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Rider Magazine says “Getting back to reality was tough”

Rider Magazine (USA)
February, 1999 Issue
by Andy Saunders

Glowing embers pierced the sky as the last of the sun’s rays turned the western edge of the Rocky Mountains into liquid gold. The sun was setting as we settled back into the hot springs’ pool, soothing away the tensions of the day’s ride. Stars popped into the gathering blue of the clear sky. Sound too good to be true? I was in the middle of a weeklong motorcycle tour with riders from all over the world, winding through the lakes and mountain ranges of Canada’s western province, and my rain suit was still dry.

Today, we’d set off from a bend in the Kootenay River, stopped in at a Mennonite bakery just a handful of miles from the Idaho border and taken the world’s longest free ferry ride (25 spectacular minutes). All of the above were linked with a couple hundred miles of rolling, usually twisty roads. Now, after a four-star dinner, we were relaxing in the biggest hot tub in the world. Tomorrow, we’d ride the Icefields Parkway and walk on a glacier.

Before starting Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Holidays two years ago, Mike Ciebien, a Montreal native transplanted to Canada’s wild West, sampled other tours - and found that many riders complained of short daily mileage, ill-prepared machines and unforeseen expenses. On Rocky Mountain tours, the bikes start out shining like new, and they’re washed while riders sleep, so they stay shining every day. The ride covers up to 500 kilometers a day (average daily route is 350km, longer routes are the rider’s choice). At the end of five days solid riding, nobody complained about the lack of miles. Or extra expenses. It’s actually hard to spend money on this tour. Once you’ve paid for gasoline, almost everything else - except drinks at dinner - is included. The chase truck even catches up at rest stops, so you can grab a soda or mineral water. About the only other thing you have to pay for is postcards.

Unlike Europe, where rides through winding mountain passes are joined with many kilometers of congested riding through towns and villages, British Columbia has a vast surplus of mountain passes and the only other traffic is the occasional adrenaline-boosting logging truck.

Tours start and end in the town of Whistler, a resort as quaint as Carmel on the mountainside. You’ll find yourself talking easily to strangers from around the world. Whistler’s winding streets echo accents from Sydney, Tokyo and Cape Town, a hundred restaurants offer almost every cuisine.

Looking for rugged scenery - such as huge standing waves in an earthbound ocean, mountain ranges that ridge inland from the Pacific Ocean? The Coast Mountains attract rainfall throughout the year, but parts of the Interior Plateau are dry as a desert. Cactus blooms here, so we were told, and we could believe it: In a week’s riding, it rained not once and temperatures soared to 100 degrees F (the average temperature is around the 80 degree mark).

The Rocky Mountain company uses a broad selection of the Triumph range, from the touring Trophy 900 model, equipped with full fairing and saddle bags, to the sporty Speed Triple, equipped with no fairing, no saddlebags, but an immense amount of torque, and wide, sticky tires front and rear. The mount offered to this rider was the Tiger, Triumph’s stab at the large-bore dual-sport market.

We didn’t hit any weather during our trip, but even so the protection of the Tiger’s fairing was appreciated. For those who didn’t want bugs in their teeth, the Trophy, with its full fairing and saddlebags, was a good tour choice. The cruiser-styled Thunderbird also offers a relaxed touring mount, with saddlebags that are perfect for credit card traveling. Add a windshield and you’ve got an all day mount that’s perfect for shorter legged riders.

Getting back from Thunderbirds to wildlife, animal sightings were one of the highlights of the trip. Even the two-hour ride from Vancouver airport to Whistler netted a bald eagle - and every day of the trip, more animals would appear, as if on schedule. We never did see a caribou, but did see osprey, bighorn sheep, elk and the ultimate sight, a grizzly bear splashing through the river in search of sockeye salmon.

We were not always alone. Hundreds of thousands of bus, car and bicycle tourists hit the national parks of Canada annually. Follow the main routes and you’ll meet an awful lot of them. That’s where the Rocky Mountain tour philosophy becomes almost like a tenet of guerilla warfare - travel the unknown back roads, pounce quickly on the must-see attractions, and retreat quickly to the hills again. The strategy works best in crowded Lake Louise, where the group gathers for a superb lunch in the uncrowded garden level restaurant of the Chateau Lake Louise, while tourists crowd upstairs.

After five days of hard riding, the week ended with a two-day stay in log cabins at a guest ranch in the shadow of the Coast Mountain range. The ranch offered a Danish chef, Thai masseurs, a corral of well-behaved horses and miles of hiking and horse-riding trails through rugged deserted mountains. If there was a good excuse to stop riding, this was it.

Getting back to reality was tough: A four-hour ride back to base camp at Whistler (over the famous Duffey Lake Road), and the farewell dinner. Would we do it again next year? A couple of tourers signed up on the spot.

Andy Saunders

— June 26, 2007

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