Road to Nepal & Diamond Valley

110 km · 1,050 m · ~3.5 hours moving · Pavement, some of it kindly provided

At some point somebody looked at a chunk of foothills road southwest of Calgary and decided it resembled the road to Nepal. I've spent a fair bit of time trying to find out who, and when, and come up empty — the name is everywhere and attributed to nobody. Which I've chosen to interpret as it being so obviously correct that no one felt the need to write it down.

The century route starts near Shannon Terrace in Fish Creek. South through the city to Spruce Meadows Green is the sensible-warmup portion — get the legs turning, remember which gear does what. Nothing here will trouble you.

96 Street West to 226 Avenue West. The city releases its grip fairly abruptly and you're into open foothills country, Rockies parked on the western horizon doing their thing. Pleasant, rolling, and entirely a setup for what's coming.

112 Street West, past Granary Road. And here's where the name gets made. Three big hills, back to back, each one steeper and longer than it has any right to be given how flat everyone assumes Alberta is outside the mountains. The first one you climb. The second one you climb slightly less enthusiastically. By the third you've stopped admiring the scenery and started doing arithmetic about your gearing.

This is the Road to Nepal. Not the whole loop — this stretch. Whoever named it was three hills deep and out of ideas, and honestly, fair enough.

South past Ironstone Farms, then west onto Highway 549. Here the ride reveals its true character, and its true character is a bit of a menace. Two lanes. Traffic at 100. A shoulder best described as theoretical. For a few kilometres you're a small, brightly-coloured suggestion at the edge of someone else's commute, and the gap between "fine" and "not fine" is measured in centimetres of white paint.

Straight talk, not a punchline: this stretch is why the loop isn't for everyone. It's short and thousands ride it every year without incident, but know it's coming, keep your head up, and think hard about low light or high wind. If that doesn't appeal, cut the loop short here.

South on Highway 22 to Diamond Valley. Reaching 22 brings the slightly disproportionate relief of a real shoulder — generous, load-bearing, wide enough to have opinions. And having found it, I decided not to turn north just yet.

The run south is what turns this from a good ride into a proper day out. Long sightlines, front ranges stacked to the west, enough roll to keep the legs honest without becoming a grind. It's arguably the best road riding within striking distance of Calgary.

Black Sheep Coffee, Diamond Valley. The turnaround and the justification. There's a quality to coffee consumed 70 km into a ride that no café can replicate on a Tuesday morning, and Black Sheep benefits enormously. I was seriously tempted by the fresh baking but OMAD didn't allow it. ☕ 

North on 22, back toward 22X. Same road in reverse, which sounds like a compromise and isn't — different wind, different light, different side of the valley. It's also the honest reckoning of the day's climbing, which the profile had been quietly accumulating while I wasn't paying attention.

And it's where I flatted. Front wheel, twenty-odd kilometres from home.

Which brings me to the bananas. 🍌🍌🍌

Three of them, over the course of 110 kilometres. Not clustered — properly distributed, one early, one somewhere in the middle, one on the way home, as though placed by a committee with a map. And all three unpeeled. Intact. Whole bananas, lying on the shoulder of a highway, unopened.

That's the part I can't get past. A discarded peel tells a complete story: someone ate a banana, someone made a bad decision about the peel, the end. But an unpeeled banana on the shoulder is a story with the middle missing. Nobody ate it. Somebody carried it out there, at some cost in pocket space and pannier real estate, and then simply released it into the wild. And then did it again. Twice.

The generous theory is a jersey pocket with a structural flaw and a rider who never looked back. The less generous theory is that somewhere out there is a person conducting a long-term study, and I've stumbled into the fieldwork. Either way, I've now ridden past more roadside bananas than I have flat tires this season, which is a ratio I'd not previously had cause to consider.

Tube in, e-pump, back on the road in under ten minutes, mildly enriched by the experience (yes, and annoyed).

22X back to Spruce Meadows Green, then home to Fish Creek. Rolling it in. The legs know they're nearly done, the traffic thickens as the city reasserts itself, and you get the specific satisfaction of a loop that closed properly.

Verdict. 110 km, 1,050 metres of climbing, three and a half hours moving, one front flat, three unexplained bananas, and one coffee I'd rate well above its objective merits. Not Nepal. Very good anyway. The scenery does more work than the climbing, the three hills on 112 do more than you expect, and the one genuinely sketchy section is short enough to survive and long enough to make Highway 22 feel like a gift.

Bring the legs. Bring the mirror. Bring a spare tube. The bananas, apparently, are provided.