| Author | Message | ||
     Sportyeric |
North of Vancouver, the Sea-to-Sky Highway is a ribbon of two-lane blacktop etched into the sides of the Coastal Mountains along Howe Sound to the lumber town of Squamish. From there, it moves inland and up, to the ski resort of Whistler/Blackcomb, rated the best ski resort in North America by any mag that knows what's what.(Pisses off Aspen and Vale to read that the last few years!) And that's the first leg of the trip. Jim, on his ZRX, and I met at the Golden Arches at Hastings and Cassiar. A half dozen young pups on liter sportbikes were just heading out when Jim arrived, so we had a coffee to give them a head start. No, seriously, I'd been chatting with this gang to learn they were only going as far as Squamish, which I told them was a waste of a day considering the traffic jam on that portion of the road on a Sunday morning. They didn't really respond as to why the short trip so I bade them "safe ride" and told them to flush out the Mounties for me and away they went. A shame to have been out of sync with them. It would have been fun to have encountered them on the twisties and they were the only major bikers we saw all day. The first 50 miles from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish are just back to back 30 mph curves. Unfortunately, its heavily travelled and heavily patrolled. You have to get your jollies where you can. Usually that's when a passing lane opens up. The lineup of SUVs in front of you all want to go 3 mph faster than the one at the front, so they all move into the left lane to hope to pass. That's the time to whack the throttle, pass the whole lot on the right, then squeak back left to pass the former front of the parade before any of them can figure out what's going on and block you in. People are much bigger a$$holes here than in Washington, (where the cars will wave for the bikes to go by first. They're so nice!) After that, my policy is to just maintain enough velocity to keep the cars you've passed at bay so you don't catch up to the next lot until you've gotten a few good hard corners in. Then wait to do it again. And so it went to Squamish and on to Whistler. | ||
| Sportyeric |
North of Whistler the parade continued. Speed tax collectors abound so we were constrained to make our passes only when the line marking said we could. Pacing a pick-up, Jim all of a sudden went gonzo! Took the truck. Took the car way ahead. Back onto the right side and hard on the brakes. He always knows where the good stuff is. Always catches me by surprise!! I follow past the truck but come up way short to get the car before the corner, which is a fabulous 15 mph hard left where the road dekes under a railroad bridge at a 90 degree angle. Blew that with the car blocking me, but the road immediately after hairpins right and then really tight left and I got by on the outside in the early stages of the right, then chased Jim through the following twisties, throttling down to gas up at Pemberton. Through Mount Currie for 10 miles at a respectful pace. (Indian reservation. Don't want them to close the road on us.) Then up the hairpins. How many are there?! It's a 15% grade for, I think, 9 miles. The Duffy Lake Road is 60 miles from Mt Currie to Lillouette and I would bet my bike that at least 59 of those have double solid lines! (Not that we pay much attention to that.) There are no turns, no traffic, no nothing but fun. I didn't even know the road went past Pemberton until five years ago and never dreamed there was this unknown pass heading east. Things went pretty much as you'd expect for the first half. Then, having caught up to a pick-up with camper and two cars stuck behind it, we made a tight pass. The road was uphill and the straight was so short that the cars had no ambition to pass. As Jim made the move and I followed behind, the lead pick-up slowed down! The timing was such, that I thought he was slowing to let the cars by, since he didn't have time to react to Jim's presence on the left. I had to worry that the cars would side-swipe me coming out, and then I discovered the reason for the slow down! Two baby deer on the road! The left side of the road. My side of the road! So Jim's on the brakes hard. I'm grabbing them, too, but I was watching the cars so he has the head-start decelerating. He glances behind to check my approach. I'm worried that a car has followed me into the pass and will need time to brake but I don't have time to look in my mirrors. One deer jumps left and over the concrete barricade. The other poor scared bugger does an imitation of Yogi Bear running from a falling tree: run straight away from the danger but don't get out of the way. So the deer's doing 10mph. Jim's bearing down at 40mph, I'm doing 60mph and wondering who's coming up behind. How hard can I brake to avoid overtaking the deer and Jim? Jim eases by to the right of the deer just as it makes an attempt to jump the barrier. It comes up short and hits the concrete chest on then regroups and scrabbles over it just as I go by. This whole play acts out in a space of about a hundred feet and occupies maybe three seconds. 60mph to 10mph under fairly hard braking. I feel bad about scaring the little things but it sure was funny watching the one try to outrun us. What a maroon! Five minutes later, we've recovered our groove. Clearing a right sweeper and encounter a truck of the dump truck variety. And it's pretty much stopped dead in the road. And there's on-coming! WTF! Fistful of Brembo again. Going way too fast to worry that anyone's catching up. Almost stopped ourselves. The on-coming clears so Jim goes by. I ease off the brake to follow and the truck shifts left over the centerline. Ch*&^t! It's turning left! Into what?!!! And where's the signal light, the pr&*(k! Almost a stoppie and I see the signal light is obscured by one of the logs that it has hanging out over the back. His fault. Not mine this time! P&*(k. Regardless, twice hard on the brakes in ten minutes has us both a little spooked. So we rein it in a bit. Even so, we catch up to a couple of bikes. Could be fun, but it turns out they don't want to play (they're Triumphs) so we wave and continue to Lillouette. | ||
