Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Jasper!!! Here I am arriving in Jasper. Thats the huge pack we had to bike with. I think i packed too much; I got 4 pairs of pants, 10 t-shirts, a jacket, 2 sweatshirts, sleeping bag, tent poles, 2 flashlights, toillettries, instant noodles, tons of paper work, some books, and a huge camera bag. The only thing i forgot was a pillow...=P

So our first stop is to go to our campsite. Which is about 5 km south of the train station.

After assembling our bikes, we took off (with alot of people staring at us...Either they havn't seen chinese people before or they think we're really stupid) With Wapiti Campgrounds as our destination, was decided to take the scenic route, which ended up taking us 2 and a half hours. Here's our first stop right beside the Athabasca River just before highway 93. If you look at the mountain behind me, thats the Jasper Tramway, which we'll later bike to today.
The water was SOO green and full of minerals.

So first things first. We needed to set up camp and stash the food somewhere. Wapiti campgrounds actually made it illegal to leave your food unattended and set up fines for it so we had to find a place to store our food. Bryan and his trusty Scouts experience, made this bear pole to keep animals from our food. We made it like a teeter-todder, when we wanted food, we'd unhook the bottom part of the shaft and let it swing down. The food hung between trees so animals couldn't climb up another tree to get to it. Pretty smart!! =D


After camp was all set up we took the bikes out and took a nice relaxing stroll around the campground. We eventuall found a site right beside the river, and with the mountains behind us.
Chillin' in the river, Now this is where our vacation really began.

We swapped sites and then took off onto the highway towards the Jasper Tramway.

This is the hill that KILLED us... the climb was about 4 km, and it was crazy steep. You can see in the picture of the little house-like form at the top of the mountain. Thats the Tramway! Today we only made it half way because our legs were burning, but we got a chance to stop by the International Jasper Hostel at the midway point to take a pee.



After that we enjoyed the 70km/h ride down the mountain side back to our campsite. Thats the fastest I've ever been on a bicycle... it was so fast, I couldnt even keep up on my high gear and nearly slipped off my bike lol


We didn't have too much kindling, but we did have alot of deer poo. So I lit it on fire and surprisingly, it burns for a LONG time. it just didn't smell great. Stupid enough, I stepped on it to put it out.. Oldest trick in the book and I fell for it..BAH, im an idiot=P