Day 3: The Hill

Distance traveled: 241 km

Cumulative distance: 899

Top speed: 90 kph

Moving average: 52 kph

Temperature range: 14.8 - 28.2

What we counted: motorcycles between 100 Mile House and Bella Coola Part "b": 0 for a total of 2

At 5:30 am, I was awakened to the sound of “Howie, I think I hear something.” It was all downhill after that (no pun intended). Fortunately, there were no bears, no deer, no squirrels, no creatures of any sort. But we were awake so what else is there to do but strike the camp and get back on the road. It was a whopping 5 degrees, so a little on the fresh side. What we did see though, were numerous small animal tracks near to our tent site. We identified one set of tracks when we saw a beetle making them but some others were unusual and unidentifiable to us.

After a little mishap with the bike keys somehow finding their way into my sleeping bag and subsequently getting packed away, leading to about a 30 minute delay in departure, we were on the road around 7:50 am, anxious for coffee but now knowing from where it will be produced or in what form.

Nimpo was the first community that we encountered after an hour on the road and the restaurant was called the RAR Restaurant. We see a sign that says “open” but the place looks like it is abandoned. However, I walk up to the door and it pulls open and what looks like quite an expansive place is all set up to seat maybe 100 people and there is a lone guy in the back working away in the kitchen. We confirm that it is, in fact, an operating restaurant open for business. It’s 9:00 am on Sunday morning.

Patrick is the owner and he tells me everything on the menu is available. The bread is home made; “he’s crazy that way”. We have a visit about the restaurant and the location and he proudly brags that there is a million dollar view from the place.  When there is no smoke. But today, smoke is the view. We excitedly told him that we camped at Tatla Lake and calls that the “scum lake of the region” and then tells us about the GOOD lakes, like Charlotte and Big Stick. He does make it sound enticing, describing beaches that go on for kilometres and crystal clear water. Well, WE had crystal clear water at Tatla Lake (we drank it) and we had beaches that went on for HUNDREDS of centimetres. Take that, Patrick. Still, I make a mental note of the lakes he describes.

We order breakfast and drink copious amounts of serve-yourself-coffee. In the back, he has been joined by his teenage son Aiden, who is going to cook our breakfast. Patrick explains to us that the restaurant is a high school graduation gift to his son, who is the only kid from the area who graduated from high school last year, though many went and all failed. There is no high school in Nimpo-Anahim Lake so kids going on from grade 9 to grade 10 have to go to a boarding school in Williams Lake, which is apparently, a recipe for disaster as the kids, with minimal supervision, run wild. Patrick also describes how this is particularly problematic for First Nations kids from the area and that the “residential schools” scenario continues to be played out as First Nations kids are often “rescued” from their situation.

More people come into the restaurant and everybody wants to know if we are delivering organs. It’s all in good fun and we have a laugh. People are friendly and interested in where we have been and what we are doing. People come in separately but they all end up sitting together and Patrick know their orders by heart. He is serving everybody’s breakfast as well as helping his kid in the kitchen. Portions are all “Hungry Man” size and the eggs are from Patrick’s chicken ranch. He also has 10 cows. Maybe that is where he gets his steaks, too.

After an uncharacteristically long break, about 90 minutes, we are back on the road. It’s hasn’t yet been clear to me exactly what we are facing with The Hill because every person who describes it has a different version. It is like everybody has a story or opinion but all derived from the internet. Nobody has actually been on the road themselves. I am just operating under the presumption that somebody would have spoken up to me before or I would have found it if it was impassable to motorcycles.

With 137 km to Bella Coola, the pavement turns to gravel. OK THIS I didn’t anticipate. I’ve been told 40 km, 70 km and other distances of the length of gravel but not this far out.  The gravel alternates between hard packed with a light coating of oil and ball bearings. The hard pack is easy riding and we are able to go at about 80 kph but the ball bearings are frightening and we are reduced to 20-30 kph. The Honda is a worthy touring stallion but it is not set up for this type of riding. Smooth tires, as opposed to knobby, are the first problem and the second is that the bike is heavy to manoeuvre, especially with two people and a load of camping gear, in slopping conditions.

At 97 km from Bella Coola is the truck brake check for The Hill. (It sounds like a Hollywood movie to me.) There is a diagram of where the turns are located, the grade and the elevation change. The road length of The Hill is 24 km with grades of 10% and 12% identified. I can’t help but be a little nervous; there are no guard rails but the downward ride is on the inside lane so at least we are saved from having to look over the edge at a 1000 metre drop. Even when we are moving, I’m too busy and Nan is too scared to look around much at the view. At one point, I pull over to take a look and maybe get a photo and Nan says to just keep going. However, to her credit, she does get a lot of pictures.

There is a surprising amount of traffic coming up. Mostly pickup trucks but also cars, motorhomes, trailers, a couple of horse trailers, a motorhome pulling a couple of trailered adventure bikes, maybe 15 or 20 vehicles in total. I wasn’t really counting but one thing is that they were all good about giving us the space to go down. Fortunately, we did not have any vehicles following us or ahead of us. And it occurred to us once we were at the bottom that being Sunday, we didn’t have to contend with any commercial traffic like logging trucks.

