We left Part 2 Bear Spray, Eh? at the point of commencing our Banff rest day, which turned out to be the only day of the trip that the motorcycles were not pressured into taking us anywhere. Laundry normally takes precedence over all other rest day activity, but fortunately a full express service was discovered and utilised to allow ordinary tourist responsibilities to be met. The assumption that Banff is only a winter skiing town was thrown out with the first foray out of the hotel, and into the large crowds of tourists with accompanying bus and car traffic on Banff Avenue. Souvenir shops were already doing a busy trade, and the tour buses were lining up to take the throngs to nearby attractions.
With breakfast out of the way and the laundry on its express wash and fold journey, we chose a walk up the nearby Tunnel Mountain to get away from the milling masses, mainly because the time to get up and back aligned almost perfectly with the scheduled completion of the laundry service.
Signs warning about bears were again prevalent, so talking was very loud but not particularly tactful as it was believed unlikely that a bear would attack on the basis of holding a differing opinion, although the topic of BMW F800GS versus Triumph Tiger 800XCx was avoided just in case.
Having summited and taken in the panoramic views, it was back to the town to admire the neatly folded laundry before stuffing it all violently back into the panniers, and then meeting up with work colleague Chris who had ridden out from Calgary on his Harley Davidson Sportster to see us. Chris’ wise wife Sally considered travelling on the back of a Harley Davidson to have the same comfort ranking as Shackleton’s 1916 whale boat voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island, so came out in the car. Over a very good boutique IPA or two and a nice meal, Chris mentioned that he had a recent and very real experience with a bear while mountain biking alone on a forest trail, so imparted some very valuable information on bear psychology and surviving an encounter.
A key point learned was that bears are like social media users and are not particularly switched on to their physical surroundings, and so are easy to sneak up on. Like twitter users, the bear’s response to finding someone challenging them is only either aggressive attack, or pointedly ignoring the challenger. It turns out that bear spray is a bit like capsicum spray rather than a bear strength Aerogard, if you are deploying it you have done the equivalent of tweeting #allbearsrideharleys, and you are now way too close.
With bear etiquette now understood, and deciding bear spray wasn’t really necessary, the following morning we conducted a chain lubrication and basic maintenance ceremony on the bikes to celebrate our reunion and headed off west. The original route plan had been to mimic the best elements of the 2015 Tony and Jane Gray Ghost journey and head up to Jasper then work south and west via Lillooet to Kamloops, but we had experienced tourist crowd overload in Banff so decided southern British Columbia might be a bit quieter. A rookie mistake of not filling up before leaving Banff led to a brief detour into the village of Castle Junction, which had the twin attractions of a bald eagle in a nest on the bridge over the Bow River, and a pre-electronics petrol bowser which demanded the customer fill up and then pay inside.
With Cold Chisel set up to play Bow River via the Sena to amuse the bald rider on the return crossing of the bridge, we rolled across the Trans-Canada Highway and down the Kootenay Highway 93 via some very picturesque mountain country and the over the border back into British Columbia. A meeting with a Vancouverite on a brand new totally-kitted-out-for-adventure 1200GS triple black at the Mt Shanks photo stop resulted in staring disbelief as he described how his wife had told him he had worked hard all his life and helped her to raise three kids, so it was time for him to buy the bike of his dreams and just ride for two weeks. Even if a Latino pool boy back at home taking a break from a Calvin Klein modelling career was a missing yet important detail in the story, looking at the awesome bike we knew he was still a winner.
The road follows the path of the Kootenay River between the mountain ranges before finding a tight gap to jump over to the next valley which contains the town of Radium Hot Springs, where coffee was required to be purchased under the Caffeine and Banana Bread Consumption Act (2016). A guard of honour was provided by mountain goats as we entered the town, and a relatively well-behaved and calm Big Horn Mountain Sheep was grazing on the nature strip which as we pulled up outside the café for the statutory cappuccino and latte. We kept an eye on it, but it appeared that BC sheep are significantly less deranged than their Alberta cousins.
