Day one … Paulson to Grand Forks, BC

So we are currently sitting in the hotel room, just finished pizza and having wine. Wow, what a day, long day but an amazing day!

Out transport arrive right on time and (of course) we were ready … I am always ready! We were transported from Grand Forks, BC to the Paulson Summit. Len (our driver) from Wild Ways (http://wildways.com) was simply phenomenal. He told lots of stories; made sure we knew where we were going and answered all our questions. Seriously, if you ever need a transport, call them and ask for Len!

We were dropped off at the summit and once we had all our gear organised and where we wanted it, we were in our way.

The first part to the Paulson Bridge we had done before in May when we biked from the Summit to Castlegar, BC. At that time, CK wanted to take pics of the bridge so we back tracked a bit. We ended up back at the bridge and took more pics. The stonework just below the bridge on the trail was quite impressive.

I was also loving the gentle 2% downhill grade, biking this was so much better than going up. We met a lovely little lizard on some of the rocks on a retaining wall; he hung around long enough for us to get some great pics. I think he was enjoying the heat as much as we were.

We came upon the first tunnel, the Paulson tunnel. It is a 365 foot (111 metre) and built in 1943. The distance threw was pretty good, a little dark in areas, but not nearly as scary as the Bulldog tunnel. We also met Dennis, a gentleman travelling down the rail trail but going in a different direction after Fife Road.

The trail itself was OK, some spots were really bad and I almost wiped out a couple of times, the rocks make it slippery to bike on if you were not careful.

We stopped to take some pics of how high we were up … through the trees we could see the highway.

We were told by Len of a wash out along the trail. A bridge was built to help bikers get past this area. The bridge wasn’t wide enough to let ATVers get through so not sure what they did, unless they were really careful getting by the washed out part of the road. I don’t know, I wouldn’t have risked it.

As we were biking, I spotted a snake and of course, had to catch it. It did poop all over me (hahaha, that’s what I get), but did get a chance to spend some quality time with this cutie.

Eventually, we made it to the Fife station and ran into Dennis again. We all chatted for a bit, quick pee break and took more pics.

This pic was inside the shack showing what the area used to look like … I thought it pretty cool. The water tower isn’t there any longer, but the shack still stands.

We stopped at Fife road (which will take you down to Christina Lake) to have some lunch. We debated going down to Christina Lake for lunch but the road going down is quite steep. I didn’t have issues going down the road; it was the way up that was a concern. I have read other blogs and the road was so steep, they took other ways to get back to the trail.

After deciding to continue on our way and having a nice dinner in Grand Forks, we came to a large bridge. I don’t have any information on it but the view was quite lovely.

Once we got past the bridge, the trail changed from a rocky rail bed to hard packed gravel (due to the installation of a gas pipeline). If biking down on the rail bed was hard in sections, this was worse. There were sections where it was like quicksand. Now, this is where I started to burn some calories. Lots of ups and downs and it was hot so I was sweating. I was running out of steam!

We paralleled along the highway all the way to Grand Forks. We stopped at an old bridge base that was left. We saw a couple hiking below. Further up was fast moving river.

Then another bridge and another fast moving river.

We ran into a few people that were jumping off a bridge into the river.

Haha, have you ever told someone to ‘go jump off a bridge’ … well these people were. We stopped to say hi and watched. Once we were done, we continued along. We reached Grand Forks and pedalled through the town to reach our hotel. I saw a couple of little baby dear sunning themselves.