Bike Packing with Aubrey June 26th-28th
Originally, I was supposed to be racing the Trans BC this week but, due to covid, that race was postponed until 2022. With a week off I reached out to Aubrey Demchuk to see if she wanted to do some biking. This ended up being a last-minute bike packing trip and my first bike packing trip.
The route went from Castle Mountain Resort, over the middle Kootenay Pass to Akamina-Kishinen, then to Waterton National Park, over Bovin Pass and back to Castle Mountain. The route looked good, and Aubrey had reached out to Parks Canada to make sure it would work.
We left Castle on Saturday the 26th and climbed to the top of middle Kootenay Pass, where we set up camp. Off to a great start, spirits were high with great views and a relatively easy start.
The next morning, we descended the pass, once at the bottom we stopped at Butts Cabin because well butts. From there we cut across an access road to Akamina-Kishinen, this is where it went wrong.
As we made good time reaching the park through the old burn in the extreme heat, we were excited to reach camp early and hang out in the river. Little did we know that the trail leading to the Akamina-Kishinen campground would be unrideable. With an unbelievable number of downed trees, swampland, and little to no trail at times we got into camp late. 15km of the trail ended up taking us around 5hrs! Sadly, the cameras went away, and the frustration and hanger forced us to rush to camp.
The next morning, we awoke to a road descent to Waterton. At this point, Aubrey had lost a cleat for her pedal, a water bottle and our spirits were broken. We decided to pull the pin and get picked up. We pedalled out of Waterton heading to Twin Butte, for our pickup and tacos.
All in all, bike packing isn’t the worst thing I have done but that was by far the worst trial and one of the hardest things I have ever done. I’m sure I will try another bike packing trip again though if the route is clear.
