Trip Report from a long weekend adventure in Southern British Columbia.

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Day 1 - Thursday
Summer in the Northwest is a good as any place on earth. Unfortunately, it  comes to an end. September is the last month where the odds of sunny skies are better than rainy days.  Early September two friends and I decided there was time still time for one more fair-weather road trip.  Based on recommendations from Tom Grenon's site, the Motorcycleexplorer.com, we chose to travel to Southern British Columbia and explore parts of the Kettle Valley Railway. 

My buddy Geoff has a Big Dodge truck and an "street legal"  XR600.  From our homes its about 6.5 hours on the Freeway to the Canadian border. Geoff suggested to help squeeze the trip into a long three day weekend and to keep the XR600 off the Freeway, we should load the bikes in his truck and leave Thursday after work.  We rolled the  XR and two KLR 650's in the back of the truck and started on our way.

We decided that Hope BC would be the best place to park the truck and start riding our bikes. After a couple hours on I-5 somewhere in SW Washington our stomachs started to growl.  My other buddy Mark is one of these fellows that needs to be fed or he gets a little irritable, you know the type.  Geoff told the story of a roadside diner in Pennsylvania marked only by a large neon sign that says "EAT".  We thought it would be cool if we could find the West Coast equivalent. It soon became obvious we would starve before finding a neon '"EAT" sign. We pulled off at the Highway 12 interchange and found a place called Spiffy's.  This was just what the doctor ordered. Spiffy's had a large rotating glass pie case at the front counter, checkered curtains in the windows and over half the menu items include potatoes and gravy. After a huge dinner we were on our way.

Seattle is a beautiful city, even from the freeway.  This is good because without exception when I drive through there I come to a dead stop on the freeway.  This time at 10:00 in the evening we sat at on the Freeway and enjoyed the city lights.  Three lanes were closed and traffic backed up for miles so a couple guys could install  yellow reflective lane markers. Oh well.  We gassed up the truck in Bellingham and asked around and determined the Sumas border crossing on the shortcut to Hope would be closed at the late hour we were trying to cross. We continued  north toward Vancouver and crossed at Blaine. This trip was the weekend following the Sept. 11 attacks.  Going into Canada was quick and easy.  Even at midnight we were amazed at the length of the line crossing back into the United States.  About 30 minutes later it started to rain and an hour later we pulled into Hope.

With our camping gear in the back of the truck and rain falling from the sky, we decided to get a motel in Hope. We drove around town and saw 1/2 dozen motels all advertising the lowest rates, most comfortable beds and most cable channels. We chose the Red Roof Motel, not to be confused with the hotel chain, Red Roof Inns. The combo Japanese Garden / Swiss Chalet theme with red steel roofs and a rock gardens caught our eye. The other good indicator was the parking lot was full. We left some or our gear including Geoff's helmet in the back of the truck for the night.  Inside the room we sat in big orange vinyl chairs and read tourist pamphlets about the area. I learned the original Rambo film, First Blood, was filmed in Hope and added the Rambo walking tour to the list of things we needed to do in the morning.  At about 2:30 AM we decided to call it a day and all made comments to each other about getting up early and finding the KVR trail.

Day 2 - Friday

When I woke up and looked out the window the truck was one of only two vehicles left in the parking lot. There goes the plan to get up early.  It was still raining and quite cold. When we went down to the truck Geoff was reminded of Helmet Storage law #1.  A helmet left outside in the rain in the bed of a pickup all night gets very wet and cold on the inside. Hope is a beautiful town located along the Fraser River and surrounded by tall rugged hills. We had a great big breakfast and the waitress told us humorous stories about Sylvester Stallone's bad attitude while he stayed in Hope for the Rambo filming.  A local bookstore had a copy of the Trans Canada Trail, the British Columbia Route. Its a mile by mile reference guide to the KVR intended for hikers and mountain bikers. The book proved to be very helpful.

