Before I jumped into the world of self-contained (unsupported) touring, I spent about 10 years happily going on supported tours. My first solo tour was back in 1998, and I was nervous enough about jumping into a month-long tour by myself that I arranged a safety net at the end of the tour. The first 3 weeks were on my own, but for the last week I joined a Backroads tour of the Canadian Rockies - from Banff to Jasper. You can read about my experience on the Backroads portion of that trip by checking out the last week's pages of my journal denise1998rockies.crazyguyonabike.com. Days 23 to 28 were the Backroads-supported part of the tour.Originally Posted by oldbikah
In my experience, Backroads is a premier touring company. I've done both their inn trips and camping trips, but as noted above, my experience with them is a little dated since I've mainly switched to touring on my own. In my supported touring days, most of my tours were Backroads tours. (My count may be off, but with little effort I can list 8 Backroads trips that I took.) I did take 2 trips with 2 other touring companies - my 1988/89 tour of the South Island of New Zealand was with New Zealand Pedaltours (OK, but not even close to Backroads quality) and my tour of Oregon (including Crater Lake) was with Bicycle Adventures (I didn't like this tour operator...).
There are a lot of companies that run tours in the Canadian Rockies. Questions for you:
--- Camping or inns? Do you have a price-point that you are looking for?
--- do you want this to be a biking only trip, or do you want to do some hiking too?
--- do you want to stick to just Banff to Jasper (Icefields Parkway) or do you want to also attempt to get to Yoho or Kootenay (on the BC side of the mountains) or would you like to add on part of Kananaskis Country?
If you've narrowed your choices down to a couple of touring companies and aren't sure which to go with - don't hesitate to ask the tour operators for references. Of course no one would give you contacts who would give a bad reference, but it still would be interesting to compare the reactions of different people.
If you have other specific questions I'd be happy to try to answer them (based on my own experience, of course).
Happy trip planning!
--- Denise