Day 9, Merritt-Hope

Today we rode about 120 km, from Merritt to Hope. For the first 30 km we rode on coldwater road, a beautiful road in the mountains along the coldwater river. Comparing with highway 5, this road has less elevation gain, so we decided to ride on this road for the first 30 km. This road merges to HW5. At the very beginning of the junction of the coldwater road and HW5 there is a steep uphill, which took about 1 hour to climb. Immediately after reaching the highest point of the road, a strong headwind started blowing and accompanied us for the whole remaining part of the road to Hope. Riding on uphills with this strong wind was very hard. From Merritt to Hope there is only one rest area. For the last 30 km of the road ending to Hope, we enjoyed riding on a steep downhill, with the average speed of 35 km/hr. Merritt to Hope was the hardest and at the same time, the most beautiful section of the trip.

We ran out of water, so we asked the passing cars for the water, a nice guy gave us some water and juice.