The Making of a Cross Canada Route

http://www.adventureriderradio.com/...try-motorcycle-routes-adventure-travel-by-gps.

Did this interview the other day, starts about halfway through the podcast.

Weird hearing your own voice

Yeh, he rode with me on some of the Island sections, but we ran into snow in the passes..

Ooops! I didnt mean to unknowingly stir up anything by posting mention of his blog. I didnt realize that! My apologies!

FWIW - I will be following your routes!

Hey Ted that was a nice little podcast. You need to speak up a little on the next one, your voice was pretty low. I dropped him an email to congratulate him for pronouncing NL properly, so many of that crowd out west do not. Haha!

Listen to the show this morning

and

I just read Rohon's RR, that guy is a beast. Thanks for the link.

Ted,
Thanks for sending me the GPS link. Got my KLR today.

Gunnerbuck,
I can't wait to ride the island section. My mom lives in Courtenay so I might come up and check it out this spring.

I'm subscribed to that podcast. Great for road trips in the car

Message me when you know a timing if you like and I may be able to ride with you for a day... Part of new section passes through a chain of mountains so it may be snowed in fairly late this year... We just had another dump of snow overnight in Campbell River..

Hey Ted, not sure if I mentioned this previously but the Three Bears Lodge in Shinning Tree shut down. I found this out last summer. You can still fuel up and get supplies at the Spruce Shilling gas station (and rent cabins) but there is no longer a kitchen in Shinning Tree. Neerest one would be 50kms west at the intersection of HWY 560 and 144 or 90kms east in Elk Lake.



Sean

That sucks, what an awesome pub that was. I'll update the description on the website. Thanks

Hey Ted - someone pointed me to your Adv Radio Interview. Great Stuff. Clearly I didn't take any of the advice in the interview :) I am currently trying to put together Aus North <-> South Route along the same lines as the TCAT.

For anyone considering it this was a great ride, I still talk about it, the prairies in spring are really interesting, despite the long haul straight runs. The stuff Ted said in the interview about wet ground was spot on. I would love to do again. The whole thing this time. Also you do have to be a special kind of weird to enjoy it by yourself (ie like me).

SkiBum - yep that was me with Murph. How is the old boy?

Edit: I started in Oyosoos

Hey Craig, nice of you to pop up! I thought that was you in the conversation. As for Murph I suspect he's about the same but I haven't laid eyes on the guy in ages. I've been away working pretty nonstop for awhile.

You better come back and do the best part of BC at least, fly over and ride my spare bike..

Just copying everything off my GPS as it getting close to death. What do I find? A bunch of TCAT stuff including my route. Ahh all those Tim Hortons!

One day, one day.

What happened to Manxman (Ross from Kelowna) he was working on a western portion of the route but has fallen off the grid for a couple of years.....

Holy crap! I just finished reading thru the entire thread! I was looking for TCAT intel, and this was/is the place. Already got the latest .gpx file from Ted (Thnx!), itching to tackle the western Canadian sections as able. Kudos to all involved in this amazing project, that benefits so many.

I'm retired, really enjoy my backcountry gravel travel (see RRs in sig line), but not so much mud and water crossings (old guy speaking here), as a tall loaded up KLR ain't no WR250 hot rod. A suggestion... clearly identifying the muddy challenging sections, and showing best option cut-outs around those challenging sections (maybe with pink or white track line) would be very helpful.

Special kudos to Chris/keefernathan for routing thru the Cypress Hills, my favourite place on the prairies!

I've sure noticed a change in the weather patterns last few years on the prairies... much wetter than it used to be.

Not sure how feasible the marking is you propose, as you know there's no predicting the weather and any mentions of sections like that could change as much as the weather does. Local knowledge is always best, ask locals at fuel and meal stops what the local backwoods are like. I would think that would be more useful than any posting on here.

Laying down another (easy go-around) track line would be same as done for the technical sections (should be easy to do). On the prairies, if it's wet, the low areas with dirt roads/trails will almost always be muddy. Prairie gumbo is not to be taken lightly - IMO there's no shame identifying "impassible when wet" sections - heck, the Gap Road between the Cypress Hills West Block & Center Block is clearly marked as such on either end (signed)... and there are similar "travel at your own risk" signed dirt roads along the Qu'Appelle valley too. Such signage isn't uncommon on the prairies actually. I've come very close a few times, on dirt roads on the prairies, to getting stuck - even on the prairies, help can be a long ways away. Going down any muddy dirt road hereabouts is usually a bad decision!

Changing gears (pun intended :^) I think it'd be cool to see a 2nd "southern" route option across the prairies too.

This pic by Rofon illustrates the challenge:

http://advrider.com/index.php?attachments/dsc_0281-jpg.601463/

"Impassable when wet" "Travel at your own risk" This is pretty typical of what prairie gumbo looks like. It's a special kind of greasy clay mixed by the Devil himself.

Man, it would really really suck getting stuck in the middle of that Gap Road section somewhere. That area looks just like middle-of-nowhere Mongolia, feels really really remote. It's an easy go tho when it's dry and not too deeply rutted: