We woke up and speedily packed up camp, nervous about the 6ish mile singletrack section that would start our day.... Bundling up in the chilly pre-sun forest, the single track was, in fact, mostly double track until we hit some boggy, muddy areas and had to hop off. The path remained pretty nice and was very beautiful, though we were hesitant about being the first ones on the trail in the morning and called out for bears very very very often. We hit a river crossing that would require us to get our shoes wet so Ziven found an alternate route where we could pass bikes over a deeper but narrower section with a tiny island. Surprisingly, I didn’t fall in! We popped out at a little wooden bridge and I thought we would turn onto the road again but we joined a “bike path” that had signs pointing to Banff, which excited us both. The bike path was simply a narrow gravel road that had some bumpy and steep spots, but we passed a few southbounders starting out and they were happy for us to finish!

We rode side by side for a while chatting and saw our second black bear running away from our gossip down the trail into the trees! We got closer and closer to Banff, seeing dog walkers and signs telling cross country skiers to yield to downhill skiers. We passed over another wooden bridge and biked alongside the river for a while. Finally, we were spit out in a trailhead parking lot and when we hit the road we immediately saw the castle-like Fairmont Hotel. Riding into town, we were impressed by the fanciness and went down mainstreet to track down Ziven’s friend, Jake, who happened to be there on a family vacation. We pulled up at Whitebark Cafe, Ziven almost crashing after slamming into a THICK curb on the patio, and ordered copious amounts of coffee and pastries while making a scene with our bikes on the cafe patio, which turned out to be connected to the lobby of a fancy hotel. Since we hadn’t showered in many days by now, we felt a little out of place and the manager of the hotel asked us to move our bikes, but not before we showed them off to Jake and chatted for a while. He had to run to catch a flight, but we sat and soaked in the sun, wifi, and coffee for far too long. It felt like we reached the end and we ignored the fact that we had NINETY MILES LEFT to our campsite for that day. Having charged our phones a bit, we headed to the grocery store for snacks and chicken nuggets. I filled water bottles in the single bathroom, for which there was a lonnggg line and we hit the road.

The first few miles were on bike paths and we passed beautiful lakes. We then went through a weird electric fence gate and joined the Bow Valley Parkway. The views were lovely and each turn seemed to find us facing huge rugged, rocky mountains. The day grew quite hot (100f) and, spying a creek to put our shirts in, Ziven braked hard and I crashed into him, sprawling all over the highway. I was thankfully not smushed in traffic and hobbled around for a while, tending my Pinedale knees and scab that had been reopened. We got our shirts wet and continued the journey towards Lake Louise. There, we filled our bike tires with air thanks to a nice bike shop and got ice cream and some groceries for dinner. Heading out of Lake Louise on an overpass and going through more weird electric fence gates, we entered the Ice Parkway properly. The rest of the day we steadily pedaled uppppppp a shallow but loonnggg climb with more gorgeous views and plenty of traffic but a generous shoulder. We reached the top of the climb when the sun ducked behind the mountains and, though we had 2 hours or so of afterglow, we decided to change our plan and head to two closer campgrounds instead of our original Rampart Creek goal. The first campground was 8ish miles downhill and we pulled in to see a huge sign saying the campsite was full, so we went a few more kilometers (per the signage) to Waterfowl Lake.

There was another sign saying the campground was full, so we prepared ourselves to beg another camper for a tent spot before I saw that they had a hike-in section. We followed the map to a mostly empty hike-in section and chose a lovely spot in the back with no neighbors and appropriately far from the weird building that warned it had been taken over by bats. I set up camp while Ziven went to pay and he met a southbounder on the way who had tried to do the gravel from Jasper but had to turn around when his panniers broke. I had tried to start a fire with a bag of Goldfish and Ziven took over when he came back while I started dinner. We ate noodles and chatted to Ziven’s new friend who had come by our camp. We then made hot chocolate and called it a day, tucking ourselves into a rain-flyless tent once again.