Peter Freeman: Tandoming the Twin Tracks

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I peeled off my eye mask and pulled out the little foam ear plugs that had blocked the sound of an occasional truck passing through the night on the road below. In the subdued light of the darkly varnished room, Mary packed away her night gear while I added water to the powdered milk in my bowl and started on the first of many bowls of cereal. When I had filled the void in my stomach, I finished off the last of our packing, moved the tandem out into the hall and hoisted it up onto my shoulders. With Mary guiding the rear wheel, I attempted to quietly descend the staircase. Every board I stepped on protested, calling out as if in pain until I had reached the bottom. Out in the street, the cold chilled my fingers as I attached the saddlebags to the rack over the rear wheel. I was dressed in shorts, my thin white top, it was summer and the temperature was close to freezing. What a change from previous mornings!

We left the Beaverdell Hotel a bit before six, eager to get our limbs moving and warmed up. By the time we regained the Kettle Valley Railway, our fingers were numb and our toes were soon to follow suit. Yesterday's sighting of a black bear made us a nervous in the soft light of dawn as dark shade from forest trees blanketed the track. We picked up speed on the smooth trail, our bear bell occasionally tinkling as the awakened sun warmed the hillside to our left but left us to ride in the dark, cold air below, pedaling the easy one percent grade.

We passed through a wide, open valley before re-entering the forest and reaching the abandoned mine town of Carmi, seven kilometres north of Beaverdell. By now, the cold had dug into our bones, so we stopped by an old mine building to put on our light, windproof jackets. Smoke rose lazily from out of a chimney of a house down the hill on our right proving that there were a few people left in this near ghost town and trees grew up through the foundation of the old railway station making it difficult to visualize what the gold mining town had once been like.

From Beaverdell the track had run north to reach Carmi on the south side Wilkinson Creek. To cross the creek, the rail bed turned to the west, ran along the side of the deep valley for about five kilometres, crossed the creek and switched back another five kilometres to arrive at Lois Station, two kilometres north of Carmi. We checked our guide book.

The bridge crossing Wilkinson Creek at km 81.2 is out, requiring you to ford the creek. During low flow rates in late summer this is easily accomplished.

The alternative was a forest service road that descended to the bottom of the creek and climbed steeply up the other side. As it was early July, I wondered if we could ford the creek as we had an exceptionally wet and cool spring and the snow had melted much later than usual. If we continued to follow the rail bed to the ford and couldn't get across, we would have to come back, adding another ten kilometres to the already long day of over one hundred kilometres. My curiosity and thirst for adventure decided for the both of us, so we headed up the valley to the ford.

A large mound of earth prevented us from accidentally riding off the abrupt embankment where the bridge had once been and a twisting trail lead us to an opening in the trees were we caught our first glimpse of the creek. Mary stared at a swiftly flowing river of cold water rushing over large hidden boulders while I looked at a gentle brook rippling slowly over rounded stones. Mary was the first to speak.

Her voice tapered off into silent resignation as I looked at the ford and planned our crossing. We would leave the saddlebags on the bike to help press it down so the flowing water would not easily push the wheels sideways, although it shouldn't be a problem since there would be very little resistance from the spoked wheels. Although crossing rivers should be done in boots to prevent injuries to numb feet, we didn't relish the thought of spending the rest of the morning in soggy boots so we took off out shoes and socks and walked the bike town to edge of the water. When Mary walked on the cold wet sand, she shivered and turned to me.

The front wheel pushed into the flow, followed by Mary's feet and then mine. The water was cold but not icy so we carefully moved out into the center with the water getting deeper and deeper, until it was lapping at the bottom of the saddle bags. I stopped pushing, it was not as shallow as I thought.

I though it out quickly. I could feel my feet getting more numb with every second.

"Leave the bike with me, you get across to the other side but watch where you place your feet."

Mary let go the handle bars and moved slowly towards the opposite bank. The water rose higher up her legs until it was near the bottom of her cycling shorts but with a few more steps, she was moving up the far bank. While I watched her, I took off one of the saddlebags, released the backpack straps and wore it on the front of my chest. The other saddlebag I wore like a regular pack, the shoulder straps locking the chest pack in place. Slowly I walked the bike through the water until only six inches of the wheels remained above water. I hoped that the sealed bearings in the wheels, bottom bracket and gear cluster would prevent water getting in to the moving parts. At the other side of the creek, Mary helped pull the bike up the bank.

