After a wet night I start into a beautiful sunny morning with spectacular mountain views. The morning also starts with a refreshing 1000m elevation gain over Hurley pass.

Unfortunately my shifters give up again in the morning [no tension]. It is clearly not repaired properly and it worries me that it worked for two days and now stopped... I decide to not touch it anymore with all the mud and to try limping my way to Vancouver on a more or less single speed bike [exactly what you need with all the steep up and down hills]. At least the Rohloff can be shifted manually with an 8mm wrench. For that, I always have to stop, unscrew the shift box, use the wrench to put in the desired gear, screw on the shift box again... It goes without saying that I try to reduce the shifting to an absolut minimum and thus can't ride with optimal speed. But I can ride which makes me stoicly recall my mantra "Things could be worse".

On the way up to Hurley Pass almost every car stops to tell me that there is a lot of snow up on the pass. The indications of the drivers vary greatly from 5cm to 50cm. Great! I can already see the grey clouds ahead of me and mentally prepare for the first proper snowy day. Slowely the snowline comes closer, first it starts snowing, 5 minutes later the snow sticks with the trees around me, again 5 minutes later the road is covered in snow. Roughly 10cm I estimate.

Most of the cars now start to offer me a lift that I happily refuse. I had some snow before, but this is the first proper winter day that I ride in and there is certainly some magic to it. I enjoy it.

The uphill is fine but once I am over the pass it actually gets very, very slippery. I even take my first fall [I am still able to do a snow angel before I get up on the bike again, so all good].

After about 10km the snow from the road is gone again. However, the downhill remains the gnarliest one I've ever had. I basically drop 1500m down to Pemberton Meadows and the road is so incredibly bumpy that with my brakes not being really in their best shape it is a nightmare. Everything hurts and I have to stop for many breaks to relax my hands and shoulders [who would have thought that a downhill can be such a hustle...].

Once I reach the meadows it quickly becomes civilized. Lots of farm land, surrounded by beautiful snow covered mountains and two rivers [Lilloet River and Ryan River]. Unfortunately so much farm land that I don't find a spot to pitch my tent. At the so called beer farm [no clue why I choose this one...] I ask for a place to pitch a tent and they are happy to provide me with a nice spot on their lawn [and a beer].