The Great Granby

The Fourth of July is one of my least favorite holidays. I wanted an excuse to not bear witness to the shitfuckery of lighting our great outdoors on fire, noise, and nationalism that the United States becomes. So I gathered a few of my favorite people and went north across the border to the motherland (literally, my mother is from Canada!). We looked at routes on Vancouver Island and in other parts of British Columbia, and landed on The Great Granby primarily because of the ease of a beautifully vetted route. We were not disappointed. 

Whelp, turns out that we ended up in Canada on Canada Day, but luckily they manage to celebrate it in a very polite Canadian way. While the original route had two options, we opted for the well graded rail trail instead of adding gratuitous road climbing. 

There isn't anything I can share here that the fine folks at bikepack.ca haven't shared, so just go, enjoy, and live large! And don't be too surprised if you bump into other bikepackers on this route like we did.

Flats happen and Ani is a great helper.

Magical lakeside campsite during peak season.

So much lake joy.

Mountains, water, and dirt roads.

Whoops, wrong way. I suppose the overgrown path was a sign.

Gnarly trails.

Bears! We took one bear spray for three of us, but no actual bears. Just prints.

Magic light and magic scenery.

Just some shitty views.

Collapsed caves are the coolest. This one is historic and left to be how it is.

There is a history of Japanese internment here... my grandad was also born and raised here. Now, since I'm adopted from South Korea, there's no relationship to this history. But I shared this story and someone thought that my grandfather was interned here. Whoops.

Some campsites come with the best swimming holes. Also, it's a great way to get away from the mosquitos.

Dave saved Elisa... it was so hard to find a "bike shop" that was open. Sometimes, you just have to find a guy who knows about bikes and he'll make sure you can shift into all your gears.

Huckleberry season! (Also, black raspberries and salmonberries!)

From wide dirt roads to doubletrack.

Magic at dusk.

Did I mention that Canadians are nice? We scored these free beers from a family across the way.

A rare photo of the three of us.

Just me n' the mountains.

Ooh, we are gonna get on a boat!

Just a little hike-a-bike.

Rest days = fun at museums.

Tunnels = natural air conditioning.

A few tips for cycle tourists:

• Folks in Canada are real nice. Finding long term parking is as easy as asking a local business owner if you can park at their establishment.
• For some wonderful reason, there are samosas widely available in British Columbia. No one knows why, but why question it? Even in the tiniest quaintest towns, there are samosas.
• Poutine is less available than samosas. Weird.
• Some of the entrances to old rail-to-trails, especially near the collapsed tunnels, may be hard to find, but I promise they are there!