Prince George, B.C. – It’s been  6  days and more than 700 kilometres, but Mikaela Pond  has done it, she biked  from Prince Rupert to Prince George to raise dollars and make a statement about the  distances some young patients have to travel for health care services.

A  former Nurse in Prince George,  she has  personal  knowledge  of  families that struggle to  get their children to where they need to be to get the specialized services they need to  get better,  and that’s why she decided to make the bike trip to raise funds for Hope Air,  an  organization that covers the cost  of flights  for  young patients to get to  their needed treatment.

Mikaela  says she has always been “active” but  was not a  hard core cyclist.  Yet she did between  80 and 140  kms per day.  The early days  were cold and wet,  and there were plenty of tears, but she pushed on.  The road was  rough,  and  the rear wheel on her bicycle has  been patched 6 times over the course of this trip.

In addition to  the funds she has raised through  this  trip, she has also  made a note of what the Provincial Ministry of Transportation might do to improve  that stretch of highway, namely add some decent shoulders.

For those  who may have travelled this stretch of  Highway 16,   Mikaela says   surprisingly, Hungry Hill was NOT the  worst  grind.  “Six mile hill was much  worse.  I’m not sure if it was just that it was farther along in the day and I was more tired”.  She says while  climbing Hungry Hill she found herself getting a ‘boost’  “There was a construction crew working   right in the middle and they kind of joked with me to slow down on the way up and it  kind of brought my spirits up, so that might have helped me make it up, but Six Mile Hill was awful.”

As of this morning, she had raised $4600 ,  with another $1400 to  go in order to  reach her goal of  $6,000, that would cover about 24 flights for people in northern B.C. “Please donate to our cause, it’s a great cause and all the money  will help  families in the North.”   donations can still  be made to  the campaign by clicking here.