*** Lost my laptop in Vancouver. Had all my travel working files and lots of pics… thankfully I kept this blog going or the entire thing would be gone by now. Some of this will be missing/wonky this week.

Last “official” week of my tour! Just packed this one full of as many climbs as I could. Ended with the famed “Triple Crown” ride in Vancouver with some friends old and new.

About 45 minute drive from Banff, there is the more remote ( but still ultra touristy ) region of Lake Louise, which has the ever-popular emerald green lake in front of the Glaciers. I’ve seen it several times on dating apps. Everyone “adventures” to that lake, which is literally right off a parking lot. CONGRATS.

Tons of Ravens in the mountains, croaking at me and eating trash and roadkill.

This whole region has nasty cattleguards and even gates to pretend the wildlife from escaping the tourists.

Me heading out on the highway towards my first stop: Takkakaw falls. Once again back to epic views of bald mountains and some permanent ice.

The skies were perfectly clear that day. Enjoy.

Really had to resist the urge to stop every 5 minutes to take pictures. I think you get it at this point: This place is beautiful and you should probably go.

Base of the falls climb was a black bear walking up the road! Had to wait for him to go into the ditch to sprint passed safely. Well he probably wouldn't have eaten me. Probably.

This bull elk was starring me down the entire time while I was passing. He wanted to wreck my life, for sure.

The falls. You can get right up to them! Yes you will get soaked.

The view from the falls. You're maybe 250m up from the bottom of the road here.

At this point you're down at the near bottom of the valley, next to the river.

Furthest stop of this ride: Emerald lake and the Natural Bridge.

It's literally a naturally formed stone bridge over the river rapids.

Humans sure love holes in rocks. Let my buy a mountain, I'll blast a ton of cool holes all over it for you.

Look at all those people looking at the hole. Not me though...

The Emerald lake, about 100m up. It is also green. They're all green.

Green and popular. Here you can rent canoes to go out on the lake. 90$/hour in case you're wondering. There's trails as well. The bike only gets you so far.

From there I headed back to Lake Louise and there was another bear just meandering along the road!

He really seemed uninterested in me or the cars stopped by to watch him. Just going along his business without a care in the world.

Following the river back. There's a 300m or so climb coming up. They carved an extensive network of tunnels in the mountain so the trains can get up.

It's called "Spiral Mountain". There's a little road stop there if you want to learn about it. The Rockies are all about trains, that's how and why people got to the west coast in the first place.

I had a massive tailwind going back. Going 45kph on the nice perfect highway when I came upon the planned road strava suggested...

Oh giant electric cattle guard and a closed half dirt garbage road? No, back to 45kph highway, thanks.

Back to the actual town for the final bits of the day: Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. Was getting chilly at this point.

They have a huge hotel/castle at the lake.

Instagram central of Canada here, probably. This girl was prancing around while her friends were taking pictures. STAY IN SCHOOL, KIDS.

Magpie coming up to tourists to beg for food. This is what happens if you feed animals guys, they'll come up to you and entertain you. Phew what a nightmare.

It is quite the lake, with a view of glaciers in the distance.

As you can see from how people were dressed... it was starting to get late and cold.

Last stop: Moraine lake. You're about 400m up from Lake Louise here. That's the view before you descend a bit to the lake itself.

Another amazing lake. Has trails all around, food, toilets etc. I didn't stay long because my toes were getting tingly...

Ok one last bear though. Camped again that night, which was great. Make tons of food. Very cold night however, probably went down to freezing. Lake Louise does sit at about 1600m elevation.

Left the cool parts of the rockies behind that day. Driving down the Ten Mile Hill I had the dumb idea of stopping in Golden and just doing the climb. I felt really good on it. Then pretty good on Revelstoke, which is the highest paved climb in Canada, at 1405 meters of climbing.
That made two days in a row with over 2000m of climbing!

Sadly I lost most of the pictures for this, including pics of the World’s Largest Paddle. Boo.

Ten Mile Road winding down along the mountain into the town of Golden.

The road passes right through this big rock they just sliced through.

About halfway up Revelstoke. Very few good views on this climb as it's almost all in the woods. Pretty lame.

Little lookout if you walk 100-200m from the parking. Too bad it was a smoky day, can't see much.

Some hidden chairs to enjoy the view. Possibly.

Silver Star Road

Another day of lost pics. Silver Star is a beefy 1200m climb to a ski resort. It’s not very steep. You take what you can get in Canada! Vernon is in the Okanagan Valley, with the dry desert landscapes that are such a contrast with the coastal or inland rockies. Looks like Arizona.

Was trying to keep my 2000m/day streak going so I found this other climb near Kamloops, where I planned to stay. Was right in the desert and just went to some lake and back. Not worth a detour but it added 700m elevation to my day…

On the way to Vernon you can stop at Log Barn 1912! They have dozens of random statues all over the place, it's quite something.

Trex pulling a carriage. They really had fun with this stuff. There's also a petting zoo with goats.

No idea where they got all this stuff. I had so many pictures. Dragons, bears, gorillas...

There's a tourist trap farmer's market there with a food truck.

I bought this for 16$ ( lol ) mostly to support the statues. It wasn't good. Tasted like bad BBQ sauce.

Tried to find the "Biggest Canadian Flag" in some small town. Think it was removed. You can have this instead.

The view going up Silver Star. Notice the rolling yellow hills and wide open spaces.

Top of Silver Star. There's a very large ski resort/town there with colorful condos. It's pretty cool and looks very expensive. View sucks from there though, for a 1200m climb...

