Steel Rail Stories

Trip dates: May 6 to 13, 2007

The Skeena travels 1160 kilometres between Prince Rupert, a city of 12 000 on the north coast of British Columbia, and the small town of Jasper, Alberta in the Canadian Rockies. It stops overnight in Prince George, BC, a city of 70 000 people located in the Rocky Mountain Trench.

May 6

We flew to Prince George via Vancouver, riding the Airporter into town shoulder-to-shoulder with nine other people. After checking into the bed and breakfast we walked into downtown Prince George and up to Connaught Hill Park. The park afforded views of the valley, the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers downtown, the pine-covered hills edging the valley, and the various industries, mostly related to lumber. We did a bum-slide back down the steep hill, wandered downtown until we found an East Indian restaurant for dinner, then walked back to the B&B to sleep.


May 7

I woke up at 4:30, still on Ontario time, and waited impatiently until it was time to get up. After an elegant breakfast we went down to the train station and boarded the Skeena, where everyone seemed to know everyone else and where the lack of a baggage car meant our two-car train was piled high with luggage. We pulled out of Prince George, following the Nechako River upstream as it turned from flat, wide, and silty to narrower and turbulent. The spruce and lodgepole pines clung to the mist in the hills and stands of birch flashed by the windows of the train.

As the morning passed, the hills in the distance grew rockier and higher but we were still moving through the wide river valley filled with farmland. I saw a black bear and several different types of eagles, and we passed a few very long lakes. In Houston we saw the world's biggest fly-fishing rod, and then at Smithers the real fun began. The rail guides suggested there would be some interesting sights ahead, so I went up into the dome and didn't come down again for several hours. A woman read the guidebook to us and twenty people were calling out the sights as we rolled past glaciers, moose, old smokehouses, bears, totem poles, pictograms, and canyons, and always above us the dark green hills broken by shining white peaks glinting behind clouds. Below the wide and brown Skeena River paced us, eddying around vast gravel banks as we pushed on to Prince Rupert and the sea.

May 8

We slept in the clean and welcoming Pioneer Hostel in Prince Rupert and woke to improbable sunshine. We took a quick walk through the Sunken Garden and then hopped into a van, picked up a trailer loaded with kayaks, and drove down to a launch point past deer on front lawns and an eagle drying its wings on a telephone pole. We paddled slowly around rocks covered with seaweed and looked in the eyes of curious seals. The weather constantly changed from sun to rain and at one point hail, during which I closed my eyes and listened to the ice pellets singing as they hit the water. After kayaking, our guide drove us on a tour of Prince Rupert and we learned about wooden pipelines, Japanese fishing boats washing up after storms, and the boom and bust of a port town. In the afternoon we walked around town and it rained and was sunny over and over; we had a nap, went to dinner, and went to bed.

May 9

We boarded the train bound to Prince George on a rainy morning and retraced our route. Near lunchtime the clouds fled and the mountains that were hidden two days before were revealed. We got a great view of the Kathlyn Glacier and enjoyed our time playing backgammon and chatting with a boisterous group of friends from Dunster, BC.


May 10

We re-boarded the train in the morning sunshine and crawled past the pulp mills, bound for Jasper. The weather stayed clear and we wove through the valleys past the Park Range and the Cariboo Mountains, deer drinking from the Fraser River and a dead grizzly bear lying at the side of the tracks.

When we got to Dunster the engineers went crazy on the whistle and we slowed to a crawl and looked out the windows on one side of the train. There were our new train friends, running alongside to hand J a package of old records. As we picked up speed the breeze came through the vestibule doors and the sunlight and happiness tore through my hair with the wind.

Later Mount Robson came into view, as ever impossibly commanding in its deep green valley. I was now in the mountains of my imaginings, grey rock, white snow, dark green pines. And then we were in Jasper to face the landscape at a slower pace.

May 11

In cold air and brilliant sunshine we stepped outside to the mountains' reminder. We hiked up to the lookout at Old Fort Point, standing higher than the bighorn sheep, then followed the Athabasca River to green icy lakes. We ceded the train to a large herd of placid elk on the way back to the hotel.


May 12

We rented bicycles and slowly pedalled them up the 4 km, 8% grade hill to The Whistlers. At this time of year, the lower trail to the summit was unhikable, so we rode the tram up to the top. From there we hiked up to the summit in freezing winds and sparkling air, kept company by a skier and a golden-mantled ground squirrel. We came down by tram and bike, happy for the disc brakes, then rode the Icefields Parkway to Maligne Canyon with its disappearing streams, thundering water, and ageless rock.