What was really amazing was riding up to the ferry to cross the lake and the last car is boarding. We just rode straight onto the ramp and fell into place behind that last car. We are patting ourselves on the back celebrating our good fortune to make the ferry. It is evening and we are shooting for a campsite up Six Mile Road near Nelson so it is fortuitous.
The campground has spots for maybe three parties and we are the only ones, grabbing the only spot with a picnic table. We are about 40 km up the gravel road from 3A so certainly accessible. The light is already pretty diminished so we quickly go about setting up our tents and then gathering dead fall and drift wood for a fire. As I am collecting wood, I hear some vehicles pull into the camp ground. They are making a lot of noise as they manouvre their vehicles into position, then immediately shift to bucking up some wood with chain saws. Great. I can see the headlines in The Sun: "Two Alberta Men Die in Grisly Chainsaw Murder in Remote BC Campground Beside Pristine Lake with Lots of Little Fish and Frequented by Bald Eagles". I find two downed trees about three inches in diameter and decide they would make a good contribution to a fire. I collect Phil's saw and go cut the two 8 foot sections from the trees. I am carrying them back to our camp thinking about how much work it is going to be to cut them into smaller sections (they don't have to be small for the fire; an end can be put into it and the log can be fed in as it burns down) and I think about the chainsaw murderers. With the chainsaw. I decide to take my life in my hands and ask for some help to buck up my two pieces of wood. I walk into their camp and in about the 20 minutes they have been there, there are four tents/campers set up, there is a roaring fire with a large pile of cut AND split wood and somebody is cooking dinner on a camp stove the size of Idaho, which is where I figure they probably originated. The first person I see is a big, muscular man, shaved head, wearing a tank top and two full tattoo sleeves. They are scary, but really organized. Then I see a little kid about six running around and there are a total of about nine or ten people. "I couldn't help but notice you have a chainsaw" I say, my voice breaking. Another person immediately comes over and invites me to help myself to all the split wood I want and they will keep my two logs to buck and split. And they are not from Idaho but from Lloydminster! Though it wasn't clear to me if it was the Alberta side or the Saskatchewan side. I carry an arm load over to our spot and in about ten minutes, we had a nice fire burning, which was great because we have splurged on hot dogs for dinner as we had a hankering for "fresh meat". In about another ten minutes, our neighbours stroll into our campsite carrying more wood for us and they also give us some fire starter for the next morning.
The following day is Phil's Favourite Part of the Ride. He has been talking about it from before the trip with comments ranging from "you will be fine" to "someone might die". But half the time he says "someone might die but you will be fine". I hadn't really thought too much about it other than when Phil talked about it but it was starting to make me feel a little panicky. I really didn't even know what was going to be so scary; I just knew Phil kept telling me I would be fine. It is the powerline trail just south of Fauquier and in fact, if you look on the trip Spotwalla, you can easily see a short, 10 km section where the "pings" indicating my location are all quite close together. In other words, it took us a very long time to get up this hill.
The powerline trail shows on the map as "Powerline Rd" as if it is some kind of road. It is not. It is, at best, an ATV trail or, what some people call "double track". When we arrive at the base, we stop so that Phil can give me some final tips and I say I want to take a picture. I look up at the mountain we are about to climb and my heart is in my throat: this does not look like something that we can physically ride because it is scary steep. I say to Phil that that is an impossible route and he reminds me that he did it last year and he reminds me that he did it alone. The climb is 1400 meters and the trail is not gravel but loose rock. The rocks are ranging in size from small stones where three or four would fit in my wine glass to canteloupe size. In fact, there are others on the road that are much larger but because there are not too many like that they are easier to avoid but to be honest, I don't know if I hit any like that or not. Somewhere in the blog you can see a picture I took of the rocks and you can see that there are a great variety of sizes but the bulk of them are baseball to softball sized. Unfortunately, the picture does not do the steepness justice and for that matter, the picture doesn't really do the rock size justice either since there is no context or comparison. Now, regular readers of my blogs know that I am at times prone to "artistic licence" however, I want you to be sure that I am not exaggerating the size of the rocks. Not to say that the rocks won't grow larger over coming years but for the moment, these sizes are my best recollection and estimate. Ask Phil.
