Has a ride organizer ever had to disqualify themself? On auto pilot. I rode straight up Taylor Way and onto the the Upper Levels highway. missing the turn onto Marine Drive, whoops! How embarrassing is that?! This cut the route short by one kilometer and lost some elevation, sorry you're disqualified Nigel.

My thinking in running this one later in the season was there might be greater odds of success due to a lesser chance of heat exhaustion, as experienced on previous attempts by other riders in the summer. Not having to climb the Duffey Lake road in the summer heat into the upper 30's with its grades of 13% for extended periods surely must make it a tad less difficult. But then you have to deal with with the cold at night, and it gets bloody cold at night up in the Cariboo in early September. For temperatures, my Garmin had lows of -5 between Clinton and 100 Mile House at around 6 am and a high of +30 degrees in Kamloops in the afternoon the same day. Day three, on the last major climb it was +2 degrees on the summit of the Coquihalla at around 8 am.

The winds played nice from Vancouver to Clinton on the first day. Highway 24 was also a pleasant tailwind but from Little Fort to Merritt it was all head winds, especially on 5a. The last 30 km into Merritt the head winds were quite brutal. Thankfully the only rain on the ride was leaving Merritt in the morning and it was just a little shower, no rain jacket needed for me a least. The last stretch from Hope was the usual Labour Day traffic, enough said.

The route lived up to its reputation as one of, if not, the most challenging and beautiful routes the club has to offer. This time there were five starters, three of which dnf'ed and one who was Dq'ed, with only one official finisher (his first 1000!).