August 12th, 2014

What happened…

Andrew writes: What didn’t happen!? Actually, I’ll start with last night. What a crazy night. One of the charms of sleeping in an abandoned human settlement like Midway, which is only used one weekend every year, is that it’s quiet. It’s desolate. It’s also populated by really loud, screaming, caw’ing crows, and at least one bear. Every time the wind made a nearby tarpaulin rustle, or a door creaked, or one of those birds flew over us while we slept, one of us would jump up, fearing the worst, and clutching our air horn. Strangely, whenever one of us bolts up, the other quickly follows. After doing this enough times, I decided that the bear wouldn’t eat me, and that the crows were a pain in the ass, but nothing that ear plugs wouldn’t fix.

Amanda’s alarm went off at 8am, but we could hear that it was raining lightly and decided to not be in a rush to get ready to ride. We were pretty tired from our restless night, and woke up again at 9am. Chocolate chip pancakes, coffee, and Great Big Sea on the squawk-box meant that we were in fine spirits by the time we rolled out at 11am.

We knew that we had some climbing to do today, and Amanda was pretty adamant on getting a hot shower at a “real” campground, which was 70km away. That meant we had a long day in the saddle ahead of us. Still, I was puzzled when Amanda didn’t seem to be putting much effort into her riding. She said she was saving herself. Saving herself for what? For all we knew, it could’ve been a single climb and lots of downhill. Frankly, we were burning daylight and it was annoying.

About an hour into the day the wind picked up to “brisk” level, and a few raindrops started falling. No big deal, we started putting on some layers of rain gear. We continued to ride for another hour, and started a series of long switchbacks up to what would be the first of two passes. The wind really started to blow from behind us, which was nice, but the rain was making it a tough slog on the bikes, essentially we were riding an inch deep in mud, sand, silt or all three. Amanda started walking at this point. I felt a little bit sorry for her, much less annoyed now, and maybe a little mad at myself for being so hard on her. Amanda is such a strong-willed individual, and on yesterdays ride when I was suffering, she was very supportive.

We stopped for lunch halfway up the pass, behind a rocky outcrop out of the wind. It was just cold leftovers from last night, but it really hit the spot. I think it was maybe 2pm, so we had been riding for 3 hours, pretty much uphill the entire time. Ahead and above us we could see a radio tower, which we mistakenly assumed was where we had to go. While there was a service road leading up to it, I’m glad we didn’t take the option for the extra vertical. Instead, we reached the top, and by now I’m drenched.

My jacket was leaking, and as a result my under layers were getting cold and clammy. Also my gloves were making my hands pretty chilly. As we were descending, we came across an Englishman, Tony, who was cycling north. I’m not entirely sure how we was faring in his shorts and light rain jacket. He had no glasses, toque, or any other visible warm layers. He mentioned that he was trying to get to Inuvik by Thursday (2 days from today), which was about 250km. I hope he makes it. It made me wonder about how everyone has a different riding style. For him, perhaps he thrives on waking up early, and riding late. Certainly with the midnight sun up here you can ride forever. Still, it isn’t my cup of tea. And while I didn’t take time to change into warm(er), drier clothes, I could have. Then it stopped raining, and while it was still about 10 degrees, the terrain improved. Ok, fast forward 2 hours.

We had just passed the NWT Road Maintenance Yard, and there was a sign indicating that the road ahead was “freshly graded, and in great shape!” according to a worker we talked to. I died a little on the inside. After my last experience with a freshly graded road, I was already dreading the next 18km to the border in this dripping morass. I’m sure cars like soft roads underneath, but not our bicycles. Nevertheless, we continued on. We started climbing. Up ahead we could see dark clouds, and a pale ribbon of road arcing towards the sky. We knew that would be the last climb out of NWT, and then it was to be downhill to the campground in the Yukon.

It was a miserable, soul-sucking, gear-grinding, jacket-sopping, teeth-chattering, blinding-fog, whipping-wind, hungry, thirsty, climb. We took turns cycling and walking, cycling and walking, depending on how squishy the ground was underneath. Meanwhile, whenever we did try to cycle, our bikes protested quite loudly from the grit and grime that was encasing itself in every bicycle orifice. I didn’t time it, but I believe it took us about 2 hours to make that last 8km.

As we neared the top, I noticed that my brake levers felt spongy. I’d never felt them to be this way, and part of the reason we chose mechanical disc brakes was for their reliability in a variety of conditions. Amanda reported a similar problem. We took shelter behind the “Welcome to NWT” sign to try and fix the problem. I took the caliper off, but couldn’t seem to reason out what could be wrong. I ended up turning a knob which forces the brake pad closer to the rotor. Off we went.

The descent was out of this world. As we left the “Welcome to the Yukon” sign, a gust of wind picked me up from behind and nearly deposited me in the ditch on the right side. We were buffeted by gust after gust of intense arctic wind. Snowflakes danced before us as we fought to keep our bikes on the road, particularly when the ditch disappeared and turned into a cliff-edge. Stopping at one point to catch out breath and ensure that we were both safe and sound, I again had to adjust the brakes. For some reason or another they just kept fading and could only be fixed by bumping the pad closer to the rotor. I became worried that I would break the caliper, I was turning the knob so much; especially on Amanda’s bike. For myself, I just stopped adjusting my rear brake and pedalled faster to keep balance. The wind kept trying to force me off the road, but it was also propelling me at a good speed down the road, towards my end goal.

Finally, around 6:30pm we pulled into the Rock River Campground. As it turns out, there are no hot showers here. Instead, we found a sheltered common area with a wicked wood-burning stove. Ike and Bethany were just wrapping up dinner, and watching the Simpsons on their laptop. We ended up talking to them for a few hours, drying out all of our clothes and whatnot before retiring for the night. Rather than pitch a tent, we just rolled out our sleeping mats and bags in front of the wood stove and hopefully we don’t get in trouble from a park ranger.

I’m looking forward to getting to Eagle Plains tomorrow for a few reasons such as crossing the Arctic Circle, picking up fresh supplies, crossing the halfway point on the Dempster, and having Internet access so that I can post these. Or maybe we’ll just spend the day here in front of the fire. Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Today’s Photographs