A proper breakfast AND a real pub lunch – the luxury! With a 30km climb to start, breakfast at the fabulous Copper Eagle in Greenwood, 13km in, was a treat. Greenwood has worked hard to preserve its history, and is Canada’s smallest city.
Conversation with the barista at Copper Eagle: “How did Greenwood come to be designated a city?”
“Oh, when you have a population of 10,000 it becomes an option.”
“So what’s the population?”
“Around 750…” wry smile “…but in the early 1900s it was over 10,000!”
Greenwood is home to a copper-gold-silver mine which gifted it a heritage and city status. Now it’s an occasional movie set (the empty front-board buildings from the ‘Snow Falling on Cedars’ set still stand) in a beautiful valley with a massive slag-pile to its west. Operations at the mine stopped in 1911. The building we were in had been variously an assayist’s building, geologist office and housed interred Japanese prisoners during the war.
We climbed on out of Greenwood on the Columbia and Western Railroad trail up to the summit at what was once Eholt siding. We then descended 23km into Grand Forks. First we flew along a short logging road then down a trail littered with old ironmongery from the railroad – spikes, bolts, nuts and hooks. These were easy to avoid; the gravel not so much.
By the end of the descent the bodies were shaken and the brains tired from making millions of micro-decisions to pick a line and avoid slipping into an inelegant wipe-out or sliding over the steep cliffs. To the perfect u-shaped glacial valley below.
We survived to hitch the bikes outside the Grand Forks Station pub (built in 1860) where the highlights were the 500g of ice with the Okanagan ciders and the incredible local burger patty.
The trail through Grand Forks was tarred and we relished the speed for a while, then hit the gravel again out of town on towards Christina Lake.
In a welcome spot of shade about 20km out of town, Gill made friends with a couple of horses while Bron did a conference call and then it was only 10km of sunny, hot gravel slog to go. Soon the river entered a spectacular gorge and then wound under the 125m long Kettle Bridge as we climbed up towards Christina Lake, our car and a most very yummy stop at the Ice Creamery.
This particular leg ended with a three-hour drive through an incredible pass down to Osoyoos and the beautiful Similkameen Valley to our overnight motel stop in Princeton to break the drive back to Vancouver. That’s how far we have come – it’s a long drive home.
Today – 78km
Total – 1,079km
#transcanadatrail
#thegreattrail
#KVR
Trans Canada Epic 