First Road Trip of 2022: To the West Coast and Back!

[Lightcycle]

We're off to the West Coast!

It's not really that far away from where we currently live. It's about the distance between Toronto and Montreal. Our friends from Toronto are flying into Vancouver for a business trip, so we're riding over to spend the evening with them.

Up till the minute we left, I was debating about whether to take the GS or the Hyper. I've already put full knobbies on the GS and I'm trying to save the rubber for our dirt rides, but the Hyper is not really a touring bike - no windshield, no fairing, I hit reserve at 180 kms, and the seat is as hard as a plank of wood...

First World Problems.

2022 has been seen a pretty crap start to our riding season out here. There's still snow up on the mountain passes and the normal April Showers have extended itself all the way to the end of May. The fastest route to Vancouver sees us riding over two mountain passes, the Pennask Summit and the Coquihalla Summit, both of which are experiencing cold and variable weather. So we're taking the lower-altitude, southern route - the famous Crowsnest Pass, which snakes East/West just north of the US border.

We leave the Okanagan and it's 10°C. It's supposed to reach a high of 18 later today in Vancouver. Nice!

Crowsnest Pass

We've ridden parts of the Crowsnest Pass lots of times, but only till Princeton, where we turn north to Merritt before heading back home. This time, we continue westwards towards Manning Provincial Park and we're rewarding with scenic views of the mountains all around us and new twisty roads.

At the summit of the park, temperatures dip down 5°C. Brrr! Once again, the weatherman proves he knows sh!t because the "0% chance of precipitation" forecast turns into a snow squall. Fork.

Did I mention that I ended up taking the Hyper, with no fairing and no windshield? Pellets of ice smack me in the helmet and chest. Neda, on her sport-touring behemoth behind me, is oblivious to the battering I'm getting out front.

The snow lets off as we descend the twists and turns of the Crowsnest, AKA Highway 3. Traffic is sparse, even on this Holiday Long Weekend, as most people heading to Vancouver brave the variable conditions of the Coquihalla Pass in order to save 60 kms of distance and (theoretically) an hour of travel time.

But they're missing out on this, though:

 

[Lightcycle]

The weather does indeed turn sunny and warm as we reach the outskirts of Greater Vancouver Area. The smell of cow sh!t when we pass through Chilliwack is a familiar welcome beacon, and the congestion gets a bit worse as we contend with stop-and-go traffic around Abbotsford. A lot worse for traffic heading out of Vancouver though, on this Friday afternoon before the Victoria Day weekend!

Port Mann Bridge. The first of many bridges around Vancouver

Our friends have never been to Vancouver, so we told them to meet us at our favorite restaurant in town.

Negotiating downtown Vancouver traffic

It's late afternoon, and most of the people have already left the downtown core to start their weekend early.

Our friends, Annie and Daniel! We haven't seen each other since we left Toronto, pre-pandemic. Almost two and a half years ago!

We're meeting at "John 3:16", and despite the religious-sounding name, they serve the most amazing Malaysian food. It's probably the most authentic place that I've found outside of Malaysia. Pictured above are their speciality: Roti Canai, light and fluffy flat bread that's served with chicken or beef stew.

Both Neda and I are big-time foodies, and when we lived in Toronto, it was not unheard for us to jump on the bikes and ride to Montreal for a smoked meat sandwich. So coming to Vancouver and seeing friends *AND* eating at our favorite restaurant made for a no-brainer road trip.

Other favorite dishes include Char Kway Teow, a charred rice noodle dish, as well as Satay which are marinated meat skewers served with spicy peanut sauce. We were in heaven! It was so good!

 

[Lightcycle]

Annie and Daniel invited us back to their hotel to hang out for the evening, so we rode over while they took a cab.

The city is perched right on the shores of the Pacific Ocean and the amazing white-topped Coast Mountains as a constant backdrop. You can see glimpses of this in the distance as you head north on certain downtown streets like Seymour and Howe.

We get to their hotel before they do. It's very fancy place, and there's a high school prom being held in the ballroom in the first floor. We stride through the lobby past all the schoolkids dressed up to the nines, and us, looking very out of place, in our dusty and dead-fly-encrusted motorcycle suits.

