Days 39 and 40, rest day followed by sweet single track and a bear!

Day 39, 14 August, rest day in Elkford

Day 40, 15 August, 59.2km and 677m climb, Elkford to stealth camp 17km south of Sparwood.

Well, today I saw my first bear! I came spinning around a corner on some of the sweet single track we rode today and there it was! It was very big and very brown. I squawked 'hello bear' in a loud voice and it looked at me and I'm pretty sure it thought 'hello human' before it fortunately dived off into the bushes. Gordon arrived to see a cloud of dust and that was it. It all happened very quickly! I guess my remaining thought is 'gosh, it was big'. A bit of a Google search suggests it was a Grizzly!

Today we planned to ride to Sparwood which is about 45km south of Elkford where we had our rest day. But it was such a lovely ride on predominantly single track and downhill tar seal that after a quick visit to A&W for lunch (yep, burger and fries and a full strength coke) and a stop at the world's largest dump truck (spot Gordon if you can), we decided to push on. Oh, and the top picture is Sulphur Springs, an interesting wee spot that reminded us of Rotorua!

Although it is only 35 odd kilometers from Sparwood to Fernie, it is all on single track and there is some solid climbing! It took us 3 hours to cover 17km so we decided to call it a day and have found a lovely wee spot to camp just off the trail. There was a bit of hike a bike today, with some bush bashing too where the trail is a bit overgrown. I struggled with the climbing, both on and off the bike today, mainly because of the weight of it I think so there was a lot of grunting going on! Gordon is loving it (as am I, just not the pinch climbs so much) as it means he gets to move around on the bike more and not just be sitting in one place.