We drove the truck a few miles east of Hope to the Coquihalla Canyon, Othello Tunnels, Provincial Park.  This section of the KVR trail is closed to motorcycles but made a great short hike. The rail bed cuts through a series of five aligned tunnels along the walls of the Othello Canyon. The longest tunnel is 200 meters and the shortest about 30.  Its an impressive engineering accomplishment. Rambo also hung from these same cliffs. As we walked the area and read the signs it was starting to become clear that parts of the original Kettle Valley Railway were now paved roads and it was going to take a little detective work to follow the trail.  The rain was letting up and it was time to park the truck and do what we came to do, ride.

Abandoning the truck for a few days on the side of the road seemed unwise. We spotted a small RV park and struck a deal with the owner and parked the truck there under his watchful eye. At 1:00 the three of us donned our raingear and Geoff put on his cold wet helmet. We fired up our bikes and followed Othello road east and crossed under the Coquihalla Highway at exit 183 and picked up the trail. The tracks and railroad ties were removed years ago. The gravel base makes for easy second and third gear dual sport riding. We rode a couple miles north when we discovered that if the map in our book states, "future bridge," its a dead end and impassable on the motorcycle. Over the next 20 miles it became obvious that the completion of the Coquihalla Highway in 1986 wiped out large sections of the original RR route. Its an scenic freeway connecting Hope and Kamloops making travel from the interior of BC and Vancouver much quicker. Its got great views and sections with three lanes each direction and several 8% grades. Some stretches have avalanche tunnels over all lanes as the road hugs steep hillsides. A great road, but not great dual sport riding.

An oil pipeline has also taken over parts of the original railroad. We did our best to ride the trail until a pipeline gate at Portia Station forced us back on the freeway again, this time for about 10 miles until we passed through the Coquihalla toll station at Coquihalla lakes. We were getting frustrated and took a side trip up the Tulameen River Forrest Service road until we had smiles back on our faces. Soon after the toll station we relocated the trail. We had been riding about 20 minutes of uninterrupted trail when we had our first encounter with mother nature. Mark was leading, I was second and Geoff third.  A wolf jumped out of the woods between Mark and I. The wolf turned after Mark and chased after him on his bike. I'd never seen or heard of anything like this. A couple bends in the trail later, half a dozen workmen were rebuilding a small bridge. Mark stopped, the wolf stopped and one of the workman started to pet it.  Turns out it was a husky dog and belonged to them.  If you put city boys in the woods, our imaginations run a little wild.

The workman were replacing the bridge decking and told us if we stayed on the left side it should be safe to cross. We feared they were going to yell at us for being there and send us back. As it turned out not one person we met on the trail for the entire trip gave us any grief. In fact, most people were all smiles and happy to see us out there using it.  Our trio of bikes continued mile by mile down the trail; now we were having fun. So much fun that we failed to notice we veered off the KVR and ended up on another abandoned railway heading north toward Merritt. It took about an hour before we all agreed we lost the original KVR route.  It happened somewhere after Brodie station, but none of us are sure exactly where. It really didn't matter because the trail we were on was in great shape and we figured it must go somewhere.  It was now about 5:00 and we hadn't seen the rain for an hour or two. 

Around a bend we met an older fellow on a four wheeler. The trail crossed his land and he had been working to rebuild a washed out section. He was a retired long shore man from Vancouver and this was as far north and away from the city as he could talk his wife into moving.  He was packing up his tools for the day and explained this was an initial repair and there was still work to do. But if we all tested out his new section of trail tonight, he would be the first four wheeler and we would be the first three motorcycles to ever ride it.  He put his quad in four wheel low and made it up and over the steep loose angled trail.  I've done some volunteer work rebuilding mountain bike trails and while I applaud his effort, he violated several of the good trail building rules I know.

