Day 13 - The Skeena Train to Jasper

Another "early" start - eating breakfast in the Ramada Inn, Prince George, at 8:15 am. Sandra didn't want to be late for the train. We'd been told that boarding would start about 9:30; we were at the station for 9:05. No one else was. Nor was the train. Just a track stretching out for miles in both directions in a heat that was already starting to bake the ground dry, even at that time in the morning.

15 minutes later a few more people had arrived, and the train came rumbling in, huge and impassive in the heat. We boarded and were off at 9:45, the honour of shouting the "ALLLABBBBBBOOOARD!" being given to the young and excited son of the family sitting opposite us (of course I wanted to do it).

The first part of the journey was across the Interior Plateau still. What? Didn't we spend hours and hours crossing that yesterday? Well yes we did, and we spent the morning crossing it today. Bruce came round with his trolley, and I told him I'd looked up Hans Island on the internet last night.

"And?"
"It's a bit small, isn't it?"
"Small? Never mind small, the war'll be big."

Greater men than I may have stayed awake longer on that train. I dropped the seat back (no one in the seats behind us) and slept for the better part of an hour, waking bleary-eyed and confused at about 11:30. We were still on the Interior Plateau. Laying the railroad through here must have been a soul-destroying job.

We stopped to let a freight train come past. Bruce invited us to count how many cars it was pulling. I counted 90. A quick bit of research says that railcars are about 60 feet long including couplers, so not including the two locomotives pulling it that freight train was over a mile long.

Lunchtime. Bruce arrived with his trolley.

"You want anything from my trolley?"
"Is it the same choice as yesterday?"
"They're the same sandwiches as yesterday, just a day older."

Yesterday I'd asked him for the options, he'd said "beef and cheese". I'd asked for cheese. He'd told me, "no, it's beef and cheese. Or ham and cheese". The sandwiches were the worst part of the journey, truly dire creations on thick white bread with processed meat and processed cheese.

Later on we stopped at downtown Penny to pick up a couple of passengers, thus reducing the population of that town considerably (11 people live there, plus 9 dogs). There are a number of towns like that, dotted along the line. What sort of people live there? In Penny, you've really got to get along with the other 10 inhabitants.

We'd left the Skeena River behind yesterday, and now we were following the Fraser River, one of the four great rivers that drain British Columbia (the others being the Skeena, the Liard in the very far north, and the mighty Peace River, the only river to cross the Rockies). Indeed the Fraser goes on further south where it grows until eventually it flows through Vancouver city and out into the Strait of Georgia. In time, though, we left even the Fraser behind, and moved into the Robson Valley, part of the astounding Rocky Mountain Trench which extends for approximately a thousand miles from northern British Columbia and into Montana.

Finally that enormous forest of pine was breaking up, though it wasn't finished yet. We had mountains either side of us now, the Rocky Mountains to the north, and the Cariboo Mountains to the south. The pine trees weren't able to make it up the sides of these harsh mountain ranges, and we were seeing more stone and snow. We passed through Dunster, whose claim to fame is that it houses one of the few remaining original Grand Trunk Pacific Railway stations; it looked like it needed some work doing on it though. Dunster is a positive metropolis for this area, with a population of 90 people; on its own website it pleads for donations to keep the site going, as it costs $21 per month to host...

And then Mount Robson climbed high into the blue sky. At almost 13,000 feet it is the highest point in the Canadian Rockies. Like a wall of snow-covered granite it rose, dwarfing everything around it, harsh and majestic, a fitting climax to our trip.

For at last our long train journey was coming to a close. Jasper was in sight, it was time to pack up, hide uneaten beef and cheese sandwiches under the seat, and say farewell to the Skeena train, and to Bruce and Patrick, and the rest of the crew, who had brought us 700 miles from the west coast and into another province. The train slowly pulled into Jasper, and I recognised some of the sights and buildings from the last time we had been here in 2008 (Jasper being the first overseas holiday location to which Sandra and I have ever returned).

We awkwardly stepped off the train - my backside having gone to sleep three hours and a hundred and fifty miles ago - and I told Bruce I'd see what we could do about those Harriers for his Hans Island war. We picked up our bags and walked the half mile or so in 30 degree heat to our hotel - the Chateau Jasper, the same one we stayed in last time we were here (it completes the figure of 8, as Sandra rightly pointed out).

The train journey was an interesting one, and it served a purpose, i.e. getting us from Prince Rupert to Jasper without us having to drive. It wasn't what I expected. In some places the endless trees almost drove me mad. But we saw some amazing scenery I probably wouldn't have had time to enjoy if I'd been driving.

Would I recommend such a journey to anyone else? Yes I would, but I'd warn them that it's a long time on a train (I don't think I could cross the whole of Canada this way), and there's a hell of a lot of trees.

Would I do it again myself? Yes. But I'd take my own sandwiches.