June 29, 2015
Facts about Kettle Valley Railway
The KVR was the work of Andrew McCulloch, Chief Engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railway’s new line in the southern interior of British Columbia…The Kettle Valley Railway. He was hired to build the Coast-to-Kootenay connection when the fear of leaving BC’s mineral wealth vulnerable to exploitation by our neighbours reached its peak. Politicians and corporate leaders including CPR President Thomas Shaughnessy and James J Warren (the first President and originator of the whole idea of the line), stood behind the economic challenge and they moved to protect our province’s resources. The result was the building of 325 miles (500 kilometres) of rail over and through three mountain ranges. It is sad to think that progress (highways and airlines) as well as the challenges of Mother Nature (major snow in the Coquihalla) took their toll – so that by 1964, passenger service had ceased and in 1989, the last freight train rode the rails.
Cycling Stats
Start point: Chain Lakes Recreation Site, Jellicoe, British Columbia
End point: Trout Creek Rec Site near Summerland, British Columbia
2:42 time, 35.6 trip, 13.2 km/h avg speed, 28.1 maximum speed
AltUP 104, AltMAX 1134m, AvgClimb 3%, MaxClimb 8%, AltDWN 235m, MaxDown 4%
What happened…
Andrew writes:We awoke to the rat-a-tat-tat of rain drops on our tent fly, so like good little soldiers, we kept hunkered down in our foxhole for most of the morning. Finally, close to 1000hrs, I ventured out to start coffee and breakfast. The rain subsided and the sun came out. We decided to wait until most of our gear had dried before leaving, which meant we didn’t get out of there until 1300hrs. It’s all good!
After a short climb into Banker, it was pretty much all flat or downhill today, at a nice steady clip of 1% grade. The sand and gravel from yesterday was more or less packed down, although that could have been from the rain too? We spent the afternoon chasing thundershowers, just keeping behind them enough that we didn’t really need our rain jackets. There were big puddles in both “lanes” of the trail so no matter what we did, we got a little wet. Still, it was a rocking good time we had.
I didn’t really want to end up in Summerland late in the day with nowhere to sleep, so when we passed a camping site in the middle of nowhere complete with picnic table and outhouse, we stopped. It was 1700hrs anyways, quitting time as it were. This meant a nice relaxed dinner prep and tent prep followed by a few hours of reading and practicing my tin whistle. Lights out at 2200hrs so that we could get an early start in the morning.
Today’s Photographs
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