A SCENIC NORTHERN ADVENTURE

Featuring Death, Dinosaurs and Chainsaws

By R. Bruce thomas

After three incident-free hours heading west from Edmonton on the four-lane Yellowhead Highway, my wife Mary and I stopped to refuel the bike in Hinton before turning north on Hwy 40 – the Scenic Route To Alaska. While the route is as scenic as advertised, it wasn’t long before I was longing for some of that super-slab boredom to return.

Signs along the highway soon warned us that there was a caribou migration in progress and that we had to be mindful of the possibility that herds of reindeer might encroach on the highway. While we did not have to deal with the anticipated asphalt antics of the boreal beasts, we did encounter some gallivanting grizzlies and meandering moose, just to keep things interesting. Even though the huge grizzlies were having a grand time in the wide boulevard between the highway and the forest, Mary wasn’t impressed when I slowed down to get a picture. Our first moose, standing on the white line on our side of the road, turned and ran into the woods, but the second one decided to strike a pose in the middle of the road as if it was in a ‘90s Madonna video. The brakes and tires got a serious workout while safely hauling us down from 100 km/h to a stop and avoidance of a too-close encounter with this imposing highway interloper. Larger creatures, although long dead, would feature prominently over the next couple of days.

Our first night was in Grande Cache, a hamlet built on coal mining along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. We had a great Greek-inspired meal at the Big Horn Grill before walking around town a bit and enjoying the mountain air and scenery. The impressive views during our walk were good enough for us, but countless others from around the world descend on this hamlet at the beginning of August to get even closer to the mountains. Since the year 2000, the 118 km Canadian Death Race ultra-marathon has seen competitors endure nearly 5,200 metres of elevation change while running over three mountain summits. I’m very happy, on the other hand, to sit and twist the throttle when I visit the mountains.

In the morning we walked over to the visitor information centre after breakfast and learned that dinosaur tracks had been found not far from here. Apparently, there is a world-class dino-track site that includes footprints of the Acrocanthosaurus (a large spined lizard who we would encounter again soon) and a display case holds a casting of some of the footprints. Upon leaving Grande Cache we headed northeast along the scenic valley of the Smoky River for the better part of an hour before the road turned north and took us on to Grande Prairie.

Twenty km west, after filling our fuel tank in Grande Prairie, we arrived at the turnoff for Wembley and the impressive Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, which sits alongside Hwy 43. Named for the world-renowned Canadian palaeontologist, who was a cofounder of the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, the Currie museum opened in 2015 and contains an impressive collection of local specimens. How local, you ask? Just 12 km south of the museum is the Pipestone Creek bonebed which is as large as a football field and so dense with fossils that it is known as the River of Death. The museum not only displays specimens from the bonebed, but it has a number of educational programs including getting to dig for fossils yourself as part of their Palaeontologist for a Day program.

From Wembley we continued northwest on AB-43 into British Columbia. Two km after crossing the AB/BC border is the junction with the eastern end of Hwy 52, a large U-shaped southern loop with our destination of Tumbler Ridge at about the eight o’clock position. However, we’d been dodging rainstorms all day and taking this route would have us traverse a 36 km section of packed dirt/gravel that gets pretty messy when it’s wet, so we continued onwards to Dawson Creek where the Alaska Highway begins its 2,232 km journey north to Delta Junction, AK. Mary and I have ridden that famous route before, and it wasn’t on our itinerary for this trip, so we turned west for about 20 km on Hwy 97 before turning south on the western portion of Hwy 52 near Arras. This section of Hwy 52 is all paved and taking this route is only 10 km further to our destination than if we had taken the eastern portion of Hwy 52.

Whichever portion of Hwy 52 that you take you will eventually end up in the small town of Tumbler Ridge. If you love the outdoors this is really a place you should visit. Similar to

Grande Cache, Tumbler Ridge was built to house employees for the local coal industry, which has also shut down. Also similarly, dinosaur tracks were found near Tumbler Ridge and, after numerous fossils were discovered, a museum was opened. Due to the geological significance of the area around the town, North America’s second UNESCO Global Geopark was designated in 2014 encompassing an area of 7,822 square kilometres.

Outside the Tumbler Ridge visitor centre, located next to our hotel, we were greeted by Slovakian chainsaw artist Tomas Vrba’s carving titled “Mother’s Instinct,” which was a neighbourly gift after it took second place in the 2011 Chetwynd International Chainsaw Carving Championship; more on that shortly. Inside the visitor centre we learned that, in addition to seemingly endless hiking trails, the area offers fishing, golfing, jet-boat and helicopter tours to impressive waterfalls, plus plenty of options for ATV, off-road or adventure bike riders. They even have a half-marathon, the Emperor’s Challenge, if you feel the need to get off your bike and run over a mountain. Mary and I walked over to the dinosaur museum to get a closeup look at none other than our friend from Grande Cache –the Acrocanthosaurus. His three fingers, smaller size and spiky spinal column differentiate him from his distant cousin the T. Rex, but he was still an impressive specimen.

Leaving Tumbler Ridge in the morning, we headed northwest for an hour on Hwy 29 to reach Chetwynd, the home of the aforementioned chainsaw carving competition. Every year, each of the 12 invited carvers gets a piece of western red cedar roughly four feet in diameter and eight feet tall and 35 hours to carve their design. It is hard to believe that some of these sculptures were created with a chainsaw as many are very detailed and quite intricate. There are over 150 sculptures on display around the town from previous events. The 16th edition of the competition had taken place the previous weekend and the staff at the visitor centre told us the latest sculptures were in the shop getting weather-proofed and would not be on display for several weeks yet. One year we really should plan to get up there to watch these artists in action.

After a couple of days riding through foothills along the eastern slopes we left Chetwynd on Hwy 97 and had to cross the Rocky Mountains on our way to a night in Prince George. This is a wonderful route going past a ski resort and numerous provincial parks, including Bijoux Falls Provincial Park. While we had seen and heard various rainstorms over the previous days we had luckily avoided riding in the rain.

The rain would likely have done wonders for the many waterfalls we had learned about including Muskeg, Twin, Eaton, Kakwa and Kinuseo falls. Many required long hikes, which my hips and knees won’t tolerate or, as mentioned, jet-boat or helicopter rides. However, the multi-level Bijoux Falls, in their namesake provincial park, are located right beside Hwy 97 and bore testament to the volume of recent precipitation as the water flow was fierce. Standing 20 metres from the falls to get a picture, I couldn’t avoid the spray.

In Prince George we visited the Central BC Railway & Forestry Museum, and The Exploration Place, to get steam locomotive photos for a Team Strange riding challenge I was participating in over the summer. If we were going to maintain our relaxed pace we would take two more days to get home (to Hinton and then to Edmonton) but we were heading south to visit my cousin Howi in Kelowna. Nevertheless, our relaxed pace showed that this scenic route is accessible and could easily be done in a week or less from Vancouver or Calgary, for example, if you are looking for a different destination.

It is also important to keep in mind that there are lots of options for camping if you are so inclined. On a previous trip through the area some buddies and I camped at the wonderful William A. Switzer Provincial Park near Hinton. There are also plenty of campgrounds near Tumbler Ridge, Chetwynd, Prince George and other locations along the route.

No matter what time of year you go, there is plenty to see and lots of opportunity for adventure on this northern route. IM