Big Elbow - Little Elbow (Kananaskis)
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
131.77847
Summary
In this episode, I talk about the first section of the Big Elbow Loop in Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada. This is a 46km loop around the Little Elbow River, and it's a tough section. There's a lot of snow in the area, but I think I'll be able to get through it.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
So here I am down at the beginning of the Big Elbow Loop, Kananaskis country, and I'm going
00:00:12.700
to be riding that way. It's a 46, 47k ride today, close to 1,000 meters uphill. I might see snow
00:00:23.960
today, so I'm going to have to see what happens, but it's cool, very cool. I'm in cold weather
00:00:28.840
gear pretty much, but it feels good out in the woods, not too bad as far as the temperature.
00:00:34.220
Once you start riding, get warmer, have a jacket, some extra clothes in case they get too cold.
00:00:40.640
So here I am on Big Elbow Trail. This is in Kananaskis country, southwest of Brad Creek, Alberta.
00:00:51.820
It's very quiet out here today, and it's warmed up significantly because I've been riding pretty
00:00:56.880
hard. I'm about 8k in right now. You can see the low cloud cover today, and I think I'm
00:01:04.180
going to ride up into that. Getting a little bit of sunshine, which is kind of nice as well,
00:01:07.920
so it's making the ride a little bit warmer as well. But I'm riding up to, I think it's
00:01:13.460
2,250 meters today, so I do think I'm going to see snow. I could see snow up in the hills
00:01:20.720
up there a little bit, just beyond that rocky section, so I'm going to get that high at
00:01:25.160
least. So I'll probably ride through snow at the top, hopefully it's not too much, and
00:01:30.000
get over the top because it's a pretty fast downhill back to the car. I think about 14
00:01:36.200
or 18k straight downhill. I don't think I'd go uphill hardly at all in 18k, so it's going
00:01:41.160
to be an interesting ride, and making good progress right now. It's a lot harder though.
00:01:47.160
When I was planning on taking a ride today, I wanted to do something a little longer,
00:01:55.120
and I looked along 66 Highway, which is southwest of Brad Creek, and I didn't find anything else,
00:02:05.120
so I came back here. I did this ride earlier this year, and I almost didn't do this because
00:02:09.560
of this area right here. Back in the spring, when I walked through here, there was no rocks
00:02:16.520
in the middle. These cement pieces weren't here either, so I think they're preparing to
00:02:22.440
put a bridge across here. We had to walk across this whole section, right from where the water
00:02:28.640
is here to the water is over there. It was all water, so probably they've thrown rocks in
00:02:33.560
here or the river has changed a little bit, but this should be a little bit easier, I think,
00:02:38.360
to get through today than it was back in the spring. We got our feet pretty darn wet in some
00:02:43.720
pretty cold mountain water here last year. Andre, my friend Andre and myself, so I'm going to try
00:02:49.480
that. I'm going to get a little bit of wet feet here, but I think I could avoid it a little more
00:02:56.120
by going through here, across there, and over there. I'm going to have to walk in and get my feet wet
00:03:01.800
through here, but luckily I brought along some warm thermal socks, some additional socks,
00:03:11.960
so it should make it a little bit easier for me to get through here and not have terribly cold peat,
00:03:19.640
which I've got right now because the water is coming right out of the mountains.
00:03:24.360
All right, so right through here. Feet are already wet, so what the hell, you know,
00:03:31.800
and then this is the hardest obstacle. If you get a bridge across here, it's still good to go
00:03:42.440
all the way down this trail. I won't have any difficulties getting through here
00:03:48.440
at all in the future. So here we go. So there we go.
00:03:54.200
I did notice that back on the trail this way, it looked like they had come through and widened the
00:04:03.640
road a little bit. Probably try to get some equipment down here to move this cement in here,
00:04:09.640
but this is looking good, and the hardest obstacle is out of the way. I'm about 7k into my ride.
