stay totally within the lane. Normally, this wouldn't have been a problem, but because of the narrow shoulder and very bending road in this section, the trailer of the semi was forced closer, and closer, and closer to us. Finally, as things got worse and worse, Sarah, who was still half clipped in, fell over sideways to avoid being decapitated by a load of California lettuce and landed hard on the pavement. As soon as I could, I rushed forward, and we pulled all the bikes and personnel as far off the road as was possible while I patched up Sarah's wounds. Luckily, her injuries were minor, but it was definitely could have gone way, way, worse. By the time this photo was taken, we'd both managed to calm down, and Sarah was even smiling again.
After a scary start to the day, the 11km climb out of Radium Hot Springs was a relief, with the bonus being the equally long descent down the other side. After the pass, Highway 93 travels up the Kootenay river and we got our first view of the Rockies. Numa Falls was a great tourist stop along the way, and the descent from Vermillion pass down to Castle Junction was nothing short of epic.
We spent the night at one of the Castle Mountain "chalets", operated by Decore Hotels. It was a reasonably nice-ish cabin, but not in a $260/night kind of way. Really, this hotel kind of epitomized some of the many issues I have with the national mountain parks. For whatever reason, if your hotel is in the National Parks, it's okay to charge $260/night and trust that the guests won't notice that your exclusively teenaged staff replaced the toilet paper with cut-grade sandpaper from Home Depot in the middle of the night. Oh well. At least I was clean.| Back to Day 1 |
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| Golden Triangle Cycling Tour Photo Album |
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