Day - 6 Merritt to Pritchard 127 Km – Tuesday June 26th, 2012

I Woke up early in the morning at 6.20 had a nice shower and figured out that I had misplaced my shower pouch in the washroom the previous night. Had my stuff for the day organized from the previous night and found it very useful to use only one bag to transport my daily needs. Breakfast today was fresh pancakes, porridge and the usual stuff (bread, Peanut Butter, Jam, fruit, GORP).

I was ready and set to leave for 8 am and realized that Keith was on duty and since he was still recovering from an infection, a bunch of guys stayed back to help their team wind up camp and load bags in to truck. We left camp at around 9.20 am and the day looked grey and feared to rain. The ride itself was great, fantastic views along the valley floor and it was rolling hills all the way to our next turn. The route today had an option to reduce a (supposedly) tough climb but it involved cycling on a packed gravel road for 11 km. Since there were enough hills in Canada to climb, we opted to go down the gravel path. Although the scenery on the route we chose was fantastic, away from roads, preserved habitat, very quiet and isolated houses and farms, but boy oh boy, the road was CRAP. After 11 km of cycling we were met with some semi paved road and it was rolling hills till our next turn. Now we thought the crap roads were over, but we hadn’t seen the worse yet apparently. A steep downgrade of 3 km on a gravel road with rocks as big as loonies and had bumps every 2 feet.

Once off the gravel path we met up with Trans-Canada Hwy (HWY # 1) and it was about 15km which we zoomed across at 33km/h thanks to a strong tail wind. Couple of really cool things happened when we cycled this part of route. The highway is currently being expanded to 4 lanes past Monte Creek and there are lots of construction sites. We were passing along and waved at the bulldozer operator and he ended up replying with a huge honk. Similarly the Canadian Pacific railway runs parallel to highway and we saw a long transport train approaching and we waved at the train. We didn’t expect a wave back, but instead we were met with a nice train horn, which I thought was a pretty cool gesture.

We got into camp around 4.30 pm and set up our tents right away as the sky looked grey and it feared to rain. Dinner today was spicy lentils with rice, Bruschetta, salad and we had cake to celebrate Howard’s birthday. Today has been the most satisfying day of the trip so far. As I sit writing this post, we were told that we were to skip Mara, BC as our next stop and will go to Sicamous, BC as there was a mudslide on that road. We are also told to fill out water bottles as the water in Sicamous has been contaminated with gasoline.