These rocks, in combination with the steepness, presented a formidable challenge to me on several levels. The first was that in riding up the hill, the front tire of the motorcycle would bounce off the rocks. Not so that the tire was not making contact but it was with much less pressure on the rocks, so steering the bike had reduced effect. I would be trying to avoid larger rocks and a couple of times, the bike would be careening all over the place trying to get a foothold. Further, it is extremely important to keep the momentum going because is is extraordinarily difficult to start from stop on the steep slope in loose rocks as letting out the clutch at the improper rate would cause the rear tire to spit rocks rather than grip them. In fact, this is where the slip clutch technique played its most important role, which was to allow me to keep the bike moving at low speed but keep the revs high. Lastly, I needed to stay off the brakes because that would alter my momentum. It was a complex set of variables. Plus, over one edge of the road there would be invariably a precipitous decline and, as before, I could it look. At least, when I was riding. On four separate occasions, I went down. I had Phil there to help me up and at times, I felt a little bad that I was preventing him from riding this track in the manner he would like but on the other hand, he is the one that brought me up there.
After I fell, Phil would help me get my bike upright. The first two times, he had to stand behind me to help me stay on the bike and start out without me spinning out. Putting my foot on the front brake had virtually no impact. Putting my foot on the back brake would sometimes hold but sometimes, I would slide backwards, skidding. All I wanted to do was get to the top.
Each day of riding on this trip has been progressively more challenging and each day Phil asked if I was having fun. I was having fun and I think Phil was really just making sure he wasn't pushing me too hard.. As it turns out, each day I built my skill set and when it came to the powerline road, I needed what I had already learned to help me up the hill. But when Phil asked me about halfway up the hill if I was having fun, I just told him that later, we would be having a conversation.
My fourth time down, as it turned out, was on the steepest part of the hill. It was about three quarters of the way up and Phil helped me get going. He told me that when I get to the top to wait and we would meet there. Every time I crashed, Phil would have to stop his own bike, park on that steep slope, get me going and then get on his own bike and get going. Well, I got going and made it the rest of the way up that slope. I was scared and exhilarated and when I reached that plateau, I applied my usual artistic licence and rode all the way to the top. I knew he meant to stop at the plateau but I had momentum and I just wanted to get it over and done. There was a little flat spot that looked back at the valley and slope I had just climbed and it would be the perfect vantage point from which to watch Phil ride up and together, we would ride triumphantly over the summit.
I waited about ten minutes and no Phil. This didn't stress me too much because LAST YEAR HE RODE THE POWERLINE RD BY HIMSELF. 20 minutes and now I am starting to worry. I am watching for him to come over the previous rise with binoculars but am not seeing him. Something has kept him from catching up to me but it also means that I will have to ride back down and the prospect of this is scaring me. After 30 minutes, I start honking my horn hoping that he can signal me back but nothing. At 40 minutes I am on my bike riding back down, worried sick at what I might find and worried equally as much that he will be fine but that I will have to just turn around and ride back up.
As it turns out, he had been right behind me the entire time and I only had to ride about 400 metres, part way down the last steep slope when approaching the summit. He had crashed. When I arrived, Phil was on his feet and he was holding his bike upright. His gear was scattered all over because he had dumped it to get his bike up. He had followed right behind me from the steepest section but when I wasn't at the plateau, he worried that I may have taken a turn that I should not have taken, so went back to check and see if there were any tire tracks. When he saw none, he pushed on but in that final section, bounced off a rock and was heading to the ditch. Unlike me, who panicked somewhat with each of those incidents, Phil just thought he would manouvre out of it by riding up the embankment, stopping then turning back down onto the road. It seemed however, that his big 650 fully loaded was not as nimble as his little racing bike and consequently dumped, with the bike falling downhill towards the road such that the wheels were above the handle bars. He was a little rattled but more mad at himself than anything. I held the bike up while he composed himself and gather a few of his belongings, and surveyed the damage: a snapped off mirror, which had broken earlier and two bolts holding the racks for his paniers. Both inconvenient but neither was trip-busting. We got his bike re-loaded and I was able to start out up the hill without help and we managed our victory ride over the summit together.
On the other side, near the bottom of the PowerLine there is a campground called Taite Creek. Because it was Thursday of the long weekend, the campground was full but it is right on Arrow Lake, so we just picked a spot on the beach and set up camp.
That is where we met Dale.
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