Coquitlam cyclist Sandra Walter can check off another item on her bucket list.
Last month, the veteran mountain bike racer competed in the Tour of the Dragon, billed as the world's toughest single-day races, which takes place in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.
Only one other woman has finished the 268-km race, and Walter was able to complete the course in 13 hours.
"Epic doesn't even begin to describe the Tour of the Dragon," she said. "I've never done anything like it, because there isn't anything else like it."
Walter, a staff person at a bike shop in Maple Ridge, was able to compete in the race after winning a contest put on by Q Energy Drink. She won two out of three qualifying matches, including the Test of Metal in Squamish and the Canada Cup in Sudbury, Ont., that put her name in a draw for the race in Bhutan.
Walter has been competing in races for more than 15 years and has represented Canada at six world championships, including one in South Africa a week before the Tour of the Dragon.
"It was pretty difficult to prepare for," she said. "I only had a short time to make the trip from South Africa to Bhutan, and then recover from four straight days of travel, and acclimatize to the altitude."
The lowest point of the race, she noted, is about 1,200 m above sea level, while the route crosses through four mountain passes topping out at 3,340 m.
Forty racers started at 2 a.m. on Sept. 7 in the town of Bumthang. The riders encountered heavy rain and thick fog on the twisting narrow roads and they made their way to the town of Thimphu, Bhutan's capitol.
"At one point, the fog was so think I had to slow to what felt like a crawl," she said, "and I was still scared I would run straight into a cow or something."
The event was the fourth time the race has been held. The overall winner was a Bhutanese rider named Sonam, who defended his 2012 title with a time of 11 hours and 13 minutes.
