Sea to Sky Highway - Vancouver to Whistler
Trip Start
May 04, 2006
1
11
14
Trip End
Ongoing
Vancouver,
British Columbia,
Canada
Sunday, February 3, 2008
After my one hour stay in Whistler, I was about to engage in a two hour dangerous activity - drive from Whistler to Vancouver along the "Sea to Sky Highway".
It was the highway that just about scuttled Vancouver's bid for the Winter Olympics 2010.
The Olympic selection committee took one look at this narrow, winding, two-lane highway and placed it at the top of their list of concerns. Reasons given were the treacherous driving conditions and the two hours drive from Vancouver, which they considered to be too long.
The Winter Olympic events will be divided between the village of Whistler (alpine events) and the cities of Vancouver (hockey and figure skating) and Burnaby (speed skating events)
40 - a famous highway in the area
.While the Sea to Sky Highway is one of the most beautiful drives in British Columbia (how often have I written that phrase?), with some 400 s a year, it must be the most dangerous road in the province.
As the name - Sea to Sky - implies, part of the highway snakes its way for 40 kilometers along the "sea" of Howe Sound to the town of Squamish. Since Howe Sound is lined with steep mountains, space for a road is at a premium. From Squamish north to Whistler, the highway only has to contend with treacherous mountain terrain which keeps increasing in altitude to seemingly reach the "sky" at Whistler.
Squeezed between the mountains and the sea, the highway also has to vie for space with the railway line that runs between Vancouver and Squamish. The tracks were made famous by the locomotives of the "Royal Hudson class" which were used here for many years on tourist excursion trains.
In 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth I crossed Canada from Quebec to Vancouver, in a train that was pulled by locomotive CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) Hudson (type of locomotive) no
41-- it is a 95 km section of Highway 99
. 2850. King George VI was a railway buff and after the Canadian tour allowed CPR to maintain the "royal" colours, emblem and name on its entire class of Hudson streamlined locomotives thereby renaming them "Royal Hudson".For many years the locomotives pulled a tourist train along these tracks between Vancouver and Squamish. The remaining Royal Hudson locomotives are now out of service and on display at the Squamish West Coast Heritage Railway Park.
Squamish is a town that has been familiar to me since 1984 when my friend, Ed Ambros, and I investigated the town as a site for possible real estate investments. While it has since developed into "Canada's Capital of Outdoor Sports", back then, it was a one-mill lumber town. We therefore chose to invest in Kelowna, in the Okanogan Valley. I still regret that we did not invest in Whistler.
Eventually I pulled out of my BC real estate investments; Ed stayed the course to this day and has done very well in the hot Kelowna real estate market. He has since become one of Canada's most successful commerical artists. (www.edambrose.com)
The provincial and federal governments responded to the concerns of the Olympic Committee by promising to throw vast sums of money at the problem if Vancouver was selected as the site of the Winter Olympics 2010. The cost of the 95 kilometer highway upgrade is estimated to be $2-billion, including future debt servicing.
The rest is history
11-- precarious route between sea and rock walls
.As a result, for the last three years the mammoth challenge of moving parts of mountains in order to widen and straighten the original road and where possible to expand it to four lanes has been undertaken.
In parts of the road along Howe Sound, there is literally no room to expand due to giant sheer mountain walls on one side and the railway line, at a level closer to the water, on the other side. Here the road will be expanded into areas which are still thin air today - a phenomenal feat which I have seen in Italian and Swiss road construction.
The net effect of all this is: Vancouver was awarded the Winter Olympics, the federal and provincial governments get to spend millions of dollars on the road construction, the road will be a lot safer and the driving time between Vancouver and Whistler will be reduced by 15 minutes to satisfy the Olympic Selection Committee.
Ultimately Whistler will further cement its position as one of the top ski resorts in the world.
- Ed, Wilf and "Lobo" circa 1984
At 17:00 I left Whistler on a two hour drive to wind my way towards Vancouver.
Driving was manageable while the daylight lasted.
Once darkness set in, it became white knuckle driving. The situation of course is exacerbated by the frequent road deviations and detours necessitated by the construction.
Visibility is a huge problem as for the most part any white or yellow lines separating the lanes of traffic have been worn away or have been dug up. Adding to that was moisture on the road which seemed to soak up any lights projected by the headlights of the trusty Volvo. The fact that the headlights were still covered over with a heavy plastic film, placed there to protect from the gravely Liard Highway, (NWT blog) probably didn't help. In addition there was the glare of headlights from a steady stream of cars coming at me from the opposite direction.
The last hour of the drive along Howe Sound to Vancouver consisted of intense concentration
- huge piles of sand
. At all cost, the right edge of the road could not be lost from sight as a navigational reference point. Construction had turned a bad road into a slalom course that provided an extreme challenge in the dark night.The bright side, yes there was one, was the sections of the Sea to Sky Highway that had been completed and that provided a respite from the this arduous drive.
