Coast to Coast: Cycling 'Across' Canada
- Posted on
- By Aidan Raynor
- Posted in Bikepacking
Rain, sleet, snow, raging Prairie sun and long days on the bike read more about Aidan's bike backing trip from coast to coast across this great nation:
Single-digit temperatures and rain coming at us sideways, huge prairie headwinds, and mountain passes—this was all part of the bucket list.
The goal was to start in Squamish, British Columbia, on the Pacific Ocean and ride to Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, on the Atlantic coast. Instead of taking the usual beaten path along the Trans Canada Highway, we planned to take roads less traveled: Highway 3 from Hope, BC, to Medicine Hat, Alberta, followed by the Red Coat Trail from Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and then the Trans Canada Highway for the remainder of the trip.
Growing up, my dad and I had always dreamed about an adventure like this, but my racing commitments always got in the way. Every weekend, it was another corner of the country for a bike or ski race. Eventually, racing interfered with the things I really wanted to do, and I decided to take a step back. This step back included chasing the dream of riding across the country, or at least far as we could get.
We arrived in Vancouver in mid-May, and after a couple of days ‘underbiking’ the notorious Squamish singletrack, we set off on Day 1 from Squamish to Hope, through Vancouver. We meandered along the Sea to Sky Highway, down along the Pacific Ocean, then up the Fraser River to Hope. If you’ve spent any time in Canada, you know we like to find anything that will make our small towns unique and exploit it to no end. Hope’s claim to fame was the filming of “Rambo: First Blood.” The main street is lined with wood carvings of the characters, and everywhere you go in town, there is a framed screen grab of the building you are in in the background of a shot from the movie. For example our home for the night was in the hotel across from where Rambo stole the motorbike in front of the police station.
The following days were filled with rain and near-freezing temperatures. We found ourselves wishing for climbs since it meant the rain wasn’t freezing our already cold, hypothermic feet. Day 3 was particularly awful. Up over the aptly named Anarchist Pass, the temperatures reached a bitter 3 degrees, and the rain came down so hard we couldn’t see ahead of us. We ended up cutting that day short by 40km.
We crossed the continental divide into Alberta on Day 8 on top of Crowsnest Pass. Alberta only took us a day and a half. With the tailwind on our side, we ripped through the Alberta Badlands. As the mountains disappeared behind us, the scenery changed from thick forests to monoculture crops as far as the eye could see.
Through the Prairies, we had elected to take the Red Coat Trail. The route meanders along southern Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba into Winnipeg through small, sparsely populated ranching and farming towns. The kind of towns with bars that have special doorways into the bars so cowboys can’t ride their horses in. In one such town, the local bar had a 5 by 8 meter wall with all the cattle brands in the surrounding area.
As the cattle ranches were replaced with grain fields, we entered Manitoba. Our first Manitoban stop was the Souris Motor Inn. This was going to be a long trip and we were bound to stay in some cheap motels along the way. Attached to the Souris bar/liquor store down a dimly lit corridor, the door to the room had an oddly police battering-ram shaped hole. I’m not sure why I was surprised after the looks I got walking in my kit, but the Souris Motor Inn was a treat.
After we entered Manitoba, the trip got hard. The long days in the saddle had taken their toll. My dad couldn’t go more than a couple of hours without his hands going numb, and the wind changed after Winnipeg as we climbed into Ontario.
Northern Ontario is a sparsely populated region of Canada. Nearly a million lakes and one road going through it. Here, the Trans Canada is the only road across, and it narrows into two lanes with every truck making the crossing. Along with this, the shoulder gets to bar width, which is hardly ideal for numb hands mixed with transport trucks.
We didn’t know it yet, but these would be our last days of the trip. Across the muskeg, with hundreds of kilometers between us and the next gas station, the only redeeming quality of this part of Ontario was its confectionary culture. Every gas station has homemade butter tarts or other treats perfected in Ontario.
We crossed into the Atlantic watershed outside of Thunder Bay as a thunderstorm bombarded the last two hours of our trip. After a rest day in Thunder Bay, still with no feeling in my dad's hands, we chose to end the trip there and fly home.
We were disappointed to end this trip early but glad we ended where we did. The rest of the trip would have been a long, arduous journey on the Trans Canada with limited dexterity. But such is life—bikepacking trips are not supposed to go as planned, so even making it this far with the weather we had was a feat.
Trips like these don’t come around often and I’m glad that we were able to make it happen. To be able to do this with my dad was incredible. Trips like these are the reason why I ride, no other sport can take you almost all the way across the second largest country in the world quite like cycling can.
Read more about the day to day and get the whole visual story on Attaquercycling.com