Climbing out of Revelstoke to the Rogers Pass Summit

Some have commented on the fact that references to the local geography haven't been particularly accurate, mostly in relation to the number of mountain ranges in BC. I had always assumed that they were ALL the Rockies, but that is not the case at all. Here are some facts and corrections.

Through Vancouver Island, we passed through the Vancouver Island Ranges. As we left Hope, up until around Kamloops, we were travelling in the Cascade Mountains. Up until Revelstoke, we were in the Monashee Mountains.

After Revelstoke, the next city to speak about is Golden, through Rogers Pass in Glacier National Park, into the Selkirk Mountains. It's a long way to go for one day's ride, so today we went halfway to the Rogers Pass Summit.

It was pretty incredible. We were surrounded on all sides by huge mountains covered in glaciers. All through the day we could hear and see water running down the mountainside as the snow melts with the coming spring, creating streams that connect with one another and continue down.

Unfortunately for us, it was essentially a 70km day straight up, with few flats or downhills to speak of. The summit of Rogers Pass is at an altitude of 1330m. We climbed about 900m of that today alone! It was an absolute grind.

Along the way, we met another cyclist making his way across the country. His name was Ryan, works in real estate marketing in Calgary, and was doing the trip alone. Moreover, he was pulling a trailer like ours, except with the 90L drysack COMPLETELY full of gear, plus his tent on top. He was carrying three days' worth of food, and about 9L of water. It was pretty crazy, as he was trying to make it all the way to Golden in one shot...for a 9-10pm arrival time. We have a feeling we'll be seeing him later on in the trip.

Once done for the day, Barb set us up to have the bikes locked up in a warehouse at the summit, and drove us back to her place for the night. Tomorrow morning we'll pick up where we left off, and head into Golden.
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