Today we started from Golden knowing that we would climb Rogers Pass. We cooked breakfast and watched the high school amble in to school. One high school student on his bike even came over and chatted to us a bit, although he seemed to think that we were going to be riding mountain bike trails around Golden and wanted to give us advice. As we headed out of town, with a quick supply stop at the grocery store, we passed another huge construction area on the road. They are really working on fixing the highway in and out of Golden.
The first part of the the day was very cool and included gentle rolling hills. It was hard to keep a constant body temperature because the wind kept cooling you off on the downhills and you overheated on the climbs. There was no way to dress that was constantly comfortable.
The area around Golden was very beautiful, the trees were changing their leaves and you could really feel the mountain atmosphere about the place.
Around noon, we entered Glacier National Park and stopped at their first roadside shelter to make some tea. I was freezing! While at the shelter, we saw two loaded cyclist head up the hill pretty quickly. We were just heading out so we tried to catch them without success.
Finally, we started the climb up the pass. It was a pretty reasonable grade all the way up. The most exciting part of the climb was the avalanche tunnels. We checked it out and saw they had shoulders, so we got our front and back headlights out and headed through. The hardest part about them was adjusting your eyes to the darkness and the noise from the cars and trucks, which reverberated off the walls! It also started raining.
At the top of the pass, we were too wet and cold to take any pictures at the summit, but there were tourists from Asia who wanted a photo with us! For a small moment we felt like celebrities. We stopped at the makeshift Parks Canada visitor center for a coffee and to get some information. The staff person there told us our original destination for the day, Canyon Hot Springs, were closed. The next campground was 75 kms away and it was 4pm so we stopped for the day at the campground 4km from the summit of Rogers Pass. We discussed staying at the Alpine Club of Canada Lodge but opted for camping once we made sure the campground had cooking shelters with wood stoves.
At the visitors centre, we also caught the two cyclist we had started chasing at the bottom of the pass. Turns out they were Scottish and Irish and on their first cycling trip from Calgary to Vancouver. They were pretty exhausted and had less waterproof gear than us, so they opted for the Alpine Club Lodge.
We were glad we had brought supper with us since there was nowhere to buy food that was open. We spent the evening in the gorgeous cooking shelter, blasting the fire and cooking up some yummy food (which took forever on the wood stove). We actually stayed quite late in the shelter, which we had to ourselves, enjoying the beautiful fire Adam made. The campground was really nice and well maintained but had no electricity, and as such, no showers. It was neat to camp at such a high altitude that you were actually “in the clouds”.
Trip Around The World 
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