Driving in the Mountains or are the Mountains Driving You?

August 26/2014  Weather is beautiful high of 85, sunny
In British Columbia we find there just are not very many primary highways and even fewer interstates or freeways.  To move from Kelowna to Hope we took 97C to Hwy 5 the Coquihalla, we climbed for about an hour then came down and made the connection at Merritt and climbed again and then went down all the way thru the Fraser River Valley. 

looking down before the descent into Merritt  on 97c

The last 17 kms (about 10 miles) is the worst on the Coq.  It is all downhill at 8% with heavy cross winds.  Can you just imagine driving this in the winter???  The first thing we saw on the Coq was a truck on fire in the northbound lane.

those are flames above the cab

Then after a day at Wild Rose Campground we watched on tv the news of a  tourism bus that had rolled over with 59 passengers.    Billy often follows the truckers up the mountains in the slow lane taking our time and coming down as well, maintaining speed and control.  We had a trucker tell us if you go up at 35 mph then you should be coming down at the same rate.

Fraser River somewhere in the valley below

runaway ramps always make you feel at ease - no they don't!

It reminded us of a fellow RVer we met a month ago in Cody, Wyoming;  he was laughing at our Canadian West roads.   His thought was that "you Canadians you like to go straight up and up and up, then you want to go straight down and down and down "!!!  He said he felt the USA was a bit different "we like to wind our way up the side of a mountain then wind our way back down".    So we have learned from experience what he was trying to tell us.  He was right. 

heading down into a tunnel on Coquihalla Hwy 5

Before coming on this trip we have often watched the Highway thru Hell on National Geographic and the Discovery Channel.  It is a reality tv show out of Hope, BC that follows Jamie Davis Towing and crew with heavy vehicle recovery on steep hills, lethal drop-offs, killer rock slides, and notoriously rapid changing winter weather all on the Coquihalla Hwy.    We are glad to have driven it on a beautiful summer day and "no" we are not coming back in the winter!