Needless to say, I have no photos from my night time experience since I had my hands full just surviving.
On my way back to Prince George, two weeks later, I caught a 06:30 ferry from Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. At 08:10 I was at Horseshoe Bay, near Vancouver at the mouth of Howe Sound ready to head up the same "Sea to Sky Highway. Only this time, mercifully, in broad daylight.
Since the weather was spectacular, which was the reason that I chose to return on that day, the drive towards Squamish along Howe Sound was truly spectacular. The blue sea of Howe Sound on the left framed by tall mountains in the background and the steep mountain walls to the right gave the full "Sea to Sky" effect
- a part of the Sea to Sky that has been widened
.At first I resisted taking photos through the car's sunroof due to the road conditions which required my full attention.
Finally, I could no longer restrain myself and I opened the sunroof and just started indiscriminately in the hopes of getting something worthwhile. The sunroof was the only possibility as parking was not an option in the construction sites.
In retrospect, I did miss the best photos in the earlier part of the drive.
Getting back to my drive into Vancouver, at 19:00 I rolled up in front of Canada Place located on the downtown waterfront. This is where the cruise ship piers and the Vancouver Convention Center are located and where Barbara had gone after work to attend a Health and Wellness Fair that was in Vancouver on that weekend.
Her hotel, the Hilton, was located in the City of Burnaby, about an hour from downtown but that would have to wait.
This was Vancouver and I had not been here since the visit with my brother and his wife in August 2007
- what a blue sky
. (Excursions Blog: no. 30). We could not possibly leave the downtown without walking along Davie and Denman Streets to catch a bit of the excitement in downtown Vancouver.
Being a creature of habit we went back to the Café Luxy Restaurant on Davie (Blog 30) since the food and prices were outstanding during the visit with my relatives.
Fortunately the waiting time was too long to hang around for a table which prompted us to look for a new restaurant.
I don't know what got into me but I actually made an unusual, at least coming from me, suggestion. "Why not go to an Indian restaurant"?
Barbara was only too eager as she let go with a phrase which I had never heard from her before. "I like Indian restaurants!" That left me wondering, now where did that come from?
So here I was abandoning all my prejudices against curry - yes, curry
- view towards Howe Sound
. I don't like it, or its smell. At least that was the impression I held for some fifty years.(I am saying this, all the while, contemplating a trip to India!)
Lo and behold, I was not hit over the head with a heavy smell of curry as we entered the India Bistro at 1157 Davie St. As a matter of fact, I couldn't smell anything that I could specifically identify as curry.
Hungry and seduced by the lovely decorations, including life size baby brass elephants, I found myself seated at a table looking at a menu with much diversity.
The menu choices presented almost had me making another plunge into the unknown. I was struck by the large selection of lamb on the menu.
Lamb ranks right up there with curry and liver in my epicurean dislikes. Nevertheless, I was tempted to try it.
I finally settled on a vegetarian dish while Barbara had a chicken tikka
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.I have had vegetables before, but none that tasted as good as these. Partly roasted and expertly spiced, they were a delight to the palate. A taste of Barbara's chicken dish convinced me that we had been missing out on a lot in eliminating Indian restaurants from our limited choice of preferences.
When it comes down to it, I am a clubhouse sandwich kind of guy.
Nevertheless, I did say to Barbara this afternoon. "We should move to France for a while so we can eat better". I had visions of the great times I passed in France and all those lovely charcuteries, patisseries, boulangers and "marché de grand surface" abounding in great food products. The memory was mouthwatering.
Getting back to the "clubhouse-kind-of-guy" theme, even in France, my favourite was a "sandwich jambon". That's a ham sandwich (now, I am talking great tasting ham here) on a fresh piece of tasty French bread with some delicious French butter. Combined with a "pression" (draft beer), it was an unbeatable combination.
Even for breakfast during my bike tours in France, I would have "un café grand" and a "pain beurre"
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. At that time in France, the "café grand" was served in a large cereal-type bowl with milk and the "pain beurre" was France's best butter spread thick on fresh French bread. This whole affair was then dipped in the coffee bowl and devoured. It was sooo good.Now why are visions of eating better in France dancing in my head?
I suspect it has something to do with the one-week cabbage soup diet that Barbara and I are presently on because there is no shortage of good food here in North America.
Barb would like to lose some weight in general and I would like to get back into pants that I wore during my trip to Chile in 2000, just after my retirement from full time teaching.
The cabbage soup diet, also called the "Dolly Parton diet", seems to be working as we have both lost about 5 pounds in just one week.
Now how did I get from the Sea to Sky Highway to Dolly Parton? It is hard to control my racing mind
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.One more note on the Indian restaurant. The portions were quite large and we finished off the rest for lunch during a great walk we had through parts of Vancouver on the next day - Sunday, February 3.
Coming soon: A Beautiful Walk through Vancouver on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
