The terrain today was a little flatter. Today a slightly longer ride both in terms of distance and time.
The first ten kilometers started with a climb up to the top of Six Mile Summit. Here you can see the final approach on the hill. It was only ~3km but got a bit steep towards the end. There was a chain up area at the bottom and a chains off at the top. Nice to get that out of the way at start of the day.
Here is the top of Six Mile Summit.
In the rest of the day there were two or three short steep hills but overall the land was becoming a bit flatter and there were also long stretches of flat land.
Some areas of agriculture such as these with large hay rolls.
Once I crossed Six Mile Hill the rest of the ride into Burns Lake at 52km went fairly quickly. Signs indicated there was repaving and I saw some newly paved pieces but fortunately no construction on Sunday. Once in Burns Lake, I met up with Jared Lester. Jared is working in town for BC Wildfire Service – as a summer job before he goes back to school in the fall. We both cycled TDA in 2013, though Jared was a stronger/faster cyclist and was able to ride every inch of the designated route. He was 18 then and youngest rider in TDA 2013. Nice catching up with him.
I call this a “joint mug shot”, taken by convenience store clerk, though we’re both smiling.
After that got some lunch and then headed out. There weren’t too many places to stop very nearby, but figured I wanted to at least get close enough to Vanderhoof that I could reach it the next day. The route went up and down past the lake but continued to be somewhat flatter than previous days. The travel lane was nice and smooth and sometimes the chip seal shoulder was extremely rough – hence I alternated between riding in the shoulder and on the white stripe.
One rest area had this cairn with an inscription (below) that suggested the main stone had once been part of the castle where King Arthur was born. If so, who and why was motivated to bring that stone here to middle of BC?
Here is another small lake. The signs indicate “Lakes District” and there are several larger lakes out here as well.
At 108km was Endako where the only business was this roadhouse. Just the right time and place to have an early dinner here. At 108km, I hemmed and hawed about stopping here and renting a room upstairs. Finally decided to go just a little further and cycled to Frasier Lake at 121km to end the day.