| Sportyeric |
Now here's the part that I really wanted to tell about. First things first. And in Lillouette, the first thing that you come across is a bar. Don't go there. Three blocks further up the street, around the curve, is a much nicer one. But we discover this time out that it doesn't serve food til later so we ask the waitress for advice and she sends us further yet up the street, further into Lillouette than I've ever been before, probably four blocks away, at the north end of town, to Mugs and Jugs. Over lunch, we interrogate (Blake. This site needs spell-check!) the waitress and clientel re: alternate roads, since we've decided to simply turn around soon rather than do the traditional loop through Merrit/Princeton/Hope. They send us north towards Goldbridge,promising 15 miles of pavement, 15 miles of gravel then fifteen miles of seal-coat, which would be adequate. The road winds continuously through semi-desert bluffs speckled with Ponderosa pines. Not a soul to be seen. The road and the scenery are outstanding! Hard to decide whether to slow down and admire the views or wick it up and use the road to its fullest. We choose the latter, of course. I'm almost throbbing, and I don't mean just the usual Sportster thing, thinking how wonderful it would be to lead a side group of Border Raiders up this way when.......Brembo time again!! road turns to gravel without any signs that I noticed! We press on for a while, just out of curiousity. It's packed well enough that I'm not too worried about a rock in the belt. It's good to practice a bit in the gravel for when you don't expect it, I figure. It starts to get boring and the mile marker passes at which we expected the seal-coat to begin so we give it up and turn around. A side-trip to this side-trip reveals itself where a dam across the river has a road that leads through a 100ft. tunnel then switchbacks up a valley for a good height. We elect to go admire the view from the top of the second switchback, which turns into four,etc. 10miles later, on this rough gravel road, we reach the summit of the pass and a loacl in a pick-up who tells us that the town, Seton Portage, 8 miles down, has a pub. So off we go. 8 miles at 15% grade, 3500 to 700 feet. Mostly just idling in neutral with the brakes on. Looking down at Seton Lake from switchback after switchback. They're trickier when they're washboarded gravel. Beautiful. I want a KLR! This pub waitress gives two options: retrace up and down White Mtn Pass for 16 miles, followed by the 15 miles of gravel, 15 miles of oh-so-beautiful pavement to Lillouette, then Duffy back 60 miles to Mt. Currie, and so on. Alternatively, we could take the "high" line for 15 miles to Darcy, then 25 miles to Mt. Currie. As the day was getting on, we thought the short-cut sounded good. What a mistake. Initially pleased to be seeing all this wilderness, it soon wore us down. I've seen one road in Guatemala that's rougher than this one,, but that's about it. At one rest-stop, my bike refused to turn over. I thought it a loose battery cable and began pushing it on the level section to the next hill, which was quite a ways. After a lengthy push, I tried the starter again and it fired, and has done so ever since. I think I overheated to the point of seizure without hearing any signs, as I was mostly engine braking at 3000rpm in first gear for a good while previous. Damn! Anyway. Hard on the engine, Harder on the tires and suspension. Very bad plan. But definitely different. Arrived in Darcy just bagged. Unfortunately, too bagged to enjoy the road from Darcy to Mt. Currie, which is another untravelled twisty that definitely warrants a side trip up and back for twenty miles whenever the Duffy is done. And the Duffy is Border Raid, so don't miss it! | ||
| Sportyeric |
That was just a boring story. It was more fun doing it. I forgot to mention one of the highlights, a service station sign at Lillouette: Marriage is like a game of bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you need a good hand. | ||
| Blake |
Great story man! Thanks! I can feel your pain in losing a couple hours worth of creative writing. I now try to do all lengthy posts in Notepad or Word, then cut and paste into the BBS when finished. I was laughing at the dear dragrace part. Did a mini version of the bad road route myself last weekend. Hate it when that happens. Still better than a good day at work though! Thanks again, you're an intriguing story teller. | ||
| Ironbru |
Hey eric.. ShovelJames from Victoria. Good story, sounds like we share the same riding philosophy. Fast or don't go. See you at the depot...later Ironbru |