00:04:20.680
There's a river down there, and there's a lot of fire road through here, but this last section here
00:04:29.480
was tough because you really got to work for your kilometers like this. Up, down, up, down. There's
00:04:37.400
some really steep sections I had to push my bike. They're just really impossible for me to pedal up.
00:04:43.400
20% grades on rock like this is really tough sometimes, but nice scenery, and my feet have warmed up
00:04:52.120
up. After getting soap back there in the river. Really pretty along this stretch, right along the river,
00:05:09.720
and just as I got to the top of this hill, the sun came out, and you can see the clouds kind of
00:05:17.480
hanging over the mountains right in there, and it's really lovely through here right now. I don't know.
00:05:25.640
I still think I might see snow, but I don't know. I'm up at about 1900 meters now. I got about 300 meters
00:05:46.520
Lovely view here. I'm probably, I think I'm about 5k from the top now.
00:05:58.760
I'm still on the Big Elbow trail, and I'm going to get to the Little Elbow soon, but I think I'm about
00:06:06.280
4 or 5k away from that. Still some significant uphill to do before I get there, but a lovely view
00:06:12.520
here as well. This is a great view in the summertime when you'll have the cloud cover there, because you can
00:06:19.720
see it further on and mountains beyond that as well, but you start to feel pretty isolated
00:06:25.960
when you get out this far. I'm 18, 19k into the mountains now from my car. I haven't seen anybody.
00:06:32.520
This is one of the more beautiful views along this trail with the creek running or the river running down here.
00:06:49.800
And as a matter of fact, if you look along the side, on the side that doesn't get as much sun,
00:06:56.440
that's snow down there. Not up here, because this is getting the sun. That's shaded, but there is snow down there.
00:07:07.800
Just a beautiful view here. Absolutely gorgeous. A little bit of sunshine coming in as well,
00:07:11.880
making it, or brightening it up a little bit. All right, so right now I am about to make a turn.
00:07:22.280
Now this road here continues to go up, and it goes up significantly and gets much steeper
00:07:28.040
around the corner. I think it's about a one and a half to two k climb up this road right here,
00:07:34.840
and then you're at the top. This is in the 2250 meter area. Here's the
00:07:43.160
here's the trail right here, and that's where I am, that little spot.
00:07:45.800
I've done all of this right here, and once I get up to the top, and I'm on the little elbow,
00:07:53.240
which I'm about to go on to right now, it's a bomb downhill. I should be back to the car,
00:07:58.600
which is parked back here, in about an hour and 10 minutes. I've been riding right now, let me see,
00:08:08.600
an hour and 43. I did pretty good to here. So I think it's about two hours I need to get to the top,
00:08:13.000
another 17-18 minutes to get to the top. I have gone up 644 meters at this point. This is a 950 to
00:08:22.760
1,000 meter ride today, and there's a little bit of climbing on the way back, but it's nothing too
00:08:28.120
difficult. It's much harder coming this way. So we'll see how it goes from here, but there are actually
00:08:35.640
some trucks down there. I don't know if you can see them. I'll walk over here. You can see some trucks,
00:08:40.200
pickup trucks down there, and over here, I can hear some sound. Listen,
00:08:45.480
as long as you can hear that, but there's a man working sign here. They're obviously doing some
00:08:49.720
work, and you can see where the trucks have come down and used this road, and I'm going to ride
00:08:57.560
I'm at the top. I'm at 2,218 meters above sea level. I can kind of get a view of the background. No snow
00:09:13.080
up here. It's because it's so open. There were places on the way up that I did see some snow,
00:09:18.600
but they were sheltered from the sun, and 22.8k, 877 meters of elevation. So that's how much I've
00:09:27.000
gone up today, 877. And still a little bit more to go, but not much. It's all downhill from here,
00:09:35.480
I swear. It's like 18 kilometers downhill right here, and it's pretty fast. It won't take me long
00:09:40.840
to get back, and it took me two hours to get here riding time. Stopped a couple times, take some
00:09:47.320
pictures, get some videos, have a drink, eat something. But a lovely day up here, and you can
00:09:53.960
see we've had snow. It wasn't like this in the summertime. I was here in the spring. There was
00:09:58.920
no snow like this. I don't think in the spring this snow has fallen over the last, you know, week or so.