After meeting the requirements of the Act, and not particularly tempted into exposing ourselves to the hot springs which contain a radioactive decay product of radium called radon, we mounted up under the unwatchful eye of the sheep and rode on. After leaving the mountains, the temperature continued to slowly climb in the flat river valley as we rode south. We passed the town of Fairmont Hot Springs which according to local naming convention must contain the decay product from an old Ford, before reaching the skiing and mining town of Kimberley for the planned lunch stop. The main reason for visiting Kimberley was because it is Cindy’s sister’s name and there was a requirement to purchase named souvenirs, but it had also been considered as the stepping off point for the off-road shortcut west over Gray Creek Pass to Kootenay Lake.
After a stroll about the pleasant quasi-Swiss/Austrian/German town with the temperature still climbing, we decided to give the Yodelling Woodcarver shop a miss and went in to Chef Bernard’s Platzl Inn. A shared cheese fondue was voted one of the best meals of the trip, with the giant pretzel in Banff just edging it out because it came with a boutique IPA.
By now the temperature was nearly equivalent to a Brisbane summer, and with Gray Creek Pass featuring on dangerousroads.org due to the 16% grades on dirt roads to reach the top at 2,000m, the decision was made to keep going south to re-join the Highway 3 which we had last seen at Coleman in Alberta and then head west. The sign saying that we were passing out of Mountain Time and into Pacific Time joyously added another hour onto our day, but having another really hot hour of riding just wasn’t that well received. Upon arrival into the small town of Creston just south of Kootenay Lake and only 10km from the USA border, the results of the rider’s referendum regarding whether we should stop at the nearest ice cream shop were announced, with a resounding yes winning the day.
One of the thrilling unknowns of riding in totally unfamiliar territory is that place names on maps may represent a population of tens of thousands, or almost none. While quenching with a lemon sorbet, review of the BC map showed lots of named places we could push on to with our free extra hour, but no idea whether we would find a large resort town with 24 hour winery tours, or a burned out barn with a Big Horn Mountain Sheep on reception. With putting the sweat-soaked jacket back on rapidly approaching an act of valour worthy of a mention in despatches, Creston morphed into the day’s destination with the Creston Hotel the excellent lodgings of choice. Fortunately the Creston Hotel bistro had a range of good beer on tap including a couple of boutique IPAs, so with the extra hour available transferred from riding to drinking, and the temperature outside forgotten it was declared a good but sweaty day.
Up the next morning for a pleasant breakfast, we got away at about 8am after leaving Cindy’s Sena communicator charging for as long as possible as it was struggling to cope with a full day playing her so-called music, and rode north along the picturesque eastern side of Kootenay Lake. I had downloaded the Kootenay Bay ferry timetable and determined that it left every 50 minutes, so was disappointed to find that it only did so after 10:40am, while before that it was every 100 minutes. As we arrived just as the 9am ferry pulled away, we had given ourselves 99 minutes to get a coffee (5 minutes) and stroll aimlessly around the nearly facilities-free Kootenay Bay (94 minutes) while waiting about in the rapidly deteriorating weather.
The Kootenay Bay – Balfour ferry which crosses 10km of Kootenay Lake is the longest free ferry ride in the world, which makes up for the huge expense incurred on all our other ferry rides around Vancouver Island and Seattle. As a result the ferry staffing is minimal, and everyone just lines up in columns and boards in order of arrival which gets motorcyclist’s noses out of joint as we are normally treated like royalty with a first-on first-off right of passage. On our crossing it was the longest and windiest free ferry ride in the world, with the open front subjected to gale force westerly winds coming across the lake.
The 700GS and 800GS engines were revving as we docked in Balfour due to a fast approaching and very malignant looking cloud following the gale, and we raced north along the western side of Kootenay Lake to reach Kaslo and try to avoid a drenching. Kaslo forms the eastern end of the Highway 31A which was recommended by just about every Canadian including the legendary 1200GS triple black rider, so it had dictated our route planning in this part of the world. The 31A road is not very long at only 46km, but is quite similar to Highway 12 through Lolo Pass in Idaho as it winds its way beside a beautiful river up and over the range and into New Denver on the eastern shore of Slocan Lake.
