Grande Prairie to the 2010 Rocky Mountain GS Challenge

It is almost time for me to start my first camping trip on my KLR 650. I will be traveling from Grande Prairie to Rocky Mountain House. My trip starts on August 12th and I hope to make it to Mountain Park for my first night of camping. The bike is almost ready, repairs needed are:
-clean air filter
-change oil and filter
-replace broken skid plate ( not sure how that happened )
-replace rear tire
-install new center stand

I will post some pics of the bike as I start loading it up. I plan on doing a daily update with pics from the iPhone then I will add better pics from the camera once I return home on the 16th.

This is what I have on it so far:
Alumiium panniers
Givi crash bars
Garmin GPSMap 276C
Rear Tire Pirelli MT21 RallyCross( will be changed before the trip )
Kawasaki Tank bag
Kawasaki Trunk bag

Here is my proposed route. From GP i will take the Canfor Road south to the Gold Creek Connector. From there I will meet up with the Forestry Trunk Road and end up on the south side of Grande Cache jumping onto highway 40 which will take me to Hinton for fuel. From Hinton I think I will stick to hwy40 to Cadomin then head to Mountain Park from there for my first nights camp.
From Mountain Park I will head over the Cardinal River Divide and connect with the FTR to HWY11. I might take some back roads to the Challenge location depending on the the weather.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday I will be camped out at the GS Challenge and hopefully will learn some new skills and see alot of nice dualsport bikes in action.
After the challenge I will head west to Saskatchewan Crossing then up to Jasper for a nights stay at Pocahontas campground. If I'm not too late I'm hoping to get a few hours in at the hot springs, I'm sure I will need it after a weekend of riding my arse off.
From Jasper I'll head back to Hinton for fuel and then north on HWY40 to get back home.

Keep us updated!

Got some work done to the bike tonight. New skid plate and center stand are on. Picked up a Dunlop 606 for the rear tire, not sure if I will have time before leaving to get it switched out. Will take it with me and change it when I get to Rocky.

Buddy of mine had a KLR and loves to ride it up here. Handles really well on whatever you through at it. Sure with some x-tra skills under your belt, you will be unstopable. Have fun!!

Got finished up in Chetwynd early so it looks like I will be able to finish my maintenance on the bike before leaving. I wasn't really looking forward to changing a rear tire on the road, especially since I have never changed a motorcycle tire before. I will post pics once the change has been made.

Will do Hideout, heard you passed!! Guess my training class helped! Bills in the mail...

You have chosen an adventurous route for sure. I will be riding from Argyll on friday. I will see you there.

Got the tire on tonight. What a challenge that was! The MT21 seemed like it was crazy glued on! Took me about an hour at my shop before I was finished.

The new Dunlop 606, all that's left is an oil change and clean the air filter. Other than that the bike is ready

I"ve traveled the upper portion of the Forestry Trunk road before but have never been on the lower section from Hinton to Rocky. I'm really looking forward to that portion of the ride. Hope to get a few nice pics through there! See you at the challenge!

Loaded and ready to roll, just waiting for the family to wake up!

How is the ride going? Your setup looks great. I should have helped with the tire change...
A little wet yesterday eh. Yup passed the Class 6, thanks for the lessons!
Safe travels and keep us informed.

Thursday was off to a soggy start, rain, rain and more rain. My trip began as planned with me taking the Canfor to Gold Creek, then over to the Forestry Trunk Road. I was just about to the FTR and the road turned to shit. It was muddy enough to make it difficult to climb up a hill. Once to the top of the hill I could see the road didn't get much better. A Canfor truck was approaching and he pulled over to talk. The words from his mouth were " Are you lost??!!" Then he told me the road only gets worse. So a change of route was in order. Turned around and headed back to hwy 40. Once on hwy 40 the weather improved, sunny with the odd little shower all the way to Hinton. Things were looking good, or so it seemed. I decided to camp, as this was my original plan, since the weather looked good. I proceeded to Cadomin and then to the Wildhorse Campground where I stayed the night.

This was the last time I would see the sun for the next 24 hours. It rained all night long and to add to that was insane winds which was blowing the rain under my rain fly and soaking everything under it. I don't think I slept an hour that night.

Decided at 5:30am that I couldn't take the rain anymore and put on my head lamp and packed up camp. It was pouring rain and cold. I packed up as quick as I could but everything got soaked. I decided at this point that I should grab a hotel in Rocky in order to dry my gear. So off I went through Mountain Park and towards Nordegg in hopes of good roads. To my surprise they were good! Really wet but solid! I hit one soft area that lasted for about 500m but that was it! I managed to get up to 110km/h in some sections. I was pushing it in hopes of finding better weather, no luck there! I got into Rocky and checked into a hotel, grabbed a quick shower, changed and went to the Challenge. The first day was a lot of fun. Basically learning better bike control then did some individual challenges. Sorry, I didn't get any pics today, forgot the camera in the hotel room. I do have a short video I will try to post from my phone.
Founds some pics I took on my phone:

Looking forward to the rest of your report. Word around the campfire is that a cat from GP busted a leg over the weekend. Hope it wasn't you!

route looks great! can't wait for more pics of this area!

Wasn't me, my bike and I are both in one piece and back home now. Will be posting some more pics and videos over the next few days. There was a guy who had a slow off on a GS1200 and broke his leg, didn't know he was from GP though.

Nice to hear from you Joe and Flora, I've been reading your Cross Canada report. Great stuff!!! And thanks for the videos, you have been through alot of places that I used to live in. Nice to see them again from a different perspective.
Safe travels