00:11:14.760
Lovely out here, a little bit muddier coming down than it was going up, little slippery
00:11:42.080
sections when you get rolling through the really fast downhill, fun though I'll tell you.
00:11:57.640
Beautiful view out here today, look at that, let's stop here for a sec, wow, what a view
00:12:10.680
beautiful sunshine, after a pretty gloomy start to this ride I'll tell you, my goodness,
00:12:22.680
I'm puffing, I hardly pedaled it all and going downhill, yeah, takes a bit out of you.
00:12:33.680
Just continuing along with this ride heading back on Little Elbow, the Elbow River is right
00:12:40.680
along here, I'll come along it in just a few minutes but I just wanted to get a, you know,
00:12:45.680
some shots of this unbelievable scenery today and the clouds have cleared out from the mountains,
00:12:51.680
they were hanging over and kind of blocking the view earlier but they've blown away, the
00:12:56.680
sun's come out, warmed up a little bit more and this ride is getting better all the time.
00:13:03.680
I'll just ride down here a little bit further with the camera on.
00:13:29.680
All right, so I thought I'd get sort of a 360 here as you get closer to my original
00:13:53.500
departure spot. So here we are, kind of in a clearing. And again, it's mostly Fire Road. I've been bombing downhill. I've hardly done any uphill in the last 14, 15 K. So I've still got only about 20 or 30 meters of up to do and all the rest of it is down. But you get some beautiful views out here. And we're into some campground area.
00:14:18.880
Once in a while, I think I hear somebody, but it's possible. It's been pretty quiet out here, but you can hear the river off in the distance.
00:14:31.040
So here is the Elbow River. I'm about 8 or 9 K, I think, from my car. And I actually walked through a river earlier. If you've watched this video, you saw it. Water's pretty darn cold coming out of the mountains.
00:14:46.500
And it's pretty through here. I think I might end up seeing some people pretty soon. They don't usually stray too far from the parking lot, but probably within a couple of K of the parking lot, I'll start to see some hikers out here.
00:15:19.020
And I'll tell you, conditions changed a lot from when I left to now.
00:15:26.860
When I left, I think it had just rained out here. Some of the cars in the parking area were wet.
00:15:35.520
And that's not the case now. It's pretty sunny. It's actually pretty nice.
00:15:39.540
Although the high out here today is expected only to be 11.
00:15:59.160
It could be. I know the lens could be a little dirty.
00:16:01.260
Because when I took it off my helmet, it was a little dirty.
00:16:18.980
We did get some rain yesterday in Calgary and down in this area.
00:16:27.700
That, well, just at the end of 66 Highway, not too far from Forget-Me-Not Pond.
00:16:38.920
And I almost think I might pull my tires and wheels off my bike and go down and dip them and clean them off in the river.
00:16:45.120
I'll have to do it at home for sure before I take it in the house.
00:16:49.060
So let's just take a look at the tail of the tape today.
00:17:34.380
And I'm going to put it up against the ride I did here in the spring.
00:17:37.600
I think overall, I mean, I think I did it faster and I didn't take as much time on the trail.
00:17:42.680
I stopped more in the spring than I did on this one.
00:17:45.460
So I kind of hooked it a little bit faster along here.
00:17:53.860
And if you're ever in Kananaskis country and you're just a little bit southwest of Bragg Creek,
00:17:59.180
you might want to try the Big Elbow, Little Elbow Loop.
00:18:08.260
Kind of clockwise might be as much fun, I wouldn't think.