By this stage the weather had created the do-I-stop-and-put-my-waterproofs-on-or-do-I-ride-it-out conundrum. The conundrum is a pointless distraction because we always ride it out, and then regret it as the entire riding costume slowly becomes saturated, whereas if we stop in the rain and open our all panniers and top boxes trying to find waterproofs both we and all our gear quickly become saturated. Another conundrum. Luckily New Denver turned up to save us, with a relatively dry parking space under some trees and a nice little restaurant for warming bowls of hot soup and chowder discovered. The sweating of yesterday now a fond memory in the cooling climate, we kitted up after lunch for drizzle that was becoming relentless and headed off toward Nakusp, via the hamlet of Rosebery where the similarities with the Tasmanian Rosebery which is one of the wettest places in Australia was easy to draw.
Nakusp sits on the eastern shore of Upper Arrow Lake which forms a formidable 200km barrier for east-west travellers between Revelstoke at the northern end and Castlegar in the south, between these towns there is no bridge. The choice from Nakusp is 60km north to a ferry at Galena Bay, or 60km south to a ferry at Fauquier. As Cindy seemed to be saying Fauquier with some intensity a lot by this stage in the miserable conditions, we gave up our north-west bearing and headed south to the second ferry ride of the day. The Fauquier ferry has a travelling distance of about 800m which probably doesn’t qualify it as the shortest free ferry ride in the world as there is a lot of competition for that title. The time between crossings is so short that there are no facilities, so no-one even bothered getting out their vehicle. The sodden motorcyclists just hunkered down in the rain and willed the fifth and final ferry of the trip to hurry back from the other shore which seemed to be greener and sunnier.
Again the names on maps problem came to the fore, with the anticipated large town of Needles on the other side of the lake with its world-renowned boutique IPA brewing and wine industries actually not even having a burned out barn. There was nothing for it but to toughen up and ride on into the increasingly wet distance. The road headed north-west again toward Vernon along some likely looking but unoccupied moose swamp habitat, but with the altitude climbing up to 1,400m the cold became unpleasant and without the GS heated hand grips even more swearing might have occurred. It was with some relief we began descending, and even though the rain had started to ease we were drawn like moths to the Gold Bar Park café flame outside Cherryville.
The warm and dry insides of the café put things back into perspective, and with the loins figuratively girded by hot coffee and some dinner pre-empting apple pie dessert for Cindy, we continued on our quest to find lodgings. The Lumby Twin Creeks motel about 30km further on signalled the close of riding play for the day, and a pleasant walk about the small rural town in the rain-less atmosphere before an IPA-enhanced hot meal at the Blue Ox pub made the miserable weather of the day seem irrelevant. With every thoroughly moisturised item of riding equipment spread out to dry on the hotel outdoor and indoor furniture, it was not long before Facebook had been papered with a thick layer of posts and the transition through to Saturday commenced.
Saturday was officially the shortest riding day of the trip at 140km due to the disgraceful failure of Needles to be a town. We had a much-anticipated appointment to catch up with friends for dinner in Kamloops, so could proceed no further. Advice indicated that the BC Wildlife Park on the outskirts of Kamloops may fill in some missing fauna pieces of the Canadian experience, so after a leisurely breakfast and some regret by Cindy that she should have dried her boots out, we headed off to the wildlife experience. The BC Wildlife Park was reached at exactly coffee time, so everything seemed perfect until the machine generated cappuccino was tasted and immediately given the lowest possible score in all categories except “tastes like hairy dog wash effluent”.
Not to be discouraged, we bought tickets and went out on the self-guided tour around the park. Like most modern parks the animals can be impossible to see in their well vegetated enclosures, however we were able to tick off the remaining three items of black bear, moose, and grizzly bear from the big five as we’d already seen wild elk and had nearly seen nearly wild bison. The black bear we saw was actually a white sub-species known as the Kermode bear that experts (i.e. Cindy and I) claim evolved to avoid being pulled over by police for no reason while driving in the USA.