If the old guy could do it, so could we; or so we thought. Mark and I encouraged Geoff to go first. He's got better off-road skills and more nerve than me. The KLR 650 becomes a very big  bike when the trails get tough.  I don't mind pushing my luck and have learned to set the bike down and get my legs out of the way when things are about to go really wrong.  That said, if letting go of the bike on the downhill side of the trail means it will tumble 50 feet down a bank into a river as could happen here,  I'll pass. Geoff took the XR up and over the tough part, but crashed  where the new trail intersected the old one.  As the old guy later explained that was one of the sections he was going to work on a little more the next day.  It was actually a loose dirt, 40 degree off camber slope intersecting a pile of rocks.  Mark gave it a go on his KLR but his balding stock Dunlop wasn't going to get the bike up the hill. He jumped off and the bike fell over.

Three guys can muscle a KLR up, over or down almost anything. We safely got Mark's bike to the other side. I skipped my turn and let Geoff try to get my bike over. Again, A KLR wasn't going to get up and over without lots of pushing.  We thanked the old man and he congratulated us for having the first bikes to pass through his land since the washout the previous winter.  It would be getting dark soon and he suggested we follow the trail about 5 miles further and turn at the gravel road by the old farm and head toward town. It sounded easy enough.  We went about five miles and past about five old farms and as many gravel roads.  We just picked one and eventually ended up in Merritt before the sun set.

Merritt is the Midway point on the Coquihalla Hi-way between Hope and Kamloops. We did a quick loop of town and got the lay of the land.  Since we had hauled camping gear all this way we decided to use it. I asked a local fellow who appeared to be on his way from one of the local bars to another, if there were any good places to camp?  "On the side of any road is fine by me," he smiled, "... or, there is a campground where we hold the annual music festival just down that road."  As we thanked him  I was thinking we just got our second set of ambiguous directions in the last hour.  We found the campground and made it our home for the night.  It wasn't the great Canadian wilderness camping experience we planned. The upside was the nice hot showers in the morning and Mini-Mart about three blocks down the street. I asked the lady running the Merritt City Park and Campground what she would recommend for dinner.  After some discussion she pointed us in the direction of the Pub next to McDonalds out by the Freeway. "You can't miss it." she said.

She was right. The Golden Arches are on top of one of the tallest signposts in Western Canada.  After dark they can be seen for  five miles in every direction.  The Pub is equally well marked with 25 foot tall bright red illuminated letters on the slope of the roof that say "PUB."  We joked this was almost as good as a big neon sign that says "EAT".  We squeezed our bikes into a corner spot in the full parking lot, tossed our helmets over the bars and went inside.  The place was packed. The dust and dirt from our day's adventures made us the most un-kept patrons there.  A friendly hostess sat us at the bar as we waited for a table.  Since we were in Canada it seemed fitting to start off with pints of Molsen Canadian. The food and service were fantastic. We enjoyed several more fine Canadian Lagers before it was time to go.  When we walked out the door it was raining again. Geoff was reminded of helmet storage law #2.  A helmet left hanging upside down off the handlebars by the strap will be cold and wet. We rode back through town and called it a night.

Day 3 - Saturday

Saturday morning we woke up early and enthusiastically packed our tents.  It was cool and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  We went to the easy to find McDonalds for breakfast and made a plan for the day.  We figured we were 45 minutes of freeway north of the area where we lost the chopped up section of the KVR. Or about an hour and 15 minutes of freeway east of Kelowna where we could try and pick up the trail again.  Kelowna is also home to Kane's Harley Davidson, one of the few Southern BC or Alberta Harley T-shirts my collection is missing. Mark and Geoff fell victim to my enthusiasm for the T-shirt and off we went.  Besides, its sort of fun to pull up to a Harley dealer on a bunch of Japanese dual sports. Kelowna is a beautiful city and one that we all agreed our wives would really like.  