It's so nice hanging out with old friends. It's pretty tough to move somewhere new as an adult and trying to make new friends and form some kind of social circle, especially during the pandemic. Hanging out with people you've known for a while, you can skip the part about explaining who you are, and just shoot the sh!t and catch up with each other's lives.

Lions Gate Bridge, just north of Stanley park

Sun setting from Lions Gate Bridge

At then end of the evening, we head back to our hotel. We're staying at a Best Western in North Vancouver, a much less swankier place than our friends. Oh, I miss the days when I had an expense account! Don't miss working though, so I guess it all balances out...

As we cross the Lions Gate Bridge, we look eastwards towards Deep Cove, where we stayed for the summer when we first moved to BC three years ago. Everything about Vancouver is so homey and familiar. I have a feeling once we're done riding the Okanagan, we're probably going to move to the GVA just because we miss the city so much. More the food and culture, not so much the traffic and congestion.

It was a great day of riding, despite the sudden snow storm. The Hyper is such a cartoon bike. Tiny tank range and super uncomfortable for distance. But at least, being forced to stop every 200 kms or so made for many, many, many rest stops along the way...

Part 2 coming soon.

 

[shanekingsley]

Awesome!

 

[Lightcycle]

We wake up well rested and ready to ride back. The route that we're taking is weather-dependent. If the snow stays off the ground, we'll take the more direct route over two high mountain passes. If not, we're going to have the take the longer way around, winding our way through the valley floors.

Our go-to resource is the DriveBC website, the government has set up cameras all along the major highways in BC, so you can check out traffic and weather conditions in real-time:

Welp, I guess we're taking the long way home:

There's still time to amend our route. Once we reach Lillooet later on this afternoon, we can check the webcams again and see if the snow has stopped and the road has been cleared.

Off we go! Neda's RS is all serious touring business. And the Hypermotard? Pure cartoon character in comparison...

We meet our very good friend Kevin for breakfast. We've been riding buddies ever since we learned how to ride motorcycles back in Toronto. He's moved out to Vancouver about the same time we started our big trip, and he and his wife put us up several times while we were out on the west coast.

Reunited! Fools be foolin' around

Kev just picked up a new ride, so we want to help break it in for him. We head north up the iconic Sea-To-Sky Highway

And immediately hit a wall of Long Weekend traffic

Ugh. This is first warm weather weekend without rain here in awhile and it looks like everyone in Vancouver is on their way north to either Squamish or Whistler to do some hiking or mountrain biking. It's torturous stop-and-go in first gear and I have to turn my cartoon bike off so it doesn't overheat while sitting in traffic.

We decide to turn off into Porteau Cove, about 50 kms north of the city, just to give our clutch hands a break and to take in the wonderful weather and scenery:

Porteau Cove

 

[Lightcycle]

A little photoshoot of our bikes on the pier of Porteau Cove.

While we were taking pictures, a horde of Harley Davidsons all swarmed around us, photobombing and rev-bombing us. What the...?

Turns out they all knew Kevin, and it turned into a huge show-and-shine with everyone showing off their black plastic and chrome rides.

Kevin has a bit of a sad history. He lost his way for a few years and joined a cult. We didn't see him much during that time, as he spent all his time being indoctrinated and brainwashed.

However, he finally escaped the cult and just sold his Harley over the winter, traded in his HD-branded leather chaps for head-to-toe Klim gear and bought himself a brand new 2022 KTM 1290 Super Adventure R! Noice!

Ok, we can be friends again, Kev

Kevin tends to only keep his bikes for a year or two before moving on to something new, so I joke around that I'll buy his bike off him next year. Since Neda has already earmarked my GS as her future ride, I'm only half-joking...

As the Harley guys crowded around Kevin, I could sense they wanted to draw him back into the cult. These guys are worse than Scientologists. The lone rider on the Aprilia came over to talk to me.

"Hey Gene! How are you liking the new ride?"

Uhhhh... I'm really bad with names and faces, but I'm pretty sure I've never met this guy before in my life. He saw the look of confusion on my face.

"Oh, I follow you and Neda on your blog!"

