After nearly a week at the Airbnb, it felt kind of strange to wake up early to the sound of an alarm. Despite there being a lot of cycling paths, leaving the city on bikes was fairly stressful and it felt like an eternity until we made it far enough away from the city centre. The landscape south of Calgary is funny – long straight roads as far as the eye can see. We found…
A day after our hike on the Berg Lake Trail, we were back on our bikes and on our way to Jasper. It had rained over night (once more…) and in the morning, everything was wet, sandy and full with small slugs. Ew! We have never been looking forward to doing laundry that much. At least…
Our first longer off-bike adventure was about to start! The two biggest logistical problems when bikepacking is – what to do with the bikes, and what to do with the stuff that’s not needed on the hike? We didn’t have a car to just lock everything in, like nearly everybody else. Fortunately for us the welcome center had lockers…
After a week in Stewart, we were on the bikes again and cycled back to Meziadin Junction. It was raining and we started quite late. In Stewart we finally had internet to research what kind of berries we had seen on the side of the road the week before. They were thimbleberries and edible! So we stopped and tried them when…
We left Whitehorse early in the afternoon. We had bought so much food that we had a really hard time fitting everything in our tiny bags and ended up having to use our small foldable backpacks. But the choice and prices at the Real Canadian Superstore were just so good! At that would be our last supermarket for a while.
The wildfire situation did not improve much during our stay in Fairbanks. At least it rained one evening, which lowered the temperature noticeably. The morning we left Fairbanks, the AQI (Air Quality Index) in the city was at 150, which was not the worst they have ever had, but most likely the worst we both have ever experienced. Thick smoke was in the city…
It felt like a small miracle when we successfully managed to pack the food and our gear on our bikes in Coldfoot. Every water bottle and water bladder filled, we left the small town with heavy bikes and were back on the Dalton Highway. The distance from here to Fairbanks would only be 20 km longer than from Deadhorse to Coldfoot, but a lot more elevation gain was ahead of us. …
Before flying up to Deadhorse for the start of our trip, we spent a nice couple of days in Anchorage. Our Warmshowers host has been amazing and even provided us with two bikes we could use for getting around, while ours were still in bike boxes for the second flight. …
