Rocky Mountaineer

We finished our time in Banff and moved on to the next stage of our adventure. We woke early on Sunday morning and met our bus to take us to the train station in Banff. Once on board the Rocky Mountaineer we started our ride towards Vancouver. The idea of the Rocky Mountaineer is to enjoy the beauty of the Mountains and river scapes from along the way. The train car has a panoramic roof that allows you to see the scenery in all directions. The train does not run at night instead it stops at a halfway town and you stay in hotels. Given the point of the trip is to enjoy the scenery the stop allows the maximum amount of time seeing the sites.

The staff is very attentive and helpful and along the way they point out interesting parts of the history sites along the way. We started at an elevation around 4600 feet and will end up near sea level in Vancouver. So I guess you could say it’s downhill all the way. Our trip and the original rail line stayed mostly along rivers which essentially are the valleys. The route was originally developed by the Canadian Pacific Rail line. The trans Canada rail line was started and finished later than the American trans continental rail line. The final spike of the rail line was placed in 1885. (Compared to 1869 in US) 

An interesting element of the rail line is the decent in the Kicking Horse Pass. The valley steeply descends and the original routing allowed for a 4.5% grade down the hill. Unfortunately the first train to go down the hill immediately derailed. (No injuries) For the next 20 years they would unload the trains at the top of the hill and take cargo and passengers down the hill by horse carts. The empty trains were able to safely descend the hill and reload to continue on the way. Ultimately the decision was made to construct the spiral tunnels. 

The tunnels each drop the train about 50 feet in a loop. On the picture above the train starts in the lower left and goes through a left turning tunnel then comes out goes a short way and enters a right turning tunnel that drops the train another 50 feet. Riding through it is strange as you feel your direction reverses twice. On the last tunnel if the train is long enough you can see the front of the train coming out of the tunnel before the back of the train goes into the tunnel. 

The morning ride was filled with views of rivers and a few lakes. There were occasional bear sightings but we only successfully saw one black bear. (Sorry no picture)

One surprising river we followed was the Columbia River. I guess being American I had always assumed that the Columbia river was a river that started and ended in the states… Little did I know that it starts fairly far north in British Columbia, and flows north before finally turning south. Check your maps..

In the afternoon we came upon  Lake Shuswap. Lake Shuswap is a huge lake which I thought was man made, but it was actually a natural convergence of several rivers forming a lake that is many mile long. We followed the lake for what seemed like hours.

Not long after leaving Shuswap Lake we arrived in Kamloops where we spent the night in a hotel. Kamloops is an englishized version of the indigenous peoples word for rivers meet. Meaning two rivers the two forks of the Thompson Rivers meet(North and South) After checking in to our hotel room we went out for a walk along the Thompson River. We met an Australian couple from the train and enjoyed conversation with them as we walked.`