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Canada’s Rocky Mountaineer: The Rockies Under Glass

Posted on 19. Feb, 2010 by Rob Howatson in Canada

TRAIN TRAVEL

You can bus to Banff cheaper or drive from Vancouver faster. But to fully experience Canada’s first national park, ride the train in a luxury dome car

by Rob Howatson

It’s a grey dawn at Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station. Groggy tourists climb aboard their cars and collapse into assigned seats, as the train lurches in the deserted railyard and begins rolling down the platform. Unlike the ticker-tape bon voyage of a cruise-liner, there is no brass band send-off. The only ceremony comes from a handful of hastily assembled Rocky Mountaineer Railtours (RMR) employees, who position themselves honour- guard style alongside the tracks and wave.

As we slip into the Grandview Cut and exit Vancouver, the clouds part, as if on cue, and the sun streams down, illuminating the Fraser Valley pastureland in all its dew-besprinkled glory. The mountains here are no more than humps on the flood plain, but they’re covered in trees and, given that it’s autumn, are an explosion of fiery hues. Still acquiring my train legs, I stagger to the front of the car where there is a small outdoor vestibule; here, passengers take turns getting slapped about by the wind and subjecting themselves to the full symphony of creaks and groans the train makes at its maximum cruise speed of 72 km/hr. It’s an exhilarating ride. But I’m still wondering how this two-day Vancouver to Banff, Rocky Mountaineer Railtour (RMR) is going to live up to its brochure promise of being “the most spectacular train trip in the world.”

CANADA'S ROCKY MOUNTAINEER Just before Skuzzy Creek, the train slows to a photo-op crawl and we gaze down into the 34-metre-wide gorge of Hell’s Gate – the only section of the Fraser River that earns a dreaded Maytag 6 rating on the whitewater charts. This is the churning broth explorer Simon Fraser described in 1808 as a place where “no human being should enter.”

Back inside the warmth and relative quiet of my 1954 heritage coach, the onboard attendant distributes snacks to the livening guests. I chat with a retired telecom worker from Hawaii about her vacation in Mongolia as our 22-car-long “consist” (industry jargon for train) abandons its carefree clickety-clack pace of the alluvial delta for a more cautious climb through the Fraser Canyon. Just before Skuzzy Creek, the train slows to a photo-op crawl and we gaze down into the 34-metre-wide gorge of Hell’s Gate – the only section of the Fraser River that earns a dreaded Maytag 6 rating on the whitewater charts. This is the churning broth explorer Simon Fraser described in 1808 as a place where “no human being should enter.” During the construction of the transcontinental railway 74 years later, workers ventured into the canyon to dangle from cliffs and stuff gunpowder into drilled holes, all the while praying they’d got the charge right.

At Lytton, we cross over the Fraser and onto a flank of the Thompson, which calls for another abrupt scenery change. Trees thin out to reveal buff-coloured bluffs and Louis L’Amour vistas. Tina, our onboard attendant – who has an impressive ability to pour drinks without missing her narration cues – dons her mike to inform us that the rock sheds (protective canopies) we’re passing through are part of the route known as Avalanche Alley – eight kilometres of slide detection fences and white-knuckle ruminating that prompt me to move to the car’s leeward side. I prefer to focus on the old telegraph poles that assume various drunken poses alongside us; the creosote stragglers once carried Morse code messages to operators in nearby shacks. Linemen jotted down transmissions on pieces of paper and posted them to a pole so that passing engineers could grab them from the windows of their moving trains.

By the time we reach Ashcroft, our train has clambered up onto B.C.’s interior plateau and the terrain has become stunningly arid. In fact, the ranching community is one of the driest places in Canada with less than 25 centimetres of annual rainfall. Sandy cliffs bleed every shade of the pastel spectrum – from rusty-looking stains of ironstone to purple and green patches of sagebrush. Other cliffs fold and undulate like walls of frozen mud. One particularly dramatic escarpment sprouts pillars from its base – an army of hoodoos rising from the scree.

Kamloops lights up red in the sunset like a Martian lunarscape. We bunk here because there are no sleeper cars on RMR trains. Instead, buses whisk us to accommodations like the Comfort Inn, leaving us just enough time to shower before we board the shuttles for RMR’s dinner cabaret. Yes, the rail tour company has branched out into the musical theatre business. And at the Colombo Lodge Italian Cultural Centre we chow down on a hearty buffet and watch a talented local cast croon and cornball their way through Tales from the Rails, a loose version of the Billy Miner story. The next morning, 21 km out of Kamloop’s station, we pass the spot where, in 1906, Miner and two fellow train robbers tried to intercept a large sum of money destined for San Francisco’s earthquake victims. (They were thwarted by a scheduling change; the train they hit yielded a paltry $15.50 and some liver pills.) Today, there isn’t much to look at on this lonely stretch of rails – no shrine to the gentleman bandit who coined the phrase “Hands Up!” – nothing but the same beguiling ranch country that the 1982 film The Grey Fox used for its account of the elderly legend, who died in a Georgia state prison 88 years ago.