Ahhhh... okay! I haven't updated that things in years, so this was a bit of surprise that someone still remembers us. Nick is a local rider from Vancouver and he had a bunch of questions as to what we were doing lately and how we made it out to the west coast. Good guy.

A lady on a golf cart pulled up to all our motorcycles and told us that we had to move as we were blocking access to the pier. So that was our cue to hit the road again. We let the Loud-Pipes-Save-Scientologists crowd leave first in thunderous fashion, consisting mostly of noise and not that much horsepower...

Back to the Sea-To-Sky Highway. Kevin is like 8 feet tall. He makes that 1290SAR look like a Grom underneath him

Before the Whistler Winter Olympics in 2010, the S2S was a single-lane highway, but they widened it before the games to accommodate the increased traffic. However, the highway still goes down to one-lane, where they couldn't blast the cliff face to put in an extra lane, so those became our first-gear-crawl bottlenecks. And then the road opens up to double lanes and we were able to twist the throttles with abandon once again.

Shame that we spent all that time in traffic, the S2S is truly one of the most remarkable rides in terms of scenery and high-speed sweepers in the area.

We ride through the tiny town of Squamish, where we lived for almost a year after moving from Vancouver. Felt very nostalgic looking at all the familiar stores and roads. This whole BC round trip is a ride down Memory Lane for us!

Finally, we reach Whistler and we pull over again for another break. Took us forever to get here. This is Kev's turn-around point and he's headed back to Vancouver. He's going to have a really nice ride on the S2S as the southbound lanes are practically empty. We say our goodbyes and start the trek further north looking for good weather and good roads.

 

[thwak]

Thanks for taking the time to post these great pictures and report. Gotta say of all the bikes, Neda's RS is spectacular, especially the colour.

 

[Lightcycle]

Thanks for taking the time to post these great pictures and report. Gotta say of all the bikes, Neda's RS is spectacular, especially the colour.

Thanks. I really like the colour too. Funny enough, it wasn't Neda's first choice.

 

[Nikola Tesla]

Nice! That long weekend traffic on sea to sky was nuts! Never see it bad like that since moving here last month, it’s usually clear no traffic at all. I was riding to chance creek fsr, a bit past Squamish, so many nice forest service roads and logging roads to explore with epic views, take the gs next time lol

 

[Lightcycle]

Nice! That long weekend traffic on sea to sky was nuts! Never see it bad like that since moving here last month, it’s usually clear no traffic at all. I was riding to chance creek fsr, a bit past Squamish, so many nice forest service roads and logging roads to explore with epic views, take the gs next time lol

Yeah, I'm saving the knobbies for more dirt-oriented trips. This was more of a street ride.

We lived in Squamish for almost a year and we're very familiar with the S2S highway. Usually when it's blocked up like that, it means there's an accident somewhere along the line. But no, this was just nice weather coupled with Long Weekend traffic. Crazy.

 

[Lightcycle]

North of Whistler, the traffic dwindled considerably. Too bad Kevin had to turn around because the Sea-to-Sky Highway was completely devoid of traffic and we could focus on throwing our bikes into the turns and enjoying the scenery around us.

At Pemberton, around a half hour north of Whistler, we once again check on the state of the mountain passes between us and home. We quickly got our answer from one of the Facebook groups we're on:

Okanagan Connector

Okay, so that settles it. We're going to have to take all the low-lying valley roads back east. It'll add over 100kms to our route, but worth it not to have to slip and slide on snow and ice!

At Pemberton, Hwy 99 is called Duffy Lake Road and climbs up the Cayoosh Pass. More twisties ahead of us, but the temperatures drop almost as quickly as the climb up to 1300m above sea level

A little bit of snow as we climb Cayoosh Pass, but nowhere as much as the OK Connector

There's not a lot of traffic up here, just some sports cars and motorcycles enjoying a long weekend ride. We pass by a convoy of older Porsche 911s on the way down and we note that they're not covered in snow, which bodes well for us.

Lower Mainland locals call this the Duffy Loop, and it's quite a popular route from and back down to Vancouver. For good reason...

 

[Baggsy]

Nice. But you're saying that your heading to the west coast on a 400 km trip, is kind of weird.

You're on the coast to us flatlanders.

 

[Lightcycle]

Switchback and mountains up ahead!