Everybody in the country is hearing about the wild fires and we got a look up close an personal with
one.  There was a fire discovered on Saturday mid afternoon not too far from the road. It was up the mountain quite a way so it didn’t look overly worrisome for us but we got a good look at it. At one hairpin turn, there was a vehicle pulled over and the driver was out inspecting it. Another couple of kilometres down the road, we saw a person wearing a red uniform standing on the side

of the road. Not a fire fighter but maybe a Parks person out there looking things over. What was really odd to us is that he didn’t seem to have a vehicle so he may have been dropped there and was getting picked up.

A little farther down the hill, we are approaching yet another hairpin turn and also a sign that warns the grade is 15%. Some people we met in Bella Coola later in the day tell us that they were scared
witless in their SUV and marveled at our coming down two-up on a street bike. One wanted to know what our braking strategy was on The Hill. I told her “at all costs, not to go over the edge”.

After 24 km, we reached the bottom and PAVEMENT! We are relieved and take a little break and I stick my face in the Atnarko River. It is 75 km to Bella Coola so total gravel for the day is 62 km, a record for single day gravel travel on this bike. If look at the Spotwalla link (which I have not done as yet as I am without cell service as I write) you can see where it has pinged and clicking on a ping will tell you how fast we were going at the time. Ironically, the gravel was worse before The Hill, particularly on the ball bearing stuff but on the hill itself, it was well enough groomed that it was not too problematic. ed. note: I do have video of virtually the entire trip down The Hill. I am thinking I will post it to YouTube, not for entertainment purposes

The ride into Bella Coola is through stunning rain forest. It’s lush and green and seems so far removed from the wildfires up the road. The road follows the river and there are small farms and acreages along the way and it is quite picturesque. We pass by a farmer’s market in Hagensborg and there are an inordinate number of cars and I ask Nan if she wants to check it out because maybe she needs some candles or something. Turns out, we learn later, is that it was a musical festival and that the farmer’s market has finished for the week.

We get to our destination of The Cumberland Inn in Bella Coola. When I booked several weeks ago,

this was the only place left, as far as I could tell. There really isn’t much in the way of hotel accommodation in town but we are right in the heart of the business district of Bella Coola. There is another hotel, a gas station with adjoining wand wash, a “variety” store of which you only ever see in a small town (locally made handicrafts, clothing, fishing supplies and boat safety equipment) a restaurant called Freddy’s which, based on the sign and artwork, serves east Indian food, the BC Liquor store and the RCMP station. There are houses around and the whole town would be walkable – every street – in an hour.

We have to phone for someone to come and check us into the hotel.  A young girl who looks maybe 16 to me comes in a car with her friend and she seems quite agitated. She checks us in and tells us that the BC Liquor store across the street is not open on Sundays, Freddy’s is not open Sundays, there is only one other restaurant which serves Korean food and it is at the Bella Coola Inn but that if we want to check out the music festival there might be food there. We tell the gal that we have just come down The Hill, thinking that maybe there is some kind of prize for us in town and she asks us about the fire. She is quite stressed that the road may be closed and it is the only road into and out of Bella Coola. We tell her it is a long way from the road and she doesn’t need to worry.

The Cumberland has seen better days. Better decades, too. Not particularly clean, quite dilapidated and clearly in need of a little love. The room is $170. As opposed to camping to be at the 6:30 am ferry line the next morning. We get the bike unloaded but before we strip off our riding gear WE GO FOR A RIDE! Actually, we ride out to the ferry terminal so that we are comfortable with where we are going the following morning as, at that time of day, there will be little margin for error.

Nan and I go for Korean food at about 3:30 to discover it opens at 4:30. As it is the only place in town and there are quite a few tourists and musicians around, Nan thinks the restaurant is going to get slammed at 4:30 so wants to wait round for the restaurant to open so we can be part of the slamming so we hang out in the hotel lobby and work on the blog. Nan is editing her pictures and I am composing.

The bul-go-gi is good
and after, we look around the business district a little. There is a museum which is sadly closed but we

laugh because there is a steep set of stairs to get up to the building… then there is a wheelchair ramp at the font door! I am sure that is to satisfy somebody’s code. I end up going for a walk around town and while I did not talk to anybody, any of the locals driving around give me a friendly wave.

This breaks my heart to write but the town of Bella Coola is a dump. I had somehow expected to see “Inland Tofino” but Tofino it is not. There is a lot of garbage everywhere, especially in people’s yards. Houses abandoned, falling apart, lots of old, dead cars in yards. Bella Coola is first a fishing community but the fishery is on the wain so not too much happening around there. Further up the road about 15 km, there is a serious upgrade in the quality of the community and if that could just filter downstream a little bit Bella Coola could be a thriving and wealthy tourist destination. Maybe not Tofino but perhaps “Inland Ucluelet”. Some vision would go a long way to bringing this to reality but it would take money to make it viable.