Day 4: Beyond "Hope" and "Hope"-less, until . . . . .

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It was an early start today, We promised ourselves to be out by 7am, needing to climb a mountain and cover 140kms.

We left at 7:30am.

This was partly due to Jeff starting the day by taking the early lead in the puncture count with a slow leak overnight.

I had worked out that our 46km ride up the mountain gaining 1200 odd meters averaged out at about a 3% gradient - now that's not too bad and I assured everyone we'd be fine. As it turned out, I was wrong.

The climb to the top of Coquihalla Pass took in the order of 4 hours. We gained and lost height a lot in the first 10kms so much so that it meant the climb when it actually started was at least 6% with long stretches of 7 to 9%. It hurt. A lot! We broke the ride up into sections to regroup and get a little rest. The final 5kms to the top was all 9%. It was a very tough and slow climb, but at the top was a road-stop where we enjoyed a hot chocolate and some food to replenish our energy. This climb had taken a lot longer than expected, it was 11:30am and we still had 100km to go - a lot of which would be on the rail trail.

For every uphill there is a downhill, and we revelled in it, allowing our lactic acid filled calves to gain some relief as we rolled down the other side of Coquihalla Pass.

Our fun was short lived as we had to leave the highway much to our reluctance and follow a side road for about 10kms that would get us onto the Kettle Valley Rail Trail (KVR). This was one of the highlights we planned for the trip - the videos online show a picturesque rail trail with grand views and trestle bridges galore. The side road we were on was awful, with large cracks across the road every 4 meters causing severe jolts to vibrate through our bikes as we road along. The awful road came to an abrupt halt and we came to a wildlife gate. Our course continued on beyond the gate on what was now a track. The track, like the road before it, was pretty ordinary making progress slow, that is of course until we came to a complete halt. The track had been washed away by a landslide. All that was left was a treacherous narrow makeshift track about 50 meters long cut into the bank. The only way past was to push our bikes along the cutting and hope we didn't fall into the creek below. We all manged to get our bikes past and were relived to get moving again - only to find a second washout a couple of kilometers down the track - this was taking a lot of extra time. We were expending a lot of energy and tiring in the heat - it looked like it was going to be a late arrival tonight.

Just before we reached the turnoff to the KVR we came across Paul and Alyssa riding a quad bike. They gave us a tip on a short cut indicating that we could take a parallel road to the KVR which would which could catch us up some time - getting us to an intermediary stop at Tulameen which was 20kms short of our stop for the night, Princeton.

Since we were stopped anyway we stopped for lunch at this point and before we headed off on the rail trail, Paul and Alyssa filled up our water bottles with fresh water and sent us on our way to the KVR.

It's hard to adequately explain the trail. Our expectations based on the videos and reading we'd done bore absolutely no resemblance to the dusty, rocky, rutted, goat track that we were presented with. It was simply atrocious. In fact a number of times we couldn't even ride out bikes having to walk some sections. All of us came off our bikes at least once in the deep dirt or stones. Our progress was excruciatingly slow. We'd planned on being finished by about 5pm today but this was blowing out significantly.

After what seemed a bone crunching eternity we finally reached the cross road that Paul and Alyssa told us about. No one had any qualms about leaving the trail and taking the road. The road wasn't sealed, but it was very wide and flat and could be ridden at speed, everything the KVR was NOT. The road we were on was taking us to Tulameen, still some 20kms short of our final stop for the day but the day was running out. We started discussing options of trying to find accommodation at Tulameen depending on how late we got there and how we felt.

Despite the better road, we had been sapped of energy early in the day climbing over 1200m and then beaten up and shaken on the goat track from hell. We all started to tire. About 8kms out of Tulameen the dirt road turned to bitumen and the bumps and shudders finally stopped for the first time in 6 hours - we almost cried with relief.

We rode the last 8kms into Tulameen with a lake on our left. Magnificent scenery we could take in now that we actually had the chance to lift out heads from the road and admire it.

In Tulameen we wanted to get info on how far it would be to Princeton via the road instead of the rail trail. We went to the General Store and found it closed. Tulameen is a small tourist town and just about every thing was closed - it was after 6pm.

I noticed a man wandering over from the other side of the road and asked him for some information about distances, state of the trail and how long it would take to get to Princeton by road. Mike answered all my questions and then said, "But you're booked in at my hotel tonight", and pointed to he Otter Inn across the road.

For some reason we thought tonights stop was at the next town, but instead we had reached our Days End. The sheer relief, and disbelief, at walking into Mike just blew us away. What if we rode straight through, what if I hadn't stopped to ask a local for information? After all the exhaustion and pain and bone crunching Kms we actually caught a break - a very big break that didn't end there.

In our correspondence with Mike, he had warned us that we'd have to bring our own food with us which we intended to get from the General Store, but because we had arrived so the General was closed and we were famished. Without hesitation Mike offered to drive us the 26kms into Princeton so we could get a meal and then drive us back again.

Needless to say Mike was our hero, and dinner was on us!

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