"I'm sorry, we don't have a lot of time. Today is going to be a long day. You'll warm up sooner or later."

I sat on a creek-side boulder, washed the sand off my feet and put on my dry socks and shoes. When I walked around, it felt like my feet were encased in concrete and I wanted to get moving again as the sun had still not climbed high enough over the trees to reach and warm us. The rail bed continued to climb as the hillside on our right dropped away more and more until the sun poked through the trees. The trail surface was still good and except for an occasional mud slide, we moved fast. We reached the junction of the forest service road from Carmi and looked down the steep hill. I was pleased that we had forded the rive, I didn't want to try pedaling up that hill. Now the track curved around gently until we were heading north again.

The next ten kilometres went by easily but in spite of our vigorous cycling, our feet were still without feeling. We stopped by a large pond, had a drink and checked our watches. We were making fast time today, a good thing since I wanted to be at Myra Canyon in plenty of sunlight to take photographs. A short time later, the railway reached Arlington Lakes where a few recreational vehicles stood by the shore and out on the lake a small aluminum boat moved along slowly. We stopped by the water tower foundation, all that remained of Lakevale Station, to have a drink and let the sun warm us. Here Mary took off her socks and shoes and pressed them against the concrete to try and work some heat into them, however I ignored her claims of success and declined to take mine off. It was still only a little after eight o'clock and I didn't think the concrete would be warm enough yet.

Soon after we got moving again, we started to feel hungry and decided to look for a warm place to eat. We came across a large slope of black rocks where heat from the sun accumulated where we stopped. While I photographed, Mary prepared our brunch of buns and sandwich meats and in the warm sun, I could feel the circulation moving back into my feet. A couple of toes had thawed out, leaving the others still feeling like they were missing.

We were now high above the West Kettle River. I could see it far below in the valley with the ribbon of highway running beside it. In the cool still air we could hear the occasional truck singing along the asphalt as it twisted around the bends. At one point, the soil from the hillside to the left of us was held back from spilling onto the track by a sturdy wall built of wood obscured by small trees that had grown up in front of it. There was a lot of moisture here, the track was muddy and the vegetation lush and fresh and I was just thinking how this might be perfect moose country when I saw a footprint in the mud.

About a hundred metres further on, the track came out of a curve and up ahead on the straight stood two large animals. At first I thought they were dogs but they were no breed with which I was familiar and they didn't look like coyotes. They were much bigger than the coyotes I had seen and had a very arrogant and proud stance. Their fur did not have the yellow tinge of coyote but was thick, particularly around their necks and was more of a steel gray colour. I stopped the bike and released the camera from its bag. As I was readying it, they watched us before trotting off down the hill and out of view. We had encountered a pair of wolves close to a place marked on the map as Wolf Creek.

We came across another large washout, but there was easy trail around it. The creek that caused the washout had originally been redirected by a makeshift gutter but was now in some disrepair. We headed along another straight section of track when two large cougars stepped on to the track a hundred metres in front of us. As I stopped the bike and extracted the camera, the cougars, standing side on to us, watched with their long tails curved up in a stiff arch. Their size surprised me, they were so large that I thought I was looking at African lions. Before I could take a photograph, they sauntered off the track and down the hill..

We were concerned at having two large predators hidden in the trees to the right of us, so I blasted the horn a few times before proceeding. For the next few hundred metres, I blasted the horn every ten seconds while Mary sang at the top of her lungs and once we were safely by, I stopped the bike to pump up the air horn which was nearly empty. Thirty fast strokes of the bicycle pump and it was at full pressure which would give us ten seconds of continuous sound or forty quarter second load blasts. We hoped that it was sufficient to scare of any potentially dangerous animals but every time we stopped I would keep it topped up just in case we had to use as we just did.

At nine-thirty we reached Cooksen Station. We had traveled some forty-four kilometres so far, up a one percent grade giving us an average speed of about twelve kilometres an hour including stops. We had almost completed half of our day's journey so early in the day and in another seven kilometres, we would be at the summit and could increase our speed.

