Nocturnal birds flapping in the night kept waking me up, but I otherwise passed the night peacefully. I was up and out early as I knew my route for this day was going to be my hardest and most grueling day. While the sunny skies were beautiful, they were also brutally hot. I battled confusing road signs, steep gravel road grades, roads rarely if ever travelled anymore, and had the adventure of a lifetime. It was a quintessential bikepacking day and it felt triumphant to successfully navigate this section of the trip.
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| Finally ran into my first logging trucks... the lack of rain lately has made for a lot of dust. Luckily, I just had a few miles before I turned off onto smaller gravel roads. |
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| Seriously, though, those flowers! |
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| Hmmm... surely that means only for cars. The handwritten note that "Google Lies" had me thinking it was not closed just for logging... I made a gamble and just went for it. |
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| Exposed, sunny, steep, and still beautiful... so much hike-a-bike! |
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| Remnants of logging long past. Clearly it had not been used recently. |
One of the biggest gambles I made this day was to ignore the "Road Closed" sign. I thought maybe it was closed for logging, but it was clear that there hadn't been any logging up this way recently. As I slowly progressed further and further, my mind wandered in circles, and desperately hoped that I would not have pushed my bike up the steep summit only to have to turn around and figure out a new route. And then, I discovered that I was right. The road was only closed to cars because it had washed out and just a small bit of singletrack connected the route through the washout. A weight lifted off my shoulders as I walked my bike and panniers separately over the loose singletrack.
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| Where the road ends for cars. |
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| Clearly, nothing had really been through here in a while. I battled tree limbs and loose rocks the whole way down. |
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| It was barely rideable due to the fist sized rocks and I wiped out. Oops. |
After basically having to walk my bike down the other side of this summit, I finally reconnected victoriously with the main dirt road. I was so pumped until one of my panniers kept popping off the rack. Turns out I broke the latch on one of them when I crashed my bike, so I ziptied the pannier to the rack and then it was clear sailing from here to Lake Cowichan where I planned to have a late lunch and a swim.
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| Logging trucks, no matter how respectfully they passed me, still kicked up a ton of dust. |
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| Cowichan is beautiful! |
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| Found my own private swimming spot where I hunkered in the shade to eat lunch and got to go skinny dipping. |
Energized by a leisurely lunch and swim, I loaded up on water and headed towards Nanaimo. I knew I had a killer summit ahead of me and vowed to get up as much of it as possible tonight. This meant I might have to dry camp, so I carried 3 extra liters of water. Again, the signs tried to fool me and emboldened by my previous endeavor, I forged ahead. I was a little worried that "no access" meant there would be active logging since the other sign had just said the road was closed. As the day wore on, I was in high spirits. There wasn't a single car and I saw two ultralightweight bikepackers zooming down the other way.
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| Nope. Ignoring you, too! |
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| The mountains still had a wee bit o' snow left on them. |
The crushing summit earlier had sapped a lot of my energy so I was trudging up the summit in a painfully slow manner. I had to push my bike up so much that I started getting blisters and finally decided to call it quits and find a big pullout to set up camp in. Bear poo was scattered on the road here and there, so I knew I was going to have to be careful with my food and sure enough, right as I was cleaning up from dinner, I saw two big black bears with their baby cub. Even though black bears aren't known for attacking humans, I scrambled to hang my food, snapped a quick picture, and dove into my tent. They ambled by peacefully and didn't bother me or my food stash at all, but my brain was racing... did I have enough reserves to make it to Nanaimo with no food? Would I have to punch a bear in the face? Will this be the adventure that ends all adventures?
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| Black bear family from afar. |
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| Not really a bad campsite though, really, even if it was just by the side of the road. |
A few tips for cycle tourists:
- This area has a ton of dispersed camping and while I had intended on staying at an established campground, I preferred to rough it.
- This is also some of the most remote cycling I've done and just know that you need to be able to be 100% self-sufficient for at least a day to do this part well. And have a good GPS. Maps.ME was great and accurate and made navigation easy.
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