The Hungry Cyclist: Pedalling The Americas In Search Of The Perfect Meal. Tom Davies Kevill
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centre.’
‘I’m saving you for tomorrow. Leave me alone.’
‘But I’ll taste so much better tonight.’
There is only so long you can sit in the bitter cold knowing that an uneaten chocolate bar waits for you at the bottom of a bag. After falling for the advances of Babe Ruth, I prepared to turn in and set about hanging what remained of my food in a nearby tree. Not only would this prevent me from decimating my rations in a fit of night starvation, it would also thwart the efforts of another hungry predator.
Ever since US President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, the great conservationist, saved a baby bear from being shot on a hunting trip, humans have had a close affinity with these ursine creatures. We all cherish Teddy bears. We anthropomorphise them into likable characters, Paddington, Winnie, Balloo and Yogi, and a trip to the Rockies would not be complete without catching a glimpse of one of these majestic and lovable animals in the wild.
‘Seen any bears?’
‘Black or grizzly?’
‘Any cubs?’
These are customary questions amongst visitors to the Rockies, and the traffic jams and tailbacks of eager tourists leaning from car windows and motor homes to capture a piece of moving bush on their digital cameras are testament to the important role bears play in the tourist industry of the mountains. But here lies a problem. Man and bear aren’t the best roommates.
Every autumn, bears make the very sensible decision to get into a cave and sleep for four months, and before taking this long nap they go on a feeding frenzy to fatten up. As their normal food supply is depleted by the damming of rivers and deforestation, they have to look elsewhere, and thus they have developed a taste for easily found human food. Rubbish bins, local tips and campsites provide easy and delicious pickings. This means that bear attacks in the Rockies at this time of year are by no means unheard of. All visitors are advised to carry a bear bell, a pathetic little thing more suited for decorating a Christmas tree than scaring away a 600-pound ravenous beast, and park rangers, local people and road signs are full of advice on how to best avoid becoming a Teddy bear’s picnic.
‘Assess the situation you are dealing with. Are you dealing with a black or grizzly bear?’
‘Climb a tree if available.’
‘Don’t announce your presence if a bear has not seen you.’
‘Let the bear know you are of no threat.’
‘If you come into contact with a bear, keep a close eye on its whereabouts.’
‘Never look a bear in the eyes.’
‘If attacked by a grizzly bear play dead.’
‘If attacked by a black bear fight back.’
Startled from a sound sleep, this catalogue of conflicting advice scrambled in my brain. I could hear the rushing water of the creek but there was something else outside my tent too. I listened again. Perhaps it was just the breeze flapping the tent material. No, there it was again. Something big was in the bushes next to my camp. Bolt upright, motionless and hoping it was nothing more than a hungry racoon, I continued to tune into its movements, while my heartbeat pounded in my head.
That’s some fucking racoon.
It was so close now I could hear the breath being drawn into its large hollow chest as it sniffed and scratched around the perimeter of my tent, its heavy paws pounding the ground inches from where I sat. I grabbed my bear bell, but was too scared to ring it. I sat paralysed by fear, and then remembered. My peanut butter.
Taking Dave’s advice, I had taken a pot of the stuff to bed with me for those cold lonely moments.
The bear can smell my peanut butter…
Trying to stay as still as possible, I fished the tub from the bottom of my sleeping bag and held it in front of me. There was only one thing for it: a sacrifice would have to be made. Slowly unzipping the front of my tent, I rolled the jar into the darkness. Terrified, I lay awake, not drifting back to sleep until the sun began to rise. Plucking up enough courage to get out of my tent, I saw that an immaculate white frost covered everything. My breath filled the air in front of my face, and I nervously inspected the camp. There was no trace of my peanut butter.
As I gained altitude, metre by metre, the air thinned and the temperature dropped. On hot sweaty climbs I peeled off layer after layer of windproof, waterproof clothing, only to put it all back on as the icy mountain air chilled me to the bone and stung my face on the fast, exhilarating descents through this literally breathtaking landscape. Childhood memories of queuing endlessly for a thirty-second roller-coaster ride returned to me as I spent hours trudging up steep climbs for only a few seconds of ‘white-knuckle’ decline, but as I continued my journey on the Icefields Parkway I rode with renewed energy towards the Columbia Icefields and the continental divide. A psychological milestone of the journey, it represented the highest point I would climb in North America, and the very top of the Rockies.
After a gruelling climb in driving snow, what I had been waiting for became visible through the whiteout in the valley below. Amid the snow, wind and glare the Columbia Icefields visitor centre appeared like an Antarctic base camp, surrounded by snowmobiles, radio aerials and flashing lights. At 3,569 metres above sea level, I had crossed the continental divide. For months I had imagined this moment, standing tall on top of the world, blond hair and Union flag blowing in the wind as I surveyed the broken snowcapped peaks of the mountains spread out around me. Instead, wrapped up like a polar explorer, my snot-streaming red nose the only bit of skin exposed to the biting cold, I rode towards the visitor centre unable to see beyond the short distance of black tarmac that vanished into the whiteness only metres ahead.
As I waited outside the visitor centre, the snow blowing, a couple of young cagoule-clad hikers came and joined me.
‘Come a long way?’ they asked.
‘London. You?’
‘Devon. Sandwich?’
I took a damp triangle of bread and meat from a neat tinfoil parcel.
‘Thank you.’
‘We’ve been saving them just for this.’
And so, sitting on the continental divide of North America, I munched on a roast beef and horseradish sandwich. By no means the perfect meal, but as I huddled from the cold, the snow swirling in the white air, it tasted just great.
The melt-water from the vast Athabasca glacier rushes in three directions. To Alaska, to the Atlantic and west towards the Pacific. Having struggled in the opposite direction to the rushing waters that flowed east, I was now at last going with the flow and following the rushing rivers that poured west into British Columbia and the open waters of the Pacific.
Camped at the foot of Mount Robson in an area of deforested wasteland that resembled an abandoned battlefield, I was awakened at dawn by the all-too-familiar sound of rain on my tent. Looking at my map the Mount Robson visitor centre was close by and, if the other visitor centres were anything to go by, it would be open in a few hours and there would be some free over-brewed coffee there and possibly a rest room.
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