A cyclist appeared, heading towards us. It was the first person we had seen today and only the third cyclist we had seen in the last three hundred kilometres. He drew alongside and we stopped to chat. He was a small gnome-like man in his fifties riding a mountain bike with a single water bottle and no traveling gear. I guessed he was out for a short ride and I was curious as to where he was heading so I wanted to warn him of the animals we had seen. His small size and solitary excursion might make him a meal for the two cougars we had just seen.

He pulled out a simple map he had picked up a tourist information centre. Distances were not indicated and neither were any other detail to aid in judging cycling times.

He indicated a campground about three kilometres behind him. I was concerned that he was ill prepared for the journey he was about to undertake as he had one small water bottle and it would be getting hot soon. He would quickly use up his water and be forced to drink from the creeks and run a risk of getting sick from parasites or bacteria. It would be easy to speed along, lulled further and further down hill to Beaverdell fourteen hundred feet below without realizing the effort need to return on tired muscles. He didn't look like a strong cyclist, and I thought he was putting himself in danger.

"We saw two large cougars down the hill a few kilometres. I'd be very careful if I were you."

He didn't seem fazed by this and soon our conversation tapered off. As he left, I watched his ungainly style as he struggled with his bike along the track. Perhaps he couldn't go too far and I silently wished him well.

We forded a small creek, just before reaching Summit Lake. A kilometre later, we were at the start of Hydraulic Lake where a group of cabins and tents nestled in the trees on the mound between the rail bed and the lake. There were recreation vehicles, four wheel drives pickups, boat trailers and old men sitting on boxes with their fishing lines in the water. We had reached obvious signs of civilization; we were at McCulloch Lake Resort.

The level rail bed went into a cutting and disappeared into a series of shallow ponds or what appeared to be shallow ponds. We rode carefully through the first one without getting our feet wet, but halfway into the second one, our feet went under water as it suddenly deepened. The next pond looked even deeper, but we were saved by a small trail that led off to the right and joined a smooth gravel road that had paralleled the track all the way from the resort. If we had seen the road, we could have saved our feet from a dunking. The road now joined the rail bed and became a causeway as it cut across a small tongue of the lake. Along the edge of the causeway, more old men sat fishing only looking up as we rode by and quickly resuming their concentrated stare at the surface of the water.

Now the rail bed was a well traveled gravel road, complete with a washboard surface and a coating of dust that lifted every time a car went by and then settled slowly upon us. We passed over Hydraulic Creek that drained the lake of the same name and continued our way, bumping along the road. My hands were going numb from the vibration off the front wheel and Mary's bottom attempted to absorb some of the bouncing from the rear wheel. We were moving about twenty-eight kilometres and hour when there was a loud bang and the rear tire was instantly flat. A blow out. Mary didn't know what had happened.

"At first, I heard a little noise like part of the tire was rubbing on something and then the bang."

We walked the bike over to the side of the road and I had the wheel off quickly. The tire and tube came off next and I examined the tire first, shocked to see that the tire was not in very good shape at all. It was starting to fracture close to the rim from the constant flexing as we rode over the uneven rocky ground and had become so weak in one spot that it had split open for about a half an inch. I held the tire up against the bright sunlight and looked to see if there was any other weak spots. All around the tire, I could see a brighter line of light as it shone through the weaker fracture point. This was not good, we would have buy a new tire. I checked the front wheel to find the same was occurring to it as well. We would have to buy two new tires but the nearest place where we could buy tires was in Penticton, about seventy kilometres further along our route.

I had come prepared for tire damage caused by stone cuts for in our tool kit. I had some Dacron sailcloth and waxed dental tape, an excellent thread for sewing up the cuts if they were too long and a few sailmaker's needles. As the cut was not too long, I decide just to glue some sail cloth on the inside of the tire to prevent the tube from pushing out through the slit and popping like a balloon. Once the contact adhesive was dry to touch, I applied the patch and after putting in a new tube, pumped the tire up but a little softer than usual.

As we rode on, I felt the softer back tire surge over the bumps. I would have to be careful not to run over any sharp edged rocks or I would get a puncture from the tire flattening against the rim. We crossed a cattle grid and when the track curved around to face the west, we had our first view of Kelowna, way down the mountain side nestling against the shores of Okanagan Lake. Soon after, I felt the tire slowly going soft again, a puncture from a rock. I stopped the bike and found a nice place off the side of the road where moss covered a large flat outcropping of rock as I wanted a comfortable spot to sew up the tire and put a little more pressure into it. With just the sailcloth patch, it was bulging where it was weak.

