Kid-friendly, Gravel riding, and Traffic free
Duration: 3 days, 2 nights
Location: Spray Valley Provincial Park
Total distance: 53.6 km (or more)
This is the perfect beginner family bikepacking or bike camping route. Plus, if it works best for your family, you can turn it into a wonderful car camping expedition. Or, if you’re like us, you can turn this into a day trip!
This out-and-back adventure has minimal elevation gains. My 71 year old mother and almost 7 year old daughter both easily rode the route. My husband used our 20″ wheeled Bike Friday Haul-a-Day schlepping our almost 4 year old on 1.75″ tires and was fine.
I have written up this little adventure as a trip report but due to a full campground, extreme heat, and heavy forest fire smoke levels — the latter two don’t mix so well with little kids — we have only ridden one section of this route so far: from the very southern end of the West Side Road of Spray Lakes (i.e. the southern end of Spray Lakes West Campground, parked in the day use area there). Because of Mother Nature and mothering younger children, this trip has yet to be completed in full; this write up is still very much a trip plan!
What we love about this trip
1. Flexibility
Using Spray Lakes West Campground as your base, this trip can be tailored to meet your family’s needs: bikepack, car camp, or day trip. Map2. The mountains
The geography in this valley is stunning. Massive slabs of rock reaching to the sky, twisty patterns on exposed faces. It’s enchanting.3. Kid-friendly terrain
There is an abundance of kid-friendly terrain in this valley bottom. The hiking here is often straight up, but the biking routes established over time are simple.
Day 1
Park at Goat Creek Parking Lot (Highway 742) and ride the High Rockies Trail to Goat Pond and continue on to Spray Lakes Reservoir. At this point you are at the entrance to the Spray Lakes West Campground, check in and find your home for the night. Some sights are oriented more for groups; some are more private. This campground stretches for 6 km down the reservoir, with 50 sites scattered all along the water (and none above the road). It is a basic campground and is first-come first-served only, as such I do not recommend trying to do this trip on a weekend — aim for midweek — unless you are able to stake out a site on a Wednesday and pay for extra days (which seems to be the norm).
Day 2
Ride to the very end of the campground road (West Side Road) to the day use parking lot. Then ride along this vehicle-free gravel fire road along the shores of Spray Lakes Reservoir. It is stunning. See below for more details!
Day 3
Ride back the way you came on Day 3. Or, if you have an industrious soul in your group who has already ridden back for your car (or perhaps you were clever and shuttled the car to the campground on Day 1), consider exploring another small section of the High Rockies Trail on the east side of the Spray Lakes Reservoir, at least until the point where it crosses the Smith-Dorrien highway.Day 2: Details
Ride to the very end of the campground road (West Side Road) to the day use parking lot. Then ride along this vehicle-free gravel fire road along the shores of Spray Lakes Reservoir. It is stunning. The first kilometre or so does have some loose gravel and sharper rocks that have fallen from the mountainside, but the rest of the journey is on the Spray Fire Road (aka West Side Road) that is in the best shape of all the fire roads I have ridden in the area. There are two well packed down rubble patches to ride over, remnants of the June 2013 flood, but that’s it for flood damage. It is 10.8 km from the gate at the day use area until the giant dam. This was our turnaround point. I have been told that there is a beautiful waterfall worth checking out if you keep riding past the dam, cross a small bridge and then walk about 2 minutes down a trail… This took about 2 hours of riding time (kid-paced for part of the trip and then my daughter was hooked up to our FollowMe Tandem for the rest of the trip), 3 hours total (including candy breaks, lunch, clothing changes, etc.): 21.6 km total.Recent Trips
This is my family packing list. And, here is my master list of ideas and missions accomplished in the area, plus here are a few other recent trips that we have done:
Netherlands Family Bike Tour: Travel Day Home
I could have spent another day in the quaint university town of Leiden. It was very beautiful. Alas, we were due at the airport to fly home to Calgary. We ate our breakfast at the hotel as it was included in our room rate: eggs, bread, croissants, Chocomel, crappy...
Netherlands Family Bike Tour: Day 9 of riding
North Sea Route and the Meijendel Today we packed up camp for the last time and rode a bit north then west into the Meijendel and it was awesome. Highly recommend it. It's this gorgeous sand dune area along the coast, parts forested, parts open and hummocked. That and...
Netherlands Family Bike Tour: Day 7 of riding
Rest days in Dordrecht & area We spent two days/three nights in Dordrecht, staying with my husband's cousin and his family who had kids roughly our kids' ages, which was fun for them, especially once the initial shyness wore off! We ditched the bikes for a few...
My name is Lindsay Bliek, B.Sc., B.Ed., I am a mom who uses a cargo bike to get around. I have been riding bikes for over 30 years, the last 9 of which I have been either pregnant or riding with a young kid or two. I am the recipient of the 2019 Commuter of the Year award from Bike Calgary. I seek out protected infrastructure, like pathways and cycle tracks, and I am confident enough to ride on some (but not all) roads (with my kids). I am here to answer your questions and help mobilize your family on bikes! Read more about my background and why I write, as well as my recent work outside of this blog.
