Headed east

Day 18
Friday, July 2, 2010
Vancouver, BC to Jasper, AB
492 miles

Frank blew revelry at 0550. We took showers, ate breakfast, broke camp and had achieved forward motion by 7:25 AM on our first day headed east. To be more accurate, we headed as much north as east, but this marks the first day on the trip that “east” in any form was included in our vector.

The drive from Vancouver to Jasper National Park was amazing. Wyoming may still have British Columbia beat in terms of great, wide emptiness, but Frank and the rest gave BC the nod for pure wilderness. Elliot said “This is what I imagine Alaska is like.”

Frank thought that today’s drive would be the reverse of the drive he and Bob made across Washington from the Idaho border, over the Cascades and down to the coast. Actually, the first two hours were similar, but any similarity there ended. As we approached the Cascades, we followed the Coquihalla River and began climbing a tremendous grade up to Coquihalla Pass. It was similar to the pass that Bob and Frank climbed where they crossed from Montana into Idaho on I-90, but it may have been even steeper and higher (1,244 meters). By the time we got to the top, the minivan was down to 35 MPH and we were shrouded in clouds with a light rain.

On the second half of the journey, from Kamloops to Jasper, we crossed 275 miles of open wilderness. Little towns were connected by 2-lane roads, Routes 5 and 16, which curved left and right on a narrow plain between pine-studded, snow-capped, rocky-topped ridges most of the way. To put 275 miles in perspective, it’s only 247 miles from Pittsburg to Baltimore. Whole states would be swallowed up in the vast places that we traversed today where less than 25,000 people live year round. In one stretch, we drove more than 80 miles without seeing a gas station.

The surprising thing to us was that we never drove out of the mountains and onto a desert plain. It did get dryer and sunnier for a bit in the vicinity of Kamloops, but we quickly returned to the high mountains and heavy cloud cover that we saw west of the Cascades and those conditions persisted the rest of the way to Jasper.  At one point we could tell that it was snowing atop one of the peaks we were passing.  On the 2nd of July!

On the way, we passed through Mount Robson Provincial Park (British Columbia), which features mountain peaks that rival those in Grand Teton—beautiful and inspiring.

We saw a bear! It was while passing through Mount Robson that a black bear crossed the road ahead of us from right to left. When we caught up with him, he was foraging in the ditch and didn’t seem bothered by the several cars that had stopped. We snapped a few photos before he lumbered off into the woods. He had all black fur and appeared very strong and powerful—a force to be reckoned with. We were still talking about our good fortune and lamenting the fact that Bob couldn’t be with us to see the bear when, to our astonishment, we saw another one! We again stopped and snapped a few more pics (see above). The second bear stayed closer to the road and we got better photos of him. He appeared smaller than the first bear and had some brown as well as black fur. Perhaps he was still an adolescent.

We found Whistlers Campground and learned upon checking in that it was completely full tonight. Of course this is the Friday after a national holiday. Not to mention it’s an awesome place to be! We crossed into Alberta and the Mountain Time Zone as we entered Jasper National Park. The combination of being on the far western edge of a time zone and at much higher latitude meant that the sun set later here than it did in Vancouver yesterday. We suppose it will rise earlier tomorrow, too.