By now, I was becoming quite expert in taking the wheel off and removing the tire. I threaded a needle with a length of dental tape and started sewing the tire using locking stitches and sewing through the sailcloth patch with the dental tape sitting flat and not chafing the tube. I sewed back over the previous row of stitches using the same holes spaced about a quarter of an inch apart and once the job was done, I replaced the tube with a good one. I pumped the tire up a little harder than before but I still did not want to pump it up too hard as the rest of the tire was weak. It looked good and it should hold it together.

Soon after we were on the road again, we reached the parking lot at the start of Myra Canyon. There were a large number of people in the parking lot, unloading bicycles and many small children riding around, eager to get going making us feel out of place amongst the tourist. We had come out of the wilderness looking dusty and weather worn and I wanted to get moving again away from the crowded parking lot where we didn't seem to belong. The canyon has become quite popular, particularly since the trestles were made safer by adding railings and laying planks over the ties and although it was safer, a sign warned us to take care when crossing the trestles and going through tunnels. Here, we would encounter eighteen trestles and two tunnels within an eight kilometre stretch of the Myra Canyon.

Just after leaving the parking lot, we were rewarded with another view of Kelowna and while we were stopped, a chipmonk came out of the foliage looking for a handout. She scurried around on the ground before climbing up on to a boulder for a view, then saw her name on the frame and decided she wanted to go for a bike ride, changing her mind when she realized Chip would miss her. As we came into the canyon, we could see Trestle #2 way across the valley and a little further on we crossed Trestle #18. The upgrading that had been done was economical in the use of timber. Boards had been laid down in the direction of travel, and while it made for smoother riding, some of the planks were beginning to deteriorate, leaving gaps between them that caught the front wheel and threatened to unbalance the bike. We crossed a number of trestles close together, one spanning a valley where a wrecked car lay upside down. People near us conjectured that it had been a graduation prank done when it was possible to drive a car through the canyon.

Behind us we could see the rocks, still bare years after the railway had stopped running. We passed through a one hundred an fourteen metre long tunnel and out onto Trestle #11, which is the highest point between Midway and Penticton and then through another tunnel, immediately onto Trestle #10 and over Klo Creek on the East Fork Canyon Creek Bridge. This was one of the larger bridges and although originally it was constructed of wood, had been replaced with steel spanning one hundred and eleven metres with the creek forty-eight metres below. A sign warned us not to ride on the trestle which crossed over a small creek a hundred and ten metres below which was the midpoint of the canyon. Across the valley, we could see the longest bridge over Pooley Creek called the West Fork Canyon Creek Bridge spanning two hundred and twenty metres and fifty-five metres above the creek. It was also originally built as a wood frame trestle before being replaced with steel in the early thirties. Before reaching this bridge, we crossed Trestle #7 which had been build in a S curve and once we were on the West Fork Canyon Creek Bridge we could look back across the canyon to the trestles we had crossed earlier.

We negotiated our way around a pile of boulders covering the track from a rock slide, and past an old trestle that had been replaced with a huge fill. We had our final glimpse of Kelowna before crossing the last trestle and reaching the parking lot at the other end. The crowds of people thinned and were once again on our own, riding along a washboard road built atop the rail bed where we came across a well balanced rock cairn which toppled over when a gust of wind caught it. We reached Bellevue Creek, spanned by a two hundred and thirty-eight metre long steel bridge also upgraded from wood during the thirties. This bridge is currently used by motorized vehicles and did not have sides or planks for easy riding so we had to push the bike the whole way across.

Just when I thought that things were going well, we had another blowout, the tire had spilt again, just adjacent to the spot I had repaired before. There were many mosquitoes flying around in this spot, so I put on some repellent before starting the job of sewing up the two inch long slit in the tire. I hoped that the tire would not deteriorate much more as I would not have enough sail cloth to reinforce the complete tire. I put the repaired tire back on and after pumping it up and checking my handiwork, we headed off again, but for how long we did not know.

