Prince George, BC to Mt Robson Provincial Park, BC – 196 Miles
After another rainy night, we pulled out of the Bee Lazee RV Park at about 9:30. After a stop for gas and to fill our propane tank, we were on our way by 10:00 am. One item of note – I was expecting to fill the propane tank at a separate pump, like in every other place I’ve ever bought propane, but the gas station we stopped at had a propane pump right out on the island with the gas and diesel pumps. The kid at the station said they actually have a lot of propane-powered cars and trucks here, and they just pull in and fill up like regular cars, except that the attendant actually does the filling because it’s a little more complicated than just sticking a nozzle in the fill tube and squeezing the handle. Anyway, that’s beside the point, but I thought it was interesting. Perhaps we’ll see more of that in the future.
We continued basically eastbound on Highway 16 out of Prince George. The road immediately starts to climb up through a low range of mountains called the Cariboo Mountains – yes, that’s the way it’s spelled, although the animal by the same name is spelled “caribou.” These are heavily forested, lush slopes, and the road winds around wide curves and up and down long grades for several miles. While logging is a major industry in this region, and large trucks with double trailers loaded with cut logs are common, they do a good job of keeping the cuts away from the roadside. You can see the logged areas in the distance on the hillsides, but there’s always a wide band of standing trees along the road if the cuts are close to the right-of-way.
Jeanette has been the tour guide for this entire trip. I determined the basic route, and she keeps the Milepost open, always looking ahead to see what’s coming up. Other than a few major activities like our fishing at Homer and glacier tour at Seward, we’ve been totally spontaneous in doing other things as we travel. It seems like everything we’ve been drawn to in this manner has been a really neat experience. In this instance, she saw something called the Ancient Forest coming up ahead, so we decided to stop and check it out. We kept our eyes peeled as we approached the designated KM post, and soon found an inconspicuous gravel drive on the south side of the highway with a small sign that said “Ancient Forest.” It turned out to be a large stand of old growth Western Red Cedar, with an interpretive trail through the forest. These trees are huge – well over a hundred feet tall, up to 16 or 18 feet in circumference, and estimated to be one to two thousand years old. The interpretive trail is a loop about a mile long that works its way first up an old logging road for a few hundred yards, then enters the ancient forest itself. It’s like entering another world. You’re surrounded by these ancient, moss-covered giants. The forest floor is a carpet of ferns and devil’s club, a low shrub with large green leaves and clusters of bright red berries. All around are fallen trees, covered with mosses and lichens as they rot away according to nature’s plan. It’s a damp and misty world, with rays of sunshine piercing the gloom here and there. And the smell of the cedar permeates the air. This is a true temperate rain forest, much like the rain forests of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula; in fact, the signboard at the start of the trail claims this to be the farthest inland rain forest on the continent. We spent about an hour and a half wandering along the trail and taking photo after photo. It’s a good thing we aren’t on a schedule or we would have been late getting to wherever we were supposed to be next. It was time well-spent, and highly recommended for anyone else passing through this area.
As the highway approaches the small town of McBride, BC, it levels out and enters the Robson Valley, a long valley that straddles the upper reaches of the Fraser River. On one side of the valley lie the Columbia Mountains, and on the other side are the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. At this point, the mountains probably average around 8000 feet, but the upper reaches are well above timberline and maintain year-round pockets and patches of snow. At one point, a small glacier can be seen in a high alpine valley, a hint of what lies ahead as we travel down the Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Banff in a day or so.
Continuing eastward, the valley narrows, and at a junction called Tete Jaune Cache another highway branches off to the south towards Kamloops, BC. Our highway, the Yellowhead, now enters the Canadian Rockies and it’s just a few miles to Mt Robson Provincial Park, a large park that abuts the Alberta border and Jasper National Park. The park is named for Mt Robson, the highest point in the Canadian Rockies at 12,972 ft. It’s an imposing chunk of granite, but unfortunately we can’t see it because of the low cloud cover and the continuing rain. Oh well, maybe tomorrow will be a brighter day.
Speaking of brighter days, remember how we were marveling at the 11:00 pm sunsets up around Dawson City? Well, it’s actually starting to get dark here by 8:30 or 9:00. Daylight changes rapidly at high northern latitudes, in fact, when we were at the museum in Fairbanks they said the sunrise and sunset changed by seven minutes each day there. That’s a lot compared to the minute or so it changes back home in Denver. So the shortening of the days we’ve experienced in the last month is accelerated by the change in latitude, plus the west-to-east travel which moves us to the other side of the time zone. FYI, the time zones for Western Canada are Mountain Daylight Time (same as Denver) for Alberta and Pacific Daylight Time for BC and the Yukon. Tomorrow we’ll cross over into Alberta and be back in our home time zone – another sign that our journey is nearing its end.
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