Hope to Manning Park: When You're Going Through Hell...

Keep going. (I think Winston Churchill said that.)

This was a leg of the journey we'd been dreading and, not to ruin the suspense, it not only lived up to our expectations, it exceeded them. There's just nowhere but up from Hope. A whole lotta up.

First, there's the climb to the Hope Slide, which according to Wiki, is a 7% grade. Or, simply put, bloody steep. We couldn't get our bikes up over five kilometres per hour, so it was slow going. Slow and...grinding. There just aren't enough spinning classes in the world to make that kind of climb any easier. For a while, I would set my sights on something about 400 metres ahead and make it my goal to just make it to that object ("I'm going to keep peddling to that big tree, just keep going until you get to the big tree, you're almost at the big tree, come on big tree, bigtreebigtreebigtreebigtree..."). This technique tricked my psyche into not sabotaging my determination for a good hour. As we moved into hour two of grinding up the hill, my psyche caught on to me ("I'm going to keep peddling to that hubcap on the side of the road, just keep peddling until--Oh sod it! This SUCKS. This hill SUCKS. Suckssuckssuckssuckssuckssucks...").

All told, the climb took almost three hours. We were tired. And lunch overlooking a devastating landslide that killed a number of people wasn't quite what we needed to hearten our flogging spirits.

We checked the map and came up with a plan. There was no way we were up to the challenge of the notorious Allison Pass, but according to our map, we had a nice long descent into the Sunshine Valley, another shorter climb out of the valley and then a descent into a campground at the base of Allison Pass. We decided to aim for that campground and to tackle Allison Pass in the morning when we had fresh legs.

The Sunshine Valley came and went and the second climb and its descent came and went and there was no campground. We were tired, daylight was flattening into dusk, and we were out of water. We reasoned that the second descent must have just been a dip and that we would have to climb up a bit further before coming down to the campground we were looking for, so we started up the next climb. In any case, there was nothing else to be done, as we were on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

An hour later, we were still climbing and the more we climbed, the steeper it got. At some point, a car crossed over the centre line and the driver rolled down his window to inform us that about halfway up the hill there was a big bear. This news was alarming in two ways: first there was a bear, a big bear at that and second, we had been climbing for an hour and we weren't yet halfway up the hill.

There was, indeed, a bear further up the hill. And he was big. But not Grizzly big, thank God (I'm more scared of Grizzlies, but perhaps only because I haven't encountered as many). (No, seriously, aren't Grizzlies more menacing?) The bear--a Brown Bear, I think--was on the shoulder on the opposite side of the road. Which is to say, much closer than I ever care to come to a bear. Kieran dug out the bear spray and had it ready in his handlebar bag and we start ringing our bike bells and talking while we approached. The bear didn't get scared off, but instead became curious and turned to take us in, sniffing the air in our direction. When we were close enough to make eye contact (ungerrrt!), the bear would turn his head sideways to avoid direct eye contact (not confrontational--PHEW!) and then look back (ungerrrt!). We did the same, and I'm sure it was for the same reasons as the bear, a kind of "I see you, but I do not want you to attack me. But I have to keep an eye on you, so I see you. But let's not fight." This dance of eye contact and looking away continued for a few long, heavy moments and then, blessedly, a truck driver saw our predicament and pulled into the centre lane, slowed to our pace, and placed the length of his trailer between us and the bear and escorted us up the hill until we were a safe distance from the bear. I turned to look back at the bear and saw that he'd done the same, craning his neck around to get a good look at us (or likely to get a good whiff, as I'm not sure how well bears can see).

Post bear excitement, we had another three hours of climbing. Still convinced we were on the smaller hill, we kept expecting the hill to end at each turn and then another hour of uphill riding would follow. At one point, I felt a cold rush against my calves and realized I had just ridden past a snow bank. We were past the snow line and we were still going up!

The last of the daylight drained away and we pulled over to put our lights on and that's when we saw this:

We'd accidentally done Allison Pass. All 1342 metres of altitude (in a mere four hours! And with only one bear encounter! Oh, the FUN!).

Stats: 67 kms; 1342m altitude; 1 bear sighting; 2 broken spirits

And, for those who are interested, here's Manning Park on Google Maps.