My Canadian


JOURNEY


It’s a question every visitor to the Canadian Rockies must ask: Is it better to see them by train or car? Anthony Lambert discovers


Rocky road or rail? R


oad or rail? Having done both several times, I’d choose steel on steel


ANTHONY LAMBERT Rail travel writer


anytime. It isn’t just that you miss so much when you’re driving, with eyes on the road rather than the scenery. There’s the conviviality of a train on which everyone is there by choice rather than the necessity of a commute, and in the case of Rocky Mountaineer the downsides of train travel have been thought through and eliminated. You're well looked after - I once heard someone end a trip with the comment that he was going to have to remember to take responsibility for his bags again now! My first journey on Rocky Mountaineer


was the Whistler Sea to Sky Climb, between North Vancouver and the main setting for the 2010 Winter Olympics, to join, at Whistler, the Rainforest To Gold Rush route on to Quesnel and Jasper. The latter may be less well known to most travellers, who tend to plump for


10 SPRING 2011 • Selling Canada


one of the two southerly routes through The Rockies, but for me the northern routes have more variety and ‘grit’. The departure from North Vancouver


starts gently enough, with one of the most idyllic stretches of railway in the world, as the train eases around the bluffs and coves lining the southern shore of Howe Sound. Breakfast is served to views across scattered islands and snow-dusted mountains bristling with conifers. North of Squamish passengers have a


grandstand view along the half-mile-long cauldron of white water in the narrows of Cheakamus Canyon, with photographers standing in the 1914-built open observation car for unobstructed pictures. It’s beyond Whistler on the Rainforest To


Gold Rush train that the railway starts to traverse remote and spectacularly beautiful Canadian countryside. No road intrudes on the peace of


Anderson Lake, its emerald-green waters stretching for 15 miles between mountains falling sheer into the water. After the bridge over the Fraser River at Lilloet, a fearsome climb heaves the railway on to a plateau as the mighty river steadily recedes to a ribbon in the gorge far below. Rolling hills, forest, small lakes and clearings for beef cattle bring the train to the overnight stop in Quesnel, a town of vast lumber piles and pulp mills. Reaching the junction of Prince George


next morning, the train turns south east along the Rocky Mountain Trench, the longest valley in North America, extending from the edge of the Yukon to the border with the US. Beyond forests of cedar, spruce and cottonwood, the mountains gradually grow in height again, reaching a climax with Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies at 12,972ft, shortly before journey’s end at Jasper.


ROCKY MOUNTAINEER


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