The KVR runs south of Kelowna on the east side of Lake Okanagan to Penticton.  From our reading, parts of this section of trail weren't necessarily "open" to motorcycles.  Tom Grenon makes reference that if you ride it early on a weekday you won't upset anybody. We would be riding it on a sunny Saturday afternoon and elected not to push our luck.  We also understood there were good sections of trail traveling west from Penticton back toward the truck.  It also seemed that  halfway through our weekend we should think about turning our travels back in the direction of the truck. We rode south down a scenic section of 97 following the shoreline of Lake Okanagan.  By lunchtime it was t-shirt weather and we located a pub in Penticton with sunny outdoor seating. During lunch we studied the Trans Canada Trail book a little more carefully and determined the main street through Penticton many years ago was the KVR. So were parts of 97 that we had just ridden on.  Our pavement to trail ratio was getting worse and worse.

We backtracked up 97 to Summerland where we hit the jackpot.  Little signs throughout town pointed to the KVR. Just outside of town some Railroad loving entrepreneurs had re-installed six miles of rails and operate the Prairie Valley Station. They have a museum, authentic operational Steam engine, rail cars and a gift shop with snacks.  Mark bought snacks and  got Geoff a much needed hat at the Gift shop. We also got the lowdown on where to ride.  It was explained to us we could start bumping down the railroad ties from the museum or take the paved road number 19 about three miles and hook up with the trail. Soon we were riding on what seemed like endless KVR trail.  We were all smiles as this was what we were looking for.  The old rail bed follows Trout creek through a canyon and up into the hills.

Between Summerland and Princeton there is only one section of trail that we couldn't ride the bikes through. There is a missing trestle at the Trout Cr. Crossing Recreation site.  Hikers and Mountain bikers have built a nice patch to bypass the missing bridge,  but it wasn't motorcycle friendly. Even Geoff saw no sane reasons to give it a try.  The area is used for free range cattle ranching and we soon discovered a maze of access roads and connected them with the main gravel Princeton/Summerland road. This main road crossed the creek at the recreation site where we rejoined the old rail bed. We continued to ride and were  running out of daylight.  Soon we arrived at Thrisk Lake, the first of three large lakes on the route.  We did our usual survey of the land and picked a great lakeside campsite.  These were free of charge spots with the sturdiest picnic tables you have ever seen. The timbers in the table were bigger than those I've seen used to build covered bridges. While we were surveying, Geoff spotted a small sign way up in a tree that said "Country Store" with an arrow pointing west.

We had stocked up on food in Summerland so we had plenty to eat. Other than lots of water we didn't have any beverage. We quickly made the connection between Country Store and beer.  Mark's bike had blown a fuse so he volunteered to stay at camp, set up and diagnose the lighting problem on his bike. Geoff and I unloaded our camping gear making room for beverages and went off to hunt and gather.  About six miles west was the second lake, Osprey, and the community of Bankier, home of the Country Store.  It was 7:30 on a Saturday night and there were an amazing number of people at this little store. Osprey Lake has lots of cabins on its shores and Bankier has some full time residents. There were other motorcyclists and campers at the store. There was a group of six mountain bikers and little kids playing out front. Geoff and I picked out a 20 pack of Molsen Canadian in cans and stepped up to the counter to pay. The little boy behind the counter explained that he wasn't old enough to handle the beer, but was able to take our money. And lots of it he took. I really shouldn't complain as the store was a lucky bonus to stumble across.

It was dark and the stars were out when we got back to Mark at the campsite. He had fixed the fuse problem on the bike. Geoff tossed Mark the first  Molsen and we cooked our dinner of beans, cheese, crackers and ramen. This was more like the camping we had hoped for.  Big trees and the peace and quiet of not being able to see or hear anybody else.  The next Nineteen Molsens were consumed while doing one of the things we do best; Sitting around telling stories and embarrassing ourselves with the vast collection of seemingly useless knowledge we've accumulated over the years.

