Wer den Mont Ventoux drei mal an einem Tag bezwingt, wird in den Club der Verrückten aufgenommen (https://www.clubcinglesventoux.org/ ). Et voilà, ich bin jetzt auch eine von denen! 😉
Ja, der Mont Ventoux ist für seinen Wind bekannt. 💨 Aber was das wirklich bedeutet, wurde mir erst auf diesem Rennrad-Abenteuer klar.
It was no surprise when we got the message from Vätternrundan in April 2020 that the event will not take place in June 2020. So, instead of riding with 20.000 other participants 315 kilometer around the second largest lake in Sweden, we decided to explore the wild east of Germany including the Bohemian border region. Luckily, the boarder was officially re-opened again just a couple days before our trip started.
Most people will love the landscape of the Granite Dells in Prescott, Arizona, but there are only a few people that will enjoy riding bikes here. You follow white dots painted on sandstone rocks. Similar to the Slickrock trail in Moab, but a bit rougher with lots of very technical climbing sections. A really neat area and definitely a unique place to ride your bike. We love it and will come back for sure!
After another great ride in North Vancouver we drove south to Leavenworth, Washington. But what we saw the next morning was a little bit disappointing: it was end of September and everything above 1000 feet was covered in snow. We quickly decided to drive further south. After another 15 hours of driving we found summer again in Moab, Utah. On top of that we also found our Columbian friend Cesar (by accident).
We are still in B.C. despite rainy weather conditions. This already tells a lot about the area, because we usually don’t like to ride our bikes when it is wet. But here we ride even in wet conditions because we are curious about what else is hidden in those woods. As it is not our first time in the „Sea to Sky“ area, which is everything between Pemperton and Vancouver including Squamish and Whistler, we had a sense that it is worth staying and exploring.
This time we had endless trail advise from locals we met during our adventure in the Chilcotins the week before. With so many trails to choose from you are lost without good trail advise.
It turns out we really (!) love the riding here because it is so different from everywhere else in the world. We are not talking about the Bike Park, we talk about all the other amazing trails out there. We are still kind of surprised that it is so good here. It is hard to explain why. Here’s an attempt:
A few days after we crossed the border to Canada we met our American friends Aaron, Jen and Paul in Squamish, B.C. in order to celebrate Paul’s 50th Birthday. The festives started with a (relativley new) must-do mountainbike ride in Whistler named “Lord of the Squirrels”, which was really fun!
The highlight was a three-day trip into the South Chilcotins Mountains Provincial Park. We took a float plane to Warner Lake, which is in the middle of nowhere, where we rode our bikes three days in a very remote area of Canada. The mountain scenery was absolutely unique and mind-blowing. Some of the climbing trails had long hike-a-bike parts, but the views on the top where always rewarding.
Two months and 6000 miles after we started our roadtrip in Baltimore we made it through the whole country and arrived at the West Coast in Bellingham, Washington. Yes „we“ arrived here together. Frank is back. Last Tuesday, I picked him up in Seattle. After three weeks of solo traveling our bed feels so small suddenly … :-))