We catch up to a group of ADV and streetbikes and pass them, and they fall in right behind us. Neda ups the pace and all the bikes behind us keep up. Looks like they just wanted someone to follow!

We pull off at Duffy Lake for a little break and to put on more layers as the temps have gone from the low 20s all the way back down to 5C. All the bikes that were following us, pass by and give us a friendly wave!

I love the motorcycling community!

Duffy Lake, what the road is named after

Proof that I was there

My little cartoon bike is eating up all the twists and turns, and although the road is patchy and broken in some places, the long suspension of the Hyper SP is soaking it all up without any complaints. This may not be the best tool for highway droning, but it does come alive on roads like these! A lot of this has to do with its short wheelbase and the even-shorter gearing which allows it to jump out of corners despite being the middle-weight V2 engine in Ducati's line-up.

 

[Merkid]

Brings back some great memories.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[BB722]

You ever been to the island?
If so how does it stack up to the mainland and Okanogan?

 

[Nikola Tesla]

^^^^ also know any good off-roading spots in and around squamish that you enjoy?

 

[Lightcycle]

You ever been to the island?
If so how does it stack up to the mainland and Okanogan?

Yep, been the the island several times. The scenery and climate are more like the lower mainland than the Okanagan. The valley is more arid, it's technically considered a desert because of how little precipitation we get, whereas the island and the mainland are what people traditionally think of when they hear Vancouver - wet and rainy, a lot more evergreen and firs, whereas the valley can sometimes look like the SW US, lot more sagebrush.

This is what you'd typically see on the island:

This is more of what you'd see in the valley:

But great roads and trails all over BC, no matter where you are. So much better than Onterrible.

 

[Lightcycle]

^^^^ also know any good off-roading spots in and around squamish that you enjoy?

Yes! The one that everyone goes to is the Lava Flow area:

This was literally 5 minutes away from where we used to live. It's very technical, but spectacular!

Also Cat Lake is a bit further north of Squamish. I've never been, but I heard it's a nice area to take your dirt bike as well.

 

[shanekingsley]

Wow your bike must be stupid fun on those roads.

 

[Lightcycle]

Our route through the frigid Cayoosh Pass descends into the Lillooet area and the temperatures soar immediately with every meter we descend into the valley. The vegetation changes from evergreens and firs to the sagebrush more commonly associated with the desert. We've been through here many many times and it's always a lovely place to ride because it's easily 5-10C warmer than the rest of the BC. Great for early and late season riding.

Ten Mile Slide on Highway 99 - a very apt name for this area

A lot of construction has gone on on Ten Mile Slide over the past several years. In 2016, there was a landslide that washed away this section of road, and they've since put up some concrete and composite piles aimed to stop the natural erosion of the soil that surrounds the highway.

This is what it looked like before the construction:

Definitely a GS Road!

We follow the valley carved by the Thompson River, trying to stay at lower-altitudes as we head back to the Okanagan. There's easily a 20-25C differential between the mountain passes and the valley. This trip seems like it's all about dodging snow in real-time.

*sigh* gas prices... I remember filling up my car for the same amount that I fill my motorcycle up for now...

Caught a rainbow just outside of Kamloops

At Kamloops, we turn south onto our familiar and local Highway 97, and it winds back towards Kelowna. Along the way, we pass through the tiny town of Falkland and we're surprised to see tons of people out on this holiday weekend. But what's more peculiar is that everyone's dressed up in jeans, big belt buckles, cowboy boot and cowboy hats. Everyone single one of them!

Turns out there is an annual stampede being held here during the long weekend, and people from all over the area come to watch the rodeo.

There is a very common misconception that the culture around the whole of BC is like Vancouver: Cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, ultra-liberal... the reality is that only the lower mainland is like that. The rest of the province holds attitudes more associated with Alberta: it's very much conservative, cowboy country outside of the GVA. Although nobody in the interior will admit to being like Albertans. Lots of Red Plate Hate all over BC (Alberta plates have red lettering).

Sun setting just outside of Monte Lake

We timed our arrival back home perfectly. The sun sets just as we roll into town. Was an amazing long weekend ride filled with great roads, delicious food and most important of all, friends that we just don't see often enough!