Day 106 - 16th September, Kikomun - shortcut through the mountains - Ryan Provincial Park, 38.72 miles

This was an adventure day of crazy shortcut. Instead going back to the Hwy #3, then north to Cranbrook and back south again, I found road which headed straight to the west and based on information from one guy here in Kikomun Creek Campground it was supposed to be paved. Well, it was but only first couple miles, then it changed to very rough gravel. Already been so far we decided for small adventure - let's continue! But it was hard, very hard, the road was bad even for mountains bikes and it was very steep. Basically we spent whole day on the way up looking forward when we will be on the other side of mountain range. But at least we were in the middle of "wilderness", in the middle of grizzly country (later, we met Jim, who told us that there is one, close to the place where we were, but we still didn't have a luck to see one, or is it luck?), with nearly no cars, it was actually a nice break. And we also saw a "dark" side of British Columbia, not only that Potemkin Village which tourist agencies try to sell. Here far away from any tourist industry, were hills scarred  by clear cuts, and covered by spruce mono cultures, barb wires everywhere, but we already got use to it, they are everywhere. 
Weather was a little problem, after noon clouds heavy with rain started to came from the south. Late afternoon we were "saved" by old guy Jim from the fire patrol, who picked us with his truck before the last and steepest hill and also the heaviest rain. So climbing horrible hill on the horrible road we talked about forest fires, he admit that BC is doing too much good job with preventing fires, now they have a lot of problems with bugs and depleted soil. The rode down was also pretty bad, steep, curved, with steep hillsides, it seems that road down would be much harder than up... Luckily that we met that fire guy. Down we finally got back on Hwy #3, biked for a while before the evening come. Huge, tall hills, which we passed through, on our left side.
Near Ryan Provincial Park we stopped in one house to ask for water. Juliet, which lived here with her grandson, gave us water and then offer us that we can stay at their camping place by the river, and use they canoe if we want... So we stayed here, happy that we and our bikes survived my shortcut and looking forward for canoeing in the morning.  

Pictures:
Shortcut