Grey Creek Pass

I had a nice evening at the Bear – it was good to sleep in a bed. They provided a continental breakfast as well, which was far better than I expected – muffins, banana bread, juice, coffee, toast, yoghurt and apples. Good gear for a hungry traveller.

Caught up with the blog and made a pretty late start. Didn’t have a whole lot of country to cover prior to getting to the border and was keen to see what I could find down the St Mary Lake River road and then head over the Grey Creek Pass. These were additional recommendations of Hank’s and looked pretty challenging and very interesting. I was going to be getting up into some serious mountain country again and, heading north, I could see the ranges to the west with some very black and foreboding clouds behind them. I’d already experienced how quickly temperatures could drop, so was going to have to be careful. I climbed pretty quickly through a lot of avalanche country – had seen a fair bit of this, but some of the rockfalls were really significant. They generally have signs saying don’t stop in these areas. A bit like the ‘Don’t feed the bears’ or ‘No swimming with the sharks’ suggestions. Another good one I’ve been seeing regularly in the forests is ‘No fireworks’. Really?

I then had my first ‘Oh Shit’ moment. I was riding up a pretty good piece of smooth track at elevation and I must have glanced down at the dash or GPS. When I looked back back up, I’d veered to the left and both wheels were about 5 cm from the edge of the road, a sheer precipice falling about 10 meters into trees. Everything tightened up as I held my line, hoped that the edge of the road wasn’t going to break away and slowly moved back across to the centre of the road. It all happened in an instant and my heart was pounding pretty fast. I remember Matt Rust telling someone who was just starting out adventure riding that looking down at his GPS has been the cause of a big number of his off’s. That was, so, so close.

Talking of the GPS! it was really struggling with the tracks over the last week and chose that moment to have a hissy fit, with the physical road moving right away from the route I’d plotted and was following. I was heading broadly too far south and, although I wasn’t hundreds of km away from major roads, it was pretty wild and getting lost wasn’t something I was keen to do, despite having plenty of fuel, water and food. I couldn’t recall passing any turnoff’s, so kept going. I got to the top of a pretty significant pass and could see the valley that ‘had’ to be Lake Kootenay about 15 km or 20 km away. The road was continuing down into it, so it seemed pretty likely it would end up where I wanted to go. It’s amazing just how far you have to ride and how many switchbacks you need to drop a relatively short distance (maybe 500 metres). It seemed to go forever – I thought I was getting to the bottom, only to go around a corner and see I was barely half way there.

Once I hit the lake (spectacular as always) and found something to eat at a fire stove store, I had the option of going directly south to Creston and the US border or going a bit further north and taking the ferry from Kootenay Bay to Balfour. I chose the latter (I love ferries and water) and managed to just sneak on and beat the surprisingly long queue. The ferry operator waved me in front of everyone in 4WD’s and squeezed me into a space with a couple of other bikes. Another advantage of two wheels.

The trip over was half an hour and I had a really good yarn to the 3 other riders on board with me. They were on road bikes – 2 from Vancouver and the other from out of state. There were so many roads I’d have still like to have ridden in Canada, especially some of the dirt ones to the north of where I was. I’ll just have to come back! These guys told me some good bitumen rides. They were pretty interested in my coming over the Grey Creek Pass – apparently it was very iconic. They were good blokes and were heading north, so we said our farewells and off I went south.

I pulled up at Ymir with the hope of heading back into the forestry at Porcupine Creek just a little further south.  There was a great little general store there and I bought a snack and a coffee. I’d been hearing people ordering Americana’s in recent days and when offered one, thought why not. ‘A double?’ she said. ‘Shot?’ I asked. ‘You bet honey’ was the reply. Turns out an Americana is a double expresso in a mug topped up with hot water. A real heart starter. 

The store owner, as always, knew the country like the back of her hand. The Porcupine Creek road was closed she said. Plenty of bears up there at the moment too. Seriously. She said they were like flies and, if I rode around town, I’d likely see a few. I did and I didn’t. Damn. However, a few miles on as I rode over a little bridge, I looked up the river and saw a black bear sitting in the middle of it having a wash. I slammed on the brakes and by the time I turned around and got back, he (or she) was gone. The only disadvantage of a loud exhaust …… possibly. 

I had to continue on bitumen and, while Hwy 3 was a major road, the views were stunning. I tried to detour on forestry roads down Monk Creek that ran along the US border but, once again, they were blocked. I think they are having trouble with quad bike and snow mobile riders getting lost and damaging ecosystems. They are in plague proportions, so if the roads aren’t necessary for logging, maybe they just shut them down?

I got into Creston about 5.00 pm and booked into the last room in a modest little bikers motel. The owner, Bill, was pretty impressed when I said I had a KTM 1190 R. ‘With off-road tyres?’ he asked as he looked at the filthy, dusty apparition in front of him. ‘You bet’, I said, which impressed him even more. ‘I see very few of the adventure bikes with nobbies’  he said. Go figure! 

I saw a huge number of bikes that day, for the first time. There was 1 Tiger, 2 R1200GS’s, a couple of sports bikes and hundreds of Harley’s, obviously the bike of choice in Northern America and Canada. They all give you a big wave as you pass (unlike at home) – quite a brotherhood, regardless of what you are riding. 

The reason for staying in town was largely to do some washing. I really was in a state and wanted to be a bit more presentable for my border crossing. I was anticipating problems with getting appropriate paperwork for the bike, so needed to give myself some chance. There was a big laundromat across the road, so I chucked 2 loads on – the first with every stitch of clothing I had except for what I was wearing and the second with all my riding gear – jacket, pants and Leatt armour. I went down to the pub for for a feed while it was all in the dryer and had a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich, something I’ve always wanted to try. The supposed porterhouse steak was pretty tough – it ‘was’ very cheesy though!

Despite only 300 odd km for the day, I crashed and slept well. The USA tomorrow –  can’t wait.