Canadian Great Divide Trail

I've been contemplating where I want to ride my bike later in the summer on my bike tour part II. I posted two ideas I was thinking about below. One issue I have with both plans is they involve a lot of driving/flying. Compared to the average Calgarian my life is relatively low on the consumption/energy use scale so I don't worry about this sort of thing too much, but I'm about to drive 5000kms round trip to SoCal and back. Then I'm going to drive another 5000kms+ to the arctic and back. Beyond the environmental impact I'm not really eager to spend more time in a metal box traveling thousands of KMs. The plane is much faster, but the hassle of boxing my bike and traveling to/from the airports at both ends evens things out. So I started pondering trips I can complete with minimal mechanized transport.

I do have the Icefield's Parkway close at hand, but I think I'll save that tour for the September long weekend as the mtns will be mostly tourist free by that point. Then I remembered I bought the Adventure Cycling Canadian Great Divide MTB Map a couple years back and haven't ridden that route yet. Starting at Banff and heading 355kms south to the US border on dirt roads & double track with the odd taste of single track thrown in for good measure. The ride starts at my back door [90mins away by car] and a long dirt tour may be just the thing to get a feel for my Big Dummy's expedition touring potential. I'd probably get a lift to the start and then ride south to the border then ride back and take a detour from the route so I end up in Calgary.

I haven't decided on this option 100%, but so far it has the most appeal of the options at hand.