Now somewhat relieved that we hadn’t actually met a grizzly bear out in the forests having seen what they could do to small pieces of fruit, we headed into Kamloops town for lunch and a wander about the Saturday market, before riding to our hotel. The issue mentioned in Part 1 IPA in the USA with the North American penchant for identical street numbers on the same road prefaced by east or west from a central point now confounded us; Google Maps insisted that the Holiday Inn we’d booked was a derelict two bedroom squat in an area dominated by derelict two bedroom squats. After 5 sweeps past the derelict two bedroom squat which stubbornly refused to become a 4-star hotel, the lights came on and west was put into Google Maps and bingo. Unfortunately bingo was 2.5 km away well outside city limits.
Dinner with friends Helen and Bryce was a Canadian dining sensation, with a boutique IPA (how did they know?) and BBQ’d moose and mule deer kindly shot by Bryce and dragged for miles through bear and wolf infested forest to his car. A question was finally answered on the availability of so much great fruit and vegetables, with 18 hours of daylight things just grow relentlessly in summer. Zucchini apparently change from delicate courgettes to things the size of the Fat Man atomic bomb overnight.
After a great evening and some good advice on the best highway avoiding routes to Vancouver, it was back to the hotel and the well-practiced preparation for the last riding day. With no major pressure to get up early, we arrived at Sunday breakfast at exactly the same time as all the other hotel guests, so after abandonment of hope of a place to dine we grabbed the essentials and took them back the room to accidentally bless the marital bed by sprinkling sacramental milk and fruit juice all over it.
I’d been avoiding eye contact with the GPS over the last week of the trip, but on the last day it decided to offer an olive branch by insisting we take a great route on Lac Le Jeune Road which followed the same general alignment as Highway 5, but included some beautiful lake scenery and lots of wild elk. The fun couldn’t last though and we ended up on Highway 5 and then a small section of our old friend Highway 3 for the 120km/h madness down to Hope and lunch.
Advice on the best roads had been to cross the Fraser River and head into Vancouver on the Lougheed Highway, which turned out to be good advice as the road meandered along the wide scenic river which ends up just to the south of Vancouver. As it was a Sunday, hundreds of motorcyclists were out riding to take advantage of the weather and the numerous cafes and restaurants on the scenic roads. With the temperature climbing during mid-afternoon, the slow and traffic interrupted journey through the Vancouver suburbs with a cramped hand from waving at other riders made the arrival back to Cycle BC a comfort relief, even though it marked the sudden end of the grand adventure.
The Cycle BC inspections and paperwork were quick and efficient, if only Cindy’s unpacking had been as efficient and she had remembered to check her jacket back pocket for several emotionally essential items it would have been perfect. In general the Cycle BC experience was a great one and we can highly recommend them, there had been absolutely no issues with either BMW bike, but if there had been there were breakdown protocols in place. I purchased a can of chain lube which other long term hire agents have normally provided us with, probably two weeks and 3,820km without it might have turned the sprockets into ninja stars.
With a two week trip booked, it would also probably have helped to have a dedicated staff member during the madness of a Monday morning pick-up to provide undivided attention to ensure that everything was collected, as Cindy mistakenly grabbed a rain jacket rather than wet weather pants, and I didn’t get jacket innards so we were very lucky to have had only one wet day. The Cycle BC bikes are well set up for on and off-road, the only missing protection was barkbusters on Cindy’s GS which I think should not even be an option before leaving the BMW (or Triumph or KTM) dealer showrooms on any serious adventure touring bikes. We are definitely going to drop these things, and it shouldn’t break something when we do.
After a quick inspection of a Cycle BC staff member’s 1200GS with QLD plates, which the leaves the Canadian police confused as they try to figure out where OLD is, it was a taxi ride to the Vancouver airport and a final boutique IPA to complete a clean sweep of the series and get rid of any remaining CAD before the check-in for the direct flight to Brisbane.
A 14 hour flight isn’t the best way to end a trip, in hindsight it would have been better to ride back.
The end, with huge thanks to Craig Wessner our Canadian riding friend and route planner.
travellingbennetts 