Cycling Outside Waterloo Region

[clasher]

I'm in Lethbridge for work and would highly recommend anyone coming out this way bring a bicycle, the river valley in the city has spectacular views and there is a decent trail network in the city, though the big (for Alberta) highways that criss-cross town do make for some choke points, traffic is generally more relaxed than in Ontario. I know drivers have to yield to pedestrians but it seems they all do it for me on a bike too, which is kinda dangerous since I don't know what the law here says about it.

Anyway, here are six pictures:

There's a lot of little paths like this along the river valley, locally known as the coulee this terrain is pretty neat.







This path was washed away in the floods a few years ago, the signs seem to indicate there was a boardwalk or something like that.




This is one of two roads that cross the river, and there is a really nice pedestrian/cyclist bridge beside the road one. This is looking west, the path up the hill is visible... it's quite a climb, there's another gravel path that goes to the university and the grade tops out at 12%. I needed all my low gears here.




Any fans of the Rural Alberta Advantage might know the song "Dethbridge in Lethbridge" and here's the bridge... it's massive in scale, 1.6km long and pretty tall. All old riveted ironwork too, quite the labourious undertaking BITD. There's a pile of trails running through the parklands between this bridge and the previous bridges. There's also a recreation of a historical whisky trading fort called "fort whoop-up" but it was closed when I went by.




Tons of singletrack type of trails running along the river too, this one was a tough climb on my road bike. There is also an MTB park (akin to the one on Trashmore) somewhere near the bridges.





I'm not sure when this happened but the land in the coulees isn't all that stable I guess. I saw another chunk across a valley that looked like it was ready to slide down.


My first time in Alberta and I gotta say it's pretty nice. The air here is a lot drier than southern Ontario and a lot windier. The heat isn't as bad either, even when it's in the high 20s it's more bearable. The wind is insane though, the highest gusts since I've been here were recorded at 115km/h. It's common for it to be 40-60km/h winds when they blowing, almost all out of the west. The rockies are visible from the west side of town, visibility is ridiculuous, often 80km when it's sunny out. The lack of smog is also quite noticeable.