June 7 - Grand Forks to Castlegar

Bike log: 89.5km, 1230m of vertical, average speed 22.3 km/h

Not a very long day in terms of mileage but this was the most challenging day yet. We had rain the entire day. The hill between these two towns is pretty big - about 1100m in one big stretch. In places it is reasonably steep (about the same as the Malahat), and you never get a rest until the summit. The rain made it really quite unpleasant!

My rain clothes are waterproof - meaning they keep you nice and dry for a ride of low exertion, but climbing up the hill, you get soaked from the inside since it is not low exertion. On top of that, it kept getting colder and colder as I got up. I would guess it was below 5C at the summit. Apparently it was snowing in Fernie (still a ways ahead). It was OK when moving but as soon as I stopped it was cold!

We had hoped to get through to Nelson, but given all this we stopped at Castlegar, which was just a 30km coast down from the summit. Kind of disappointing to pull up 40km, since I didn't feel too tired yet and it is supposed to be not too bad of a ride, but given how lousy the weather was, it was a good idea.