As cowboy country fades behind us, we enter the Shuswap Lake district. The labyrinthine, H-shaped lake and houseboat renters’ delight has spawned every conceivable support service – including pizza delivered to one’s vessel by speedboat. This image of a Mercury-outboard ferrying Hawaiian specials out of Sicamous has me glancing up and down the aisle for our next meal cart. But there is none, because on this second day of the trip RMR has upgraded this travel writer to Gold Leaf Service, which means I’m comfortably ensconced in a bi-level dome car, sun filtering in through the car’s Plexiglas ceiling. For each repast, I merely descend a spiral staircase to the dining area’s thickly upholstered booths and await the chef’s latest creations.

The cramped but resourceful galleys successfully plate elegant courses such as Alberta striploin in a red wine demi-glace and fusilli pasta in a dried banana maple cream sauce. Gold Leaf is clearly the way to go (bearing in mind that with fares starting at $1,179, it’s twice as expensive as Red Leaf). My timing for the dome car move is also perfect; for, as we hit Revelstoke, the geography throws us a new ripple – mountain ranges. Lots of them. The Selkirks, the Purcells, the Beaverfoot range, all in quick succession. Peaks 2,700 metres high warp through the bevelled glass roof, leaning over the tracks like giants inspecting an ant trail.

I don’t hear any mid-mountain yelps so I assume modern travellers are a tamer bunch – unlike the wife of Canada’s first prime minister, Agnes Macdonald. During a trip aboard the transcontinental in 1886, she insisted on riding atop the train’s front bumper. The engineer played along, but he must have been sweating bullets. The first lady had chosen the steepest section of track to be out on the cowcatcher – the drop between Hector and Field known as the Big Hill.

Meekly, we dart into a cave, the eight-km-long Connaught Tunnel, built in 1916 to avoid the heavy snowfalls of Rogers Pass. It’s a long haul through solid rock but not as impressive as the nearby Mount Macdonald Tunnel, which covers almost 14 km (North America’s longest). Our attendant deadpans that in frontier days, female passengers thwarted men trying to steal kisses in the dark by clamping hatpins between their lips. I don’t hear any mid-mountain yelps so I assume modern travellers are a tamer bunch – unlike the wife of Canada’s first prime minister, Agnes Macdonald. During a trip aboard the transcontinental in 1886, she insisted on riding atop the train’s front bumper. The engineer played along, but he must have been sweating bullets. The first lady had chosen the steepest section of track to be out on the cowcatcher – the drop between Hector and Field known as the Big Hill. Before it was replaced by the Spiral Tunnels, this was the CPR’s weakest link for 22 years, a 4.5 per cent grade (twice today’s allowable steepness) that forced long freights to break down into smaller trains to tackle the plunge.

We soon pass through the Valley of the Ten Peaks, a towering picket fence of summits that march off into the distance. As majestic as they are, however, they pale in comparison to Mount Temple – the most massive and highest peak in the Lake Louise area.

Transfixed by the sight of the 1929 Stoney Creek Bridge arching its steel body over the cascading waters of Mount Tupper, I’m glued to the window with each braided river we pass, each jade-coloured lake. And as the train labours up the snow-dusted approach to Mount Stephen and we breach 1,625 metres, I step through the automated sliding door onto the viewing platform – like going from a fireside lounge to a walk-in freezer. My car mates, Laurie and Rachel, stand at the chrome railing and study the small ditch that trickles alongside the tracks. “We’re coming up on the Continental Divide,” explains Laurie. “Watch the flow of the water. When we hit the divide it’s going to stop babbling west and start bubbling east.” That’s the significance of this, the highest point in our journey, which separates the Pacific watershed from the Atlantic one. Although when we actually roll past the commemorative marker on the border between B.C.’s Yoho National Park and Alberta’s Banff National Park, we can’t see the ditch water because it is sealed beneath a thin scrim of ice. Nonetheless, the huddled group lets out a muffled cheer through scarves and zipped-up collars.

The train immediately picks up speed as we begin our approach into Banff. We soon pass through the Valley of the Ten Peaks, a towering picket fence of summits that march off into the distance. As majestic as they are, however, they pale in comparison to Mount Temple – the most massive and highest peak in the Lake Louise area. Like so many of the breathtaking spires we encounter, it is a helmet-shaped wonder etched with powdery horizontal lines and capped with a hanging glacier. Its grandiose hulk stands alone above the forest, defiant. In 1955, seven climbers died on its southwest ridge (Canada’s most costly mountaineering accident), and the cliffs of its north face were left unscaled until the 1960s.

We arrive in Banff at dusk, feeling humbled by the awesome display of nature and eager to de-train so we can experience the Rocky Mountain thrill on foot. Our journey has transported us from sea level to the top of the continent and lived up to all of its brochure promises, except one – we didn’t get to see a lot of wildlife.

No sooner has this occurred to me, though, than a large, beefy elk saunters across the station parking lot. Welcome to the park that rail built.

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Photos: Rocky Mountaineer

Tags: Riding the Rocky Mountaineer, World's Top 25 Rail Journeys