Monday dawned, and with it our last day in Vancouver. Myself and Nath were up early to drop our boxes off at the warehouse for their journey home by sea, then it was back to the apartment to load up our rental 4×4 for the journey to Banff. A mild panic ensued when we realised we’d never get all our luggage in to the car, but Greyhound came to the rescue and we shipped a few bags direct to Fernie. Once that was done we waved farewell to Vancouver and set off on the Trans-Canada Highway – destination Banff.
The first part of the journey was uneventful, cruising through the suburbs and out through the fertile Fraser Valley. Beyond Hope (yes, that’s the town’s name) the Coquihalla Highway started to get icy and we got our first dose of snow. It didn’t last long, and we were soon back on dry roads, with Kamloops, our overnight stop, rapidly approaching. No sooner had we checked in to the hotel than it started snowing, and it kept going for most of the night, allowing us to have a brief snowball fight after dinner.
Tuesday morning saw us back on the road, in much worse conditions. The graders were still out clearing up the overnight snowfall so the going was slow. We stopped in Revelstoke for lunch, being greeted by a local, Carol, as we walked along the sidewalk, who insisted on showing us a nice place to eat. We also took the opportunity to check out a model of the new ski resort opening in December: 1800m of vertical and 12-18m of snowfall per year! Sounds promising.
The road from Revelstoke to Golden and then on to Lake Louise is one of the most spectacular I’ve driven on, lined with 3000m+ peaks with snow sheds protecting the road from the slide paths of regular avalanches. It’s also dangerous, with the stretch between Golden and Lake Louise dubbed the most dangerous road in British Columbia. Anna’s a very nervous back-seat driver, and the icy conditions only increased her stress levels, so I thought it prudent not to tell her in advance of the road’s status.
However, when we’d made it to Lake Louise I congratulated her on having survived B.C.‘s deadliest road, only for us to get held up in a traffic jam 20 minutes later. We were stuck for three quarters of an hour, before being allowed to continue. Moments later we passed an horrific accident which was still being cleaned up. A small car had had a head-on with an 18-wheeler, ending up with the front half under the truck’s cab, and the other 30m away at the side of the road. We’d heard that someone had died, presumably the car’s driver. That accident was the fifth since leaving Kamloops that morning, with three cars and an 18-wheeler having slid off the road at various stages, so we were pretty relieved to arrive safely in Banff that evening!