Pincher Creek No. 9, Canada - Polarsteps

We went from a terrible night into one of the best days of the trip. We packed up, still feeling really rough, but the rain had stopped and when we got to a rest area just up the road the sun started coming out. We'd camped behind a truck scale, which was closed and unstaffed in the morning, but the scale was still working, so we went through and put our bikes down on it. Each bike+gear weighed in at 70kg, which is more than we thought, and also a number I'm glad to know at the end of our time crossing the mountains rather than at the start. We crossed into Alberta and celebrated with some bubbly (grape kombucha), then headed into the heart of the Crowsnest Pass. Getting to cycle through this area was one of our main reasons for choosing this route over the much more well-trodden road through Banff. We twisted and turned through the mountains to Crowsnest Lake, spotted some bighorn ewes at the side of the road, then got off the highway to wander through the old mining towns and get onto the paved trail that connects them (we missed our final highway summit moment this way and don't regret it). We stopped into a textile art show in Frank and then took a side road directly through Frank Slide, the pile of rubble that was the top of Turtle Mountain, which slid down and buried an entire mining town in 1903 (there's a really good interpretive centre here, which we've been to before on a day trip out of Lethbridge). We passed the old Burmis Tree that marks the edge of the Crowsnest Pass, and ended the day camping next to Lundbreck Falls-- over the mountains, into the prairies and foothills, and solidly in our second province. -Sara