This is a glorious climb, from Lake Louise up one of the nearby mountains, Saddleback Pass. The trail starts out smooth and flat, but then gets rockier and steeper as you climb, and climb you do, all up about 750 vertical meters to get to the snow capped peak.
It's well worth it though, just for the views, which are beyond belief!
After this climb I single tracked it back to Lake Louise and added in the climb to Fairview Lookout, which has stunning views over the lake below, just awesome. Easily rideable in under 20 minutes return too, including some photo time. All up I was out for 2 hours for this one, and in my tapering heart rate zone, so taking it nice and easy. A top day out!
Day 2 - Lake Moraine
Just riding on the road for the 1km jaunt from the hotel to the start of this single track is jaw dropping stuff, the views of snow capped mountains are all around! This is single track nirvana, rocky in parts, but fast and flowy and the forrest opens up to reveal wild flower covered hill sides and glacial views before you bomb down a wicked descent to Lake Moraine to meet the local friendly chipmonks, they are so tame they will let you cuddle them :)
The singletrack took me 90 minutes to ride, so I took the road back to Lake Louise and as it's mostly high speed downhill stuff, I was back in 30 minutes, weeeeeeeee!
The crew:
| Jason | Giant Trance |
The Stats:
| Distance | 40km |
| Time | 2:00 |
| Climb | 750vm |
| Date | 21/07/2008 |