Well, we’ve now made it to the last stop on the snowboard tour. We left Fernie on Saturday and drove first to Revelstoke via Rogers Pass. Rogers Pass is one of the most economically important passes in Canada, as both the Trans-Canada Highway and the railway line pass through it, connecting Vancouver to the rest of the country.

The scenery is amazing, with steep, high mountains, laden with snow on all sides, but this comes at a price. Rogers Pass is prone to massive avalanches and there are approximately 140 slide paths which threaten the highway. Snow sheds have been built in the worst places to protect traffic, and quite a few that we drove through had had avalanches roll over them.

After a quick stop in Revelstoke itself, Tom decided we should continue on to Kamloops, getting more of the drive out of the way on the first day and leaving us only 300km remaining to Whistler itself. That turned out to be a good decision, as the latter part of the journey say us driving on a secondary road which wound its way down an avalanche-prone valley. However, with spring bringing plenty of rain, it was falling/fallen rocks we had to worry about and not snow. We managed to beach our rental car on one rock, having overestimated how much clearance we had, but were able to free ourselves with some judicious back and forth driving. For the next 90km we were confronted with fresh rockfalls around what seemed like every second corner and to make matters worse, it had been raining all day which didn’t bode well for the snow at Whistler.

We’re now crashing on Bevin’s couch for the week before heading to Vancouver next Monday.