Ascent of Mount Nebo

I feel the air getting thinner as I turn the final bend of the ascent.  Approaching the summit, I notice subtle changes in the vegetation: the dew on the grass glistens with a darker shade of green; the trees are just that tiny bit shorter. I feel a shortness of breath as I shift into my biggest ring on the back. I am pedalling up Mount Nebo, the 121^st highest mountain in Manitoba.

Dusty 100 Wrap

A small cadre of wheelmen emerged from the fog Sunday morning at Victoria Settlement game to embark on the first-ever Dusty 100 Gravel Challenge. The circuit turned out to be neither dusty (it's been a damp week around these parts) nor 100 (the route actually clocked in at 107 km), but it certainly was  gravelly and a challenge. It took 6.5 hours for our mud-and-bug-splattered butts to complete the course.

Alberta's Tour de Mud(dle)

All Photos: Casey B. Gibson | www.cbgphoto.com

Last Sunday’s stage 5 of the 2015 Tour of Alberta was a curious combination of farce and epic. Some will see what happened that day as irrefutable proof that the event is doomed; others, me included, will see past a muddled ending to great promise.

For naysayers, those skeptical of the whole Tour of Alberta enterprise, the fiasco near the end of stage 5, when second wheel Sven Erik Bystrom took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and the peloton followed him until a marshall on motorbike informed them all that they had to turn around, will be the defining moment of this year’s race, evidence that Alberta’s attempt at pro cycling is bush league.

Dusty Lens: Buffalo Campground, Red Deer River