Pics for these were still on my phone, thankfully. Kamloops is a very scenic town bisected by the Thompson River. The entire city is built basically on a 500m cliff, Newfoundland style. If you take the Coquihalla highway out, you gain 1600m of elevation over 35-40km.
Ashcroft is a tiny mining desert town in the middle of nowhere, at the bottom of a canyon, on highway 97. The views from Kamloops to Ashcroft are absolutely stunning and unique though, worth the detour.

The city of Kamloops in all its glory.

Another view of Kamloops from one of the bridges.

Bottom of the 400m climb to Paul Lake. These rolling yellow straw hills are a super cool and unique feature of the Okanagan.

Top of the hill is just a lake. Notice how it's already back to coniferous forests. Looks like Quebec.

Railway museum. As always. Your town is mandated to have one of those in the Rockies.

Kamloops marina, where the little bike path ( aka dog park ) meanders.

In the rest of BC this would just say "HOBO".

The highway drive from Kamloops to Ashcroft has this crazy viewing area of Kamloops lake. This is maybe 300m up.

That's how it looks as you descend into Ashcroft, on both sides of the river.

The landscape progressively turns from full desert, to grassy farms and then into ranches.

The top of the pass doesn't have that great a view, but you're now back in the pine forests.

Going back down into town. I was going to do the other side but the sun was setting... Somewhere along the way I lost 2 hours of sunlight without noticing.

Town is very small and has a western theme to it.

There's only a few streets, but a lot of these original buildings are still standing.

If you want that "authentic" 19th century western vibe, go there. It's not a manufactured tourist trap like Banff/ Jasper.

Little brother of the World's Largest Truck in Sparwood, BC.

Seems like a cool tradition going on there.

As always: No river, no town.

Streak still alive, over 10000m after that day. That’s more than Everest! Was still going strong, somehow. Felt grateful to be in a shape where I can bike like this every day and never have to rest.

The 2h30 drive from Ashcroft to Pemberton is the gnarliest part of the rockies.

The views are stunning. The road follows the river and constantly goes up/down as it twists and turns, sometimes very abruptly.

The drive gets you out of the desert and back into the proper "cold" Rockies.

Glad I didn't do that drive at night. Don't drive here at night lol. It's also Grizzly Bear country, apparently. Seen 0.

Chilly lakes, coniferous forests and snowcapped mountains. Welcome back to BC.

View from the top of Cayoosh pass, which climbs out of Pemberton. It's a 1100m climb with a really steep start.

Top going down. Not super amazing views since this is a highway pass, sadly. But it's one of the toughest climbs in Canada for sure.

Headed to Whistler for a ride afterwards. Here's... a lake.. Yah. Not even green this one.

Tried to bike up to the Olympic village but it was closed, because "reasons".

View on the way back down from the village.

They have a pretty cool mountain over there I guess. Believe this is called "Mount Whistler".

The town itself is more of a ski/mountain bike/lake town. No parking, expensive shit, pretentious Tim Hortons architecture. Tourist Trap alert.

Squamish was one of the only places in BC where you can park and sleep. BC is very anti-camper life. Has a huge violent hobo problem and lots of hobo-campers douchewads who just abused the hell out of Wal-Marts and Rest Stops, living there semi-permanently and dumping their trash/sewer water all over, or just wrecking the bathrooms.

Instead of solving the problem ( with bullets ) governments / commerces have mostly decided to ban overnight parking, punishing the 99% of people who did nothing wrong. They enforce this by towing vehicles and having security knock on camper doors in the middle of the night.

Another joyous benefits of a large drugged-out hobo population. Hurray.

Wasn't feeling like taking many pics today. Squamish is nested at the base of a bunch of cool hills.

There were tons of people biking in some sort of event. Had to join them to ask what they were doing.

Apparently this was the day of the Vancouver-Whistler fondo. Damn, I would have done that as an out and back if I had known.

These weren't the head group.... Started at 7am and had done like 70-80km in 4-5 hours. COME ON GUYS, MOVE, MOVE lol.

Squamish is a cute little town, but pricey and not a road bike destination. Never seen so many fit people in any one city though, don't know what's up with that.

View of the "Sea to Sky" highway that connects Squamish to Vancouver. That's a ride for another day I suppose. Very beautiful.

This is the “Big Ride” people do in Vancouver. They call it Triple Crown but there’s really just two mountains in the area. Still this nets you >2700m of elevation. The two mountains ( Seymore and Cypress ) have very nicely paved roads and somewhat gentles gradients. I’d be here a lot if I lived in Vancouver.
Rest of the city seems pretty crap though.

JR, old friend from Montreal, organized this ride and invited a bunch of Vanc people!

It made it more fun for sure. We just took it easy as multiple large fires made the air pretty polluted...

Top of Cypress... Yes... enjoy that clean air..

View of the clean air. Visibility was like 100 meters. It was bad.

Some damn/river somewhere.

Over 13 000 meters climbed that week, almost 30 hours on the saddle. Glorious end to the whole trip, despite losing my laptop… Ultimately still decided to go to the USA for a bonus week!

Thanks for reading and checking my blog! I’m glad I kept up with it otherwise all of this would be completely lost along with my laptop and my memory is garbage so I would remember none of this.

One last week after this and back to Victoria it is.

If you made it this far, feel free to join my Instagram and/or Strava!

Touring Canada Week 17 - Final Official Week! Over 13 000m elevation.