Day 4 - Sunday

I woke up Sunday morning with my sleeping bag over my head thinking that it sure gets cold up in the hills. I looked out the tent door and Thrisk lake had a light wispy fog across it's surface. It was beautiful. We got up early knowing we had a fairly long and unknown route back to the truck plus the Freeway ride home.  We rode west through Bankier and past Chain Lake. The old railroad route runs high on the hillside above the valley. Down in the valley grass farmers and ranchers seemed to have their own little pieces of heaven on earth.  We would stop to enjoy the view as we opened and closed occasional livestock fences.  At one point the KVR crosses hundreds of feet over a Creek. This was the longest and largest bridge we crossed. It was a steel structure that appeared to have been most recently rebuilt in 1994.  The width of the bridge and spacing of the ties make for easy riding. The crossing was one of the highlights of the trip.

About 5 miles later we looked ahead down a long straight stretch and saw a tunnel. We stopped to admire the 295 foot long Erris Tunnel and were surprised how tall it was. It is also unique because wooden timbers support the roof and walls. Our checklist of the three T's was now complete, trails, trestles and tunnels. The rail bed meanders down of the valley toward Princeton.  As we pull into town, Mark's stomach and the XR600 gas tank are both about empty. We gassed up the bikes and found another diner with checkered curtains for a very late Breakfast.  We pulled out the book to determine the best route back to the truck.  Princeton was at a point where we could follow the KVR trail north or head south on fast paved roads back to Hope. We suspected that following the KVR would take quite a bit of time and likely leave us dead ended in the area we took the wrong turn on Friday. This would leave us backtracking to Princeton and taking the paved road home.  Not knowing how long it would take to cross back into the States at the border got the better of us, and we decided to take the quick route south out of town.

As luck would have it, after making this decision we met no less than three sets of people who told us that the KVR section north out of Princeton to Coalmont and Tulameen that  we just decided not to ride, was the best in the area. Looking at our watches, Mark, Geoff and I agreed to stick with our decision and we would just have to come back another day and ride the KVR again. The ride back to Hope on Hi-Way 3 was quick and easy.  The big Dodge was safely sitting where we left it at the RV park.  Ready for the ride home we wisely decided to stop in Hope and get small gifts for our wives. Turns out it would have been wiser to get gifts on Friday, because on Sunday everything was closed. Oh well, we tried.  By about 3:00 we were near the Sumas border crossing. A unanimous vote stopped the truck one last time before the line at the border at a favorite Canadian landmark, Tim Horton's Donuts.  We enjoyed our donuts in the 45 minute line to cross back into the states. Some enterprising kids were making a killing selling ice cream to stopped cars.  I was ready to spend an hour or two so 45 minutes seemed pretty fast. 

We quickly got to Seattle and you will never guess what happened next.  Brake lights all over the Freeway. Once again I'm at a complete standstill on the Freeway. I don't know how people could live here. In the early 90's there was a movie called Singles based in Seattle. One of the characters was a young transportation engineer and he works all year on a proposal for a Super-Train that will get all these people off the Freeway. In the Film, the Mayor rudely rejects the proposal about 30 seconds into his presentation. I'll tell you, Seattle needs a Super Train. Anyway, here we are sitting on the freeway when we spot the life-flight helicopter circling a mile or two up the road.  The helicopter seemed to switch from clockwise to counter clockwise circles every 20 minutes to keep the pilot from getting dizzy. I hate to see an accident of any kind and this was a serious one.

An hour and a half later we start to move and took the first exit we saw to find the nearest bathroom. Lots of other people took this same exit for the same reason and the line for the men's room was 10 deep. I don't know how the line looked at the ladies room, but I'm sure it wasn't pretty. Geoff filled up the big Dodge's big tank in Olympia and we motored non-stop all the way home in time to get six hours of sleep and go to work Monday morning.

A few years ago I heard the philosophy that the value of a weekend is equal to the stories you get out of it. Using this measure the KVR weekend was a good one.  Based on our experience I'd recommend starting a KVR trip in Princeton instead of Hope and heading East.  It seems the drier weather to the east has resulted in less washouts and helped lengthen the lives of the wooden trestles. Please ride safely and with respect for the trail, the landowners who allow its use and the other hikers, bikers and horseback riders enjoying it.

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