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Dara Poon went cycling
April 1, 2026
Komoot made me do this, Day 1: Vancouver → Manning Park
15:14
244km
16.0km/h
71.2km/h
2,630m
1,490m
I knew I was going for a big ride today. But I had no idea that I was going to end up at Manning Park Resort tonight until I made the decision at 18:30.
When you browse your Komoot feed, it gives you algorithmic recommendations for cycling routes. Most of the suggestions I get are pretty meh: the classic routes for local road cyclists and sightseeing tourists.
This one, though, caught my attention as being rather epic in length and scenery: https://komoot.com/collection/405/vancouver-roundtrip-bikepacking-british-columbia — so I put it in my favourites list for attempting someday. Was it authored by AI? Who knows. The comments ask if anyone has actually done it. Apparently not, so maybe I could be the first to report?
This year, I was looking for ideas for a bike tour over the Easter long weekend to kick-start my cycling season. There's nothing like riding all day in Zone 2, for multiple consecutive days, while carrying a load, to make you go zoom afterwards. I find it to be an effective training strategy, and much more fun than doing indoor cycling all winter.
I figure that if Komoot recommends splitting the route into 10 days, then I should be able to do it in 5 or 6. So I arranged a "six-day weekend" to try it.
It turns out that it's probably way too early in the year to try this Komoot route. This morning, it was raining in Vancouver, so I checked the weather forecast, which reported snow from Whistler to Pemberton (and therefore almost certainly on Duffey Pass too). No thanks, I'm not that hard-core.
So then I thought that I could salvage my vacation by riding the loop backwards (counterclockwise) instead. The Fraser Valley forecast had merely light rain. Maybe I'd aim for Tulameen instead of Lillooet as originally intended.
I found that the Kettle Valley Railway Trail was closed right out of the gate at Hope. A dog-walking woman told me that I wouldn't get far due to downed trees.
With the KVR closed, I decided to ride the Crowsnest Highway (Hwy 3) instead. At 18:30 I reached Sunshine Valley, and faced a choice of staying there or continuing. I called Manning Park Resort as I rode, and found that they had single rooms available at $130 after a seasonal discount.
There was 900 m of climbing from Sunshine Valley to Manning Park Resort, three hours of it after sunset, and cold (-1 ℃ at the end). At the Allison Pass Summit, a salt truck driver pulled over to congratulate me. He must have alerted a colleague, because soon afterwards there was a road maintenance truck driver who offered me an escort for the last few km to Manning Park Resort. It was actually quite helpful to have an extra set of headlights to illuminate the faint road markings, as well as a rear guard to prevent drivers from passing me unsafely.
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This activity is part of a collection: https://komoot.com/collection/4230306
Waypoints
Route Details
Elevation
Highest point (1,350 m)
Lowest point (-40 m)
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