Trip Report: Short Cycling Tour (Banff, Lake Louise, Canmore)

My wife and I tackled our first cycling tour together this September. We decided on three days of cycling with rest days in between each ride day. The three stages of the tour were: 1) Banff to Canmore and back to Banff, 2) Banff to Lake Louise, and 3) Lake Louise to Banff. Due to late booking of accommodations and a minor injury on day 1, we actually did the stages in order of 2-1-3 with the help of the ROAM bus.

Day 1 (Stage 2: Banff to Lake Louise) started off with some nerves, but the weather and route was amazing. I did have a bit of bad luck on the first major hill. I’m not exactly sure the cause, but a bad shift into granny gear caused a broken chain on an 8% uphill resulting in an almost crash that tweaked my knee. Roadside chain surgery took about 15-20 min. The knee started to hurt a bit, but really began giving me grief after we stopped for a lunch break at 35km. Fortunately, my awesome spouse cheered me on the final 35km and ~600m of climbing.

Melissa did a really good job training for this indoors and easily handled a ride that was probably 3x harder than any outdoor ride she had ever attempted. You can’t practice downhills on an indoors trainer though; I had to renew her rear brake pads before the last decent of the day.

Day 2 saw us relaxing in style at Chateau Lake Louise. Rest and recovery moved me from having a horrible limp to merely some discomfort. Our first time staying here and a great opportunity to enjoy the lake with some leisure. Had some awesome meals and got an hour of painting in that afternoon.

We decided to use the ROAM transit bus to rearrange our schedule to do the shorter Banff-Canmore-Banff route on Wednesday instead of the planned Lake Louise-Banff route. This plan change helped us finish all three of our planned routes despite the injury.

Day 3 (Stage 1: Banff/Canmor/Banff) started early, catching the ROAM bus at the hotel back to Banff. Then we rode up the steep hill to the campground back to the camper to ditch a bunch of our gear and lighten the load for a simpler and shorter round trip to Canmore and back on the legacy trail. My knee felt much better, and I really enjoyed the ride. For lunch, we had coffee and sandwiches at the Rocky Mountain Bagel Company (I love that place). Arriving in Banff, we had to go up that steep hill to the campground again.

Day 4 was a rest day. Melissa went to the spa at the Banff Springs Hotel and I drove to Canmore to poke around there. Feeling a bit tired, I ended up painting from my table at Rocky Mountain Bagels. Gouache is so fast to work with, I had a little study done by the time I had finished my coffee and bagel sandwich.

Day 5 was supposed to be a riding day, but we decided to take an extra day of rest to make sure we’d my knee had healed as much as possible before we did the longer ride from Lake Louise to Banff. Bummed around Banff for the day. In the afternoon, we spent some time painting together at the Banff Campground. Melissa worked on a custom paint-by-number that I had made of Rundle mountain from this campground (although the view is blocked by trees at this site, unfortunately). I did a little tree study in gouache.

Day 6 (Stage 3: Lake Louise to Banff) had us driving out to Lake Louise withe the bikes loaded in the back. This was the easiest day of riding. There were three big climbs, but the previous two rides and rest days had us feeling fit and energetic from start to finish. Even the dreaded steep hill up to the campground from Banff townsite at the end of the ride was no match for us.

After the ride, I walked back down into town and caught the ROAM bus to Canmore to grab the truck. Bus transit in the park is fantastic, it made it much easier to change our plans around my knee injury on this trip.