mini tour

I had a few days I could take off work, and needed a good solo ride anyway, so figured I would try out a few things that had been on my list for a while.
First thing on the list to accomplish was riding a bunch of gravel roads that are near a lot of the rides we do anyway (particularly on the annual Lillooet trip.) I see a lot of these roads while we are out on our training rides, and I’ve ridden bits and pieces of them. It seemed like a good challenge to string these pieces into a route and do the whole thing in one shot.
The second was to try out some gear I've been meaning to check out for a while.  Notably, I was looing forward to riding the Salsa Warbird on more gravel, loaded with camping gear on the new Compass 38 extra light tires.  Forgoing the stove and other comforts I ended up with a fairly compact setup.

Bivy, Sleeping bag, pad, tools and spare bits, some extra clothes, snaaaacks

I was also hoping to give my Alpine hammock a go.  Practice run in the park:

Day 1



Day 1 was a typical route out of town.  A couple of required stops, including finally making it into Wentings in Mission to use up a gift certificate from a race around 4 years ago.

favourite water stop

used to be the dogwood..

And finally, dinner at Fat Jack's and sleep at The Mighty Fraser

Day 2

The second day was to be a bit more ambitious.  The original goal was to ride the west side of the Fraser, but early morning showers in Boston Bar and getting to the ferry in Lytton during a 1.5 hour coffee break put a stop to that.



The day ended up being hard enough without that extra gravel.  I continued passed Lillooet toward Carpenter Lake (one of the standard mighty training camp rides), intent on climbing and descending Mission Pass to Seton Portage.

jack ass..

carpenter lake dam

bc hydro infrastructure

mission pass

seton portage

I carried all my gear because I thought I would be camping in this section, but I pushed through the day to make it to Gates Lake and our friend's cabin, arriving just before sunset.  So, actually didn't get a chance to test out the bivy after all...

Day 3

rest day

 Day 4

And, of course, when you're in the area.

cayoosh pass, aka the duffy

Pics