2004/08 Yukon trip - The road home - |
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Wednesday 25th August
We enjoyed our drive over the mountains. There has been some work on the road since our last trip. Back then there was a 25% grade on one section, enough that the cupboards in the trailer opened up. Now the steepest is about 15%, still about twice as steep as a regular mountain road..
We stopped for the walk up to Nairn Falls, an interesting waterfall of grey-green glacier water. Most of the water disappears into caves and emerges violently further down the cliff. It’s probably a very impressive sight in the spring if you could find somewhere safe to watch it from. On the way back I did a controlled glissade down the canyon wall in order to take pictures at river level. Sandie, not being familiar with glissading techniques, thinks that I fell.
We drove through Whistler, busy as usual, just confirmed to be the site of the snow sports part of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Our first thought was “What will they do about Highway 99?” We were soon to find out. Highway 99 connects Vancouver with Whistler and it’s a narrow road that hangs onto the cliff between the mountains and the sea. We found that there are some massive road works going on to cut further into the cliffs to widen it to four lanes.
We took a quick look at Brandywine Falls, a classic symmetric spout into a large amphitheatre. We passed the Stawamus Chief, one of Canada’s most famous rock climbing sites and a great chunk of 
granite, the biggest monolith in the world after Gibralter. We took an even briefer look at the high Shannon Falls as we were too cheap to pay the parking fee for a place that’s best seen from a distance anyway. The best view is from a boat out on Howe Sound.
We made it to Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay just as the 4pm ferry to Nanaimo left, so we thought we’d have plenty of time to cook lunch and see to other necessities before loading onto the next ferry. But the controllers decided to move us to another lane in the midst of this, so Sandie drove while I staggered out of the bathroom and the kettle merrily boiled on the stove.