So here's some of the highlights from the Cypress Trip this year - and exploring the TCAT.
The Players:
SDSC members:
Chris
Stan (talking to the ferry operator)
Glyn
John
Ken
Brad
ADSMC members
Medicine Hat
Dave
Rob
ADSMC members
Lethbridge
John
Justin
The story:
Chris and I headed to Kyle on Wednesday night and stayed at the Tumbleweed Inn. Stan was camped at Clearwater Lake and met us out front of the Tumbleweed at around 7:00 AM Thursday morning.
By the way, I highly recommend the Tumbleweed Inn if you're staying in Kyle. It was nicer than I had anticipated, and for a small town Saskatchewan hotel it was great. The $70 price tag was pretty reasonable too, especially when split between Chris and me.
We headed over to the Cedar Villa restaurant, where they apparently have a 10 egg omelette available for breakfast!
I have been trying to eat more healthy lately, so I just had the "Cardiac Platter" instead.
After that it was on to the route. The first roads out of Kyle were grid roads, but after the first two miles the road changed from gravel to dirt. We found some awesome dirt backroads through the fields for the TCAT, and eventually went past Lacadena and on to this viewpoint near the South Saskatchewan River.
After riding across several more dirt backroads and fields...
...we came to the Lancer Ferry.
If you ride the route east to west, the Lancer Ferry is the 2nd of two ferries the route will cross the South Saskatchewan River on, the first being the St. Laurent Ferry northeast of Saskatoon. Southwest of the ferry we got onto some more grid trails across miles of open fields.
This part of Saskatchewan is very wide open! It'll be a different experience than the forests to the north.
We went through the tiny town of Sceptre, which doesn't have a gas station but has a Co-Op Cardlock. If you go to the Co-Op and ask nicely they will use their Cardlock card to allow you to purchase gas there.
South of Sceptre the route goes through the Great Sandhills, an interesting geographic anomoly. Apparently, due to prevailing winds, the hills move about 4 feet per year.
South of the Sandhills we found some of the most awesome roads there are in existence! One in particular was the best dual-sport road I've ever ridden - and I've ridden BC, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, etc. etc. The road was curvy and had lots of small humps that you could just catch a little air over when you were doing about 80 km/h. It was like riding a roller coaster!
A bit further down I managed to catch my front wheel on the edge of a rut on a grid path and fall off my bike. It hurt a fair bit, but nothing too serious. The video is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJhr__6X ... ature=plcp.
We pulled into Maple Creek around 8:00 PM and got a room at the Maple Creek Inn. The restaurant here is decent, and they have a bar too so you can grab a cold one after a long day of riding.
The next morning we headed off toward Cypress. We explored one route into the park, but ran into a "No Trespassing" sign and decided not to route the TCAT this way. Too bad, as it was a great road!
So we headed through the park (Centre Block), stopping to take in the views...
...and explored a potential route on the east side of Highway 21. This route was OK, but I still wasn't 100% convinced, so we headed back to the park on the west side of 21 to try a 3rd option. This option worked well, but it will result in the TCAT bypassing the Cypress Hills Centre Block altogether. So I'm not sure whether I liked the east or west route better. Decisions decisions...
Anyway, from there we were heading back to the Centre Block up the Gap Road to check out routes heading out to the east again. Showers had gone through the area earlier in the day, and as we headed for the Centre Block the Gap Road kept getting muddier and muddier. Finally we were struggling along in first gear and the mud was packing around our tires, and I looked back and Stan had gone down. I went back to check on him, and discovered he had broken his leg!
So we called the ambulance (fortunately we had cell service - you can't always count on that out here!). While we were waiting we were watching a thunderstorm move toward us from the west, and we started to worry that if it reached us before the ambulance did they might not be able to get through on the Gap Road. Fortunately the ambulance crew was quick, and after loading Stan up Chris and I had just enough time to get out of there before the rain hit.
Well, Stan's injury was a downer - we felt really bad for him - but we met these New Brunswickers back at the Maple Creek Inn.
They were on a power pole crew, maintaining 30,000 power poles in the area, and were in the mood for drinking, so they invited us back to their room for a drink. It was much appreciated and visiting with these hilarious guys and having a few whiskeys made a big difference to our spirits (no pun intended).
The next morning Chris and I rode to the park and hooked up with the rest of the crew, who were camped out near the Ranger Station on the Saskatchewan side of the West Block. Unfortunately Ken and Brad weren't feeling well, and they preferred to nap rather than go for breakfast. Glyn, John, Chris and I all headed into Elkwater to meet up with the Medicine Hat guys and to have some breakfast.
It turned out that two ADSMC members from Medicine Hat and two members from Lethbridge had made the trip to Cypress to ride with us. So when we left the Elkwater Landing restaurant we had a crew of 8.
We headed back and hooked up with Ken and Brad, who were feeling a bit better, and headed out to ride some trails. The Mad Hatters led us through some great stuff, as usual, and we had a great day of riding. Toward the end of the day, Chris and I decided to make a beeline for Saskatoon that evening, since it was supposed to rain on Sunday and we didn't like the idea of riding all the way home in the rain. So we split off from the main group and blasted back to Maple Creek. We headed up highway 21, across on 44, then up 4 to 7 and back to Saskatoon, and made 410 km in 4 1/2 hours (on KLRs no less). Chris actually made another 75 km back to his place after that yet too!
It turned out that Stan needed surgery, as he had broken both his tibia and fibula (both bones in the lower leg). But he told me later that they were saying he'd be out of commission for 6 to 8 weeks, which for that type of injury is quite a short recovery time! Hopefully you're riding by August, Stan, and your season is not over!
Total km for the entire trip was ~ 1584! Thanks to all those I rode with - you're all a great group of guys. Thanks especially to Stan and Chris for helping me with the TCAT part of the route - your input was valuable and I couldn't have done it safely alone.
