Starting from the touristy town of Hope, the TCT picked right back up again, with a popular and promising section known as the Kettle Valley Railway, a stretch of abandoned rail corridor that passes through the mountains, all the way to Castlegar, more than 600 kilometres eastward. I held high hopes for this stretch, in that it was considerably more established and straightforward than the roundabout winding that the trail had heretofore been doing through more urban areas. It started off with a bang with the Othello Tunnels, one of the most stunning places I've seen in my life.
The Othello Tunnels in Coquihalla Canyon Provincial Park are a relic of one the most hubristic engineering feats in rail history. Andrew McCulloch, chief engineer of the KVR (one hundred years ago), was determined to carve a railway route through the treacherous canyon, contrary to other engineers' opinions about whether or not it could be done. McCulloch spent weeks dangling in a woven basket suspended from ropes on sheer cliff faces, chipping away ledges to set up surveying equipment. In the end, he successfully built four tunnels in quick succession, attached by two bridges, while achieving the status as the most expensive mile of railway to build in the world. McCulloch was something of a Shakespeare aficionado, and in addition to entertaining his workers with the Bard's tales by evening firelight, he named many of the railway stops after his characters (I passed through Juliet, Romeo, Portia, Jessica, Lear and Iago). The result of his work was truly unbelievable, even while standing in the middle of it.
The Othello Tunnels.
Unfortunately, the trail quickly descended to its usual state soon thereafter, and after getting lost twice, rescued by several phone calls to Google Maps, and a particularly difficult stretch that took me the better part of a day to make a mere 22 km, I decided once and for all that I am officially done with the Trans Canada Trail; there is simply no reason to continue putting myself through the hell that this trail provides, not on this trip, and not on this bike. So it's back to the highways for me, hurray! I am much, much happier at the notion of riding on the familiar pavement once more, my nose raised to the wind instead of buried in a book that's dictating the adventure I'm supposed to be having. We now return from Scott's Cycling Slog to our regularly scheduled Biking Blag.
Passing through the Northern Cascades and back to Highway 3, I entered the familiar Okanagan Valley, where the aggressively verdant forests of the west gave way to the more subdued sagebrush of the east, and fruit trees, fruit trees, fruit trees. Whereas Vancouver gets more than 100 centimetres of rain per year, the Okanagan, hiding in the rainshadow of the Cascades, gets less than 30. Of course, much of those 30 would opt to fall as soon as I got here; the last two days have been a soggy, wet affair. As I descended in the valley, wildfires raged in the mountains alongside the highway, but the smoke intermingled with the clouds to become an indiscernible fog amoungst the trees.
The Okanagan Valley.
I stopped in the city of Keremeos for a reprieve from the rain, but the only laundromat in town was closed, for the owner's wife was in labour. I settled into a nice little French bistro, where I quickly discovered a teeming population of wayward youth in an otherwise backward little town. Turns out Keremeos is something of a mecca for cultural flotsam, bringing in people from all over the country for a summer's worth of fruit picking, and slow country life. I met some lovely folk who offered me a free place to camp, and even some work picking pears if I wanted it, but I was determined to get over the upcoming Richter Pass, and hopefully out of the rain.
The appropriately-named Spotted Lake.
After spending an entire morning tied up in the eternal balagan of international commerce and banking, I decided that the easiest solution to my monetary crisis would be to just pop back over the border to Oroville, WA, and try and work out my banking woes here. (While waiting for the financial gears to do their grinding, I ran into an old roommate from Seattle, Chelsea, who now lives 'round these here parts.) After one more stop at the bank, it's back up to Canada for me, where an eastward highway, a nice tailwind, and maybe even some sun to dry my sodden feet await me. Ah, life is good, once more.
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