The road was sandy and corrugated, and because of the loose traction, I was forced to grip the handlebars firmly to maintain our balance on the loose surface. My arms took the brunt of the pounding with the tips of my fingers going numb and I was forced to take a hand off occasionally to shake some circulation back into it. We passed through a rock cutting and alongside another old trestle, bypassed by a huge fill just before reaching Lake Lebanon where I knew we had only about five kilometres to go. We were confident we would be able to make Chute Lake even if we were forced to walk, and after a few more careful kilometres on soft tires, we reached the northern end where I spotted an eagle's nest high up on a dead tree. At the other end of Chute Lake, was the resort where we would spend the night and halfway along the lake was a Memorial dedicated to an old inhabitant of the area. When we reached the entrance to the resort, I relaxed. We had made it.

Mary went inside the lodge and paid for our room while I took the bike around the back and removed the wheels and tires. I was hoping that someone would be leaving to go to either Penticton or Kelowna so I could buy some more tires, so I wandered around the front of the lodge where a group of people sat surrounding a picnic table.

"Do you know of anyone who will be driving back to Kelowna tonight? I need to buy two new tires."

"Are you sure? It looks like the edge of the brake pads have been pressing on the tire instead of the rim."

"Peter, the cook will be going back to Kelowna tonight and coming back tomorrow. He said he would buy the tires and he would be here to start work at ten o'clock."

We went inside the lodge and met the cook, a young man that prepared hamburgers and other quick meals for the guests. Standing beside him was a tall man who also worked for the resort. The two were talking.

"What about your car? You couldn't get it started the other morning. What if it breaks down?

"Why don't I buy the tires? That way if your car breaks down, these folks will not be stranded."

"It would be better if I got you your tires since his car is not working great and it might break down. The only problem is that I won't be here until one o'clock in the afternoon. If you don't mind getting your tires then, I'll pick them up."

I did a quick mental calculation. We had only sixty kilometres to do the next day and if we got going at 1:30pm, we should be able to reach Summerland, our next stop before night fall. After all it was mostly downhill and we would have new tires.

I gave him a hundred dollars and one of the old tires as a sample. I hoped he would not run into any problems and that the tires he bought would be the correct size and strong enough. Now that that problem seemed to be solved, we sat down at one of the tables and ordered chicken burgers. I relaxed a bit and looked around at the inside of the lodge.

At one end of the room, one man hunched over a pool table, about to shoot the eight ball into a corner pocket, another watched, resting on his cue. Around the edge of the room were shelves covered with antique kitchen and other household items such as old irons, toasters, electric kettles and egg beaters mixed with old fishing gear and ancient rusty tools. Comical signs were nailed on the wall space between the windows educating the reader in the differences between the sexes or about the house rules for women and a different set for men. On the back wall hung a railway clock that, at the top of every hour, made the sound of a steam train leaving a station.

While we waited for our meal to arrive, we washed up in the little communal bathroom outside, reached by a rickety walkway running along the back wall of the log walled lodge. Feeling refreshed, we returned to the lodge to avoid the mosquitoes that circled around outside and to spend some time browsing the museum like interior. Once our meal was placed on the table and we began to eat, we realized how hungry we were as the last time we had eaten anything except a Power Bar was early in the morning. We had reached Chute Lake Resort at five-thirty in the afternoon and now it was about an hour later. It turned out to be a costly fast food meal for no sooner had we finished our burgers, we ordered two more.

We went outside, ascended a narrow winding staircase made of tree branches to a balcony outside our room. The inside of our room was simple with a sagging bed and old blankets and above us, dust covered rough hewn poles supported the roof . Dust lay on the ledges and old tables and an old couch pressed up against one of the walls. We went back to the tiny sloping bathroom to shower and afterwards Mary stayed behind to wash our biking cloths while I went back to the room to mend the punctured tubes we had from our day's ride. As I was putting on the patches, Mary joined me and began to wipe the dust off the furniture.

I went back to patching the tubes while Mary roved around with an old rag, wiping places where she draped an item of our attire. She last cleaned the horizontal pole above our head and hung our shirts over it, the thin polypropylene material would be dry by the morning. The sun was setting, we were tired and I had finished the last of my chores; putting talcum powder on the tubes so we undressed, slid into bed, turned off our watch alarms and looked forward to a complete nights rest.