80.6 miles, 3530‘ climbing, white tailed and mule deer, snowshoe rabbits
We left our beautiful, riverside camp site around 7:30am, riding on a good dirt road through the forest. It was Canada Day, and we were unsure if we’d find an open store or restaurant to resupply. The pedaling was relatively easy compared to recent days with a mild downhill trend for many miles. We saw large brown rabbits with white back feet that we found out were snowshoe hares in their summer coloration. Lots of whitetail deer sprang away from the road, their white tails seeming longer than those at home. We spotted a couple of other deer without the white tails, about the same size, probably mule deer.
We planned to camp in Beaverdell. The valley leading in to the small community was particularly beautiful with large meadows fringed with trees. It was great to find the town open for business. We had lunch at a small snack shop, then resupplied at the general store, meeting the first rider on the BC Epic 1000 race we passed. The race leaders and middle of the pack were already past Beaverdell on a part of their route we don’t overlap with.
Since it was early, we decided to continue riding rather than staying in Beaverdell. We finally got on the Kettle Valley Rail Trail, nice since the gradient is never really more than 2%, nice for tired legs. Unfortunately it was quite bumpy, full of puddles and potholes and rocks, with only a few places to camp, slow going. We passed a few other racers, some who stopped to chat, and it was after 9pm, nearly dark when we made it to our camp site. Probably 30 racers were already there, in their tents. It rained lightly as we set up our tent, around 14 hours after leaving camp. The temperature dropped. By midnight all the trees and bushes were frozen, but it rained again before morning.
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