{"id":15946,"date":"2020-09-09T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T16:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bcaletrail.ca\/?p=15946"},"modified":"2022-10-19T07:57:42","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T14:57:42","slug":"biking-and-beers-in-pemberton-bc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bcaletrail.ca\/biking-and-beers-in-pemberton-bc\/","title":{"rendered":"Biking and Beers in Pemberton, BC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pemberton is a beer-loving cyclist’s dream, complete with easy off-road trails, jaw-dropping scenery, and kilometres of flat ground. It’s even better if you look at a map before you start riding!<\/span><\/h2>\n

For weeks I\u2019d been planning a family camping trip to Pemberton. This was the plan: my own family and I would drive up there to meet up with our friends from the Interior, then spend five days and four nights hiking mountains, climbing rocks, swimming in cold rivers, and, of course, visiting a couple of the up-and-coming mountain town\u2019s local breweries on behalf of the BC Ale Trail. It was a fantastic plan.<\/p>\n

But then our friends, for some very understandable reasons which are irrelevant to this piece, pulled out. And then my wife, for some similarly understandable reasons, did too. My family camping trip had imploded in the way that fantastic plans sometimes do, and through no fault of its own. Still, I had a job to do, and I\u2019m not one to shirk my duty to society. So that\u2019s why, on a promising August morning, I found myself alone, driving northward on the Sea to Sky highway with the music loud, coffee in the cup holder, and my bike on the back of the car. It would have been nice if the original plan had happened as intended, but I wasn\u2019t upset because things were looking up.<\/p>\n

\"Matt
The author experiencing a pre-ride glow at Nairn Falls Provincial Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Biking towards beer<\/h2>\n

After arriving in the late morning and pitching my tent in a campsite high above the Green River at Nairn Falls Provincial Park, I climbed onto my bike and set off toward my first destination. I\u2019d sketched out a rough itinerary for myself that saw me biking from the campsite to Pemberton Brewing Company<\/a>, the Pemberton Distillery<\/a>, and finally, to The Beer Farmers<\/a>, before heading back to the campsite at the end of the day. I knew it would be a manageable forty-five kilometres, over almost entirely flat ground, no less.<\/p>\n

Somehow, though, I entirely neglected to research the finer details of my route beyond connecting the three points on Google Maps, and, so, I never found this detailed map<\/a> produced by the Pemberton Valley Trails Association, which would have made my travels significantly easier in parts. So, rather than rolling out of the provincial park onto the wide, smooth grade of the Sea to Sky Trail, I turned onto what I thought was the only trail into town, which turns out to have been rated \u201cmore difficult,\u201d and I\u2019d like to think that I didn\u2019t disgrace myself too badly as I wrestled my bike over massive roots, rocks, and steep climbs. Either way, nobody was around to see whether or not I walked any of it.<\/p>\n