gauvins

[no touring this summer, so let's draw plans for next year]

The sketch is for roughly 2 months, late June to late August. The idea would be to fly to Calgary, ride south towards Yellowstone. Then west towards Portland. Then north towards Seattle. Then north again to Vancouver Island. Then fly home from Vancouver. Kids will be 9 and 15. We should be averaging 60kms/day. Camping.

A very rough google mapped itinerary makes it 3 000 kms, so it looks ok

Will read comments/advice/suggestions with considerable interest.

staehpj1

I look forward to seeing a more fleshed out route. Lots of options between those distant waypoints. Sounds like quite a trip though.

gauvins

Well, it would look like:

1. Leave from Calgary airport. Ride west on the Bow Valley Highway until we hook up to the GDMBR. Then to Banff
2. Ride south on the GDMBR down to the TransAmerica (connector using route 2, close to Homestake - Twin Bridges)
3, Loop Yellowstone clockwise, heading west on the Lewis and Clarke route, until we can connect with the Pacific Coast route
4. North on the Pacific Coast route, up to Port Angeles.
5. Ferry to Victoria. Ride to Nanaïmo. Ferry to Vancouver. Fly.

All the routes are ACA. Should be ok. If there are good reasons to improvise, please say the words

(BTW, I've watched ACA's promotional clip about the GDBMR (see below). Interesting. Was expecting single file trails but it looks like excellent dirt roads. So, yes, this is probably the route we'll take (assuming getting supplies doesn't require heroic efforts).

staehpj1

Sounds amazing. I don't have any route advice, having only ridden the TransAmerica and Pacific coast portions of your route. Hopefully others will chime in. If not maybe post a question specific to the GDMBR for more details on it.

I think there may be times you find 60 km to be an awkward distance and you may feel the need to do more some quite a bit longer and maybe a few shorter days due to the spacing of camping or resupply. I always find that to be the case regardless of the desired average.

gauvins

Yes yes, absolutely. I'd say that we can ride up to 100kms if needed.

Too early for detailed planning. My guess is that the routing outlined above is significantly longer than the initial estimate and we'll have to build a few alternates (shortcuts or cheats - bus/train/car rental) to make it fit into our allocated time.

indyfabz

How old is that video? I believe ACA recently made significant changes to portions of the route. Make sure you have the new maps. That aside, I'll bet it's still mostly unpaved roads as opposed to singletrack. Probably still some paved sections as well. If you stay in Whitefish, MT Whitefish Lake State Park has hiker/biker sites with bike amenities like a repair stand and electrical outlets. So does Wayfarers State Park in Bigfork, MT. Both are very nice, although they could be pricey with multiple people since I think they charge by the person, not the site. ($12/non-residents).

staehpj1

Yeah, hiker biker sites sometimes are not a great deal for for groups. We were at times successful in convincing them to let us stay in a regular site if that was cheaper for our group of three and/or the sites were a lot nicer. They were sometimes hesitant and unsure if they were allowed to do so. In one case they had to call a supervisor at our insistence.

Sometimes the rates seemed especially unfair to cyclists in small groups like families. One place they tried to charge our group of three (three bikes one tent) more (a good bit more) than they would charge a car with a family of 10 with several tents. They claimed they were giving us a break because they were charging us slightly less per vehicle. We continued down the road a few miles and found another place to stay. It was reasonable and super nice.