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Welcome
Aboard The Skeena
Through the valleys and the mountains
from the ocean flecked with foam,
rolling through Canada in a Vista Dome
By
John Goepel
VIA
Rail’s daylight run across western Canada provides two days’
majestic progress through mountain ranges, forests, valleys, along
rivers, and into one of Canada’s premier national parks. The
train is small (two travel classes in only three cars), it’s
retro-sleek (restored early ’50s cars), and its second season
begins this spring.
Moving at a
stately pace, the Skeena covers 700-odd miles between Prince Rupert,
BC, and Jasper, AB, in roughly 19 hours over two days. It’s
a two-purpose train. Transportation is one: Local people tend to
use "Coach Class" and ride the train to get where they
want to go. Tourism is the other: By adding a first class coach
and a dome car, and stopping overnight in Prince George, the Skeena
makes the process of getting there the reason for going.We embarked
from Prince Rupert, the island town at the line’s western end.
Soon the short train of stainless steel cars was rolling through
rain forest and by coastal mountains, a cannery or two, and perhaps
four dozen waterfalls, including 1,500-foot Emanon Falls.
Following the
Skeena River the train passes through several small towns, skirts
Seven Sisters Mountain for about fifteen miles (so you get a variety
of views of it), passes totem poles, crosses trestles and bridges,
and goes through 11 tunnels. We spotted eagles and a bear—quite
a cry goes up in a train car when a bear comes into view.
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Prince
Rupert
The world’s third deepest and Canada’s northernmost
Pacific port, Prince Rupert also is "Halibut Capital
of Canada." The capital to which all those many
halibut are drawn is a small city of some 16,000 people
at the edge of endlessly mountainous country 40 miles
south of Alaska. Although, as the VIA Rail people concede,
"it rains often and heavily" there, Prince
Rupert is a popular tourist stop, with about 660,000
people arriving annually.
Despite
all the visitors, Prince Rupert still is a real, as
opposed to touristy, place. If you have time, you might
want to add a few days in Prince Rupert to your Skeena
train trip. At least take a walk along the waterfront
and visit the fine Museum of Northern BC. If there’s
more time, enjoy the nearby North Pacific Cannery Village
Museum or take a float plane ride to see the coastal
mountains.
The
biggest attraction is ecotourism. Float planes and helicopters
are available for sightseeing trips or heli-fishing.
Sea kayaking attracts many, as does whale watching (especially
in July and August). Mountain goats and grizzly bears
live among the stretches of raw, whitecapped peaks that
form the coast. Wilderness starts at the edge of town.
Even
so, for most tourists who alight in Prince Rupert, the
town is more a connecting point than a destination.
Alaska cruise ships stop; there is ferry boat access
to Vancouver Island, Alaska, and the Queen Charlotte
Islands; and VIA Rail trains depart from the station
on the waterfront.
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Soon the Bulkley
Valley’s farms and meadows replace coastal scenery. Moose are
said to roam in considerable numbers here, but remained elusive
on our trip. A fox stood watchfully by in the parking lot at Prince
George, however, as the train pulled in for its overnight stop.
The geographical
center of BC, Prince George is a small city surrounded by considerable
opportunity for back country recreation. You’ll see a fair
amount of that wilderness from the train, but time for looking around
Prince George itself is limited.
The next morning,
the Skeena embarks along the Fraser River, through forest and farmland,
past several more very small towns. Long about McBride, mountains
once again loom up. As we travelled along the Fraser, every now
and again a poster-quality mountain view presented itself. It is
on such occasions that lounging in a dome car is especially redolent
of peel-me-a-grape ambiance.
Mount Robson,
highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies and probably the one attracting
the most clouds, presents more photo opportunities. It’s in
Mount Robson Park, which borders Canada’s biggest national
park, Jasper.
For some miles,
Skeena follows the Fraser River, reaching its head waters at Yellowhead
Lake. This is the Continental Divide: The Fraser flows west; on
the lake’s east side, the Miette River flows east.
The train continues
to flow east, too, but it’s near the end of its run. Soon after
passing Mt. Robson, the Skeena enters Jasper National Park. This
huge park is home to lots of moose, bears, mountains, glaciers,
celadon lakes, and wilderness. Without disturbing any elk that may
be wandering among the tracks, the Skeena glides to a stop in the
small town of Jasper.
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Jasper
In Alberta, two huge national parks protect the Rockies:
Banff to the south and Jasper to the north. The train
stops in Jasper National Park at the small town of Jasper.
The two parks are connected by the Icefields Parkway,
a road lined by pale green lakes, raw-rock crags, and
glaciers.
Banff is closer to population centers; the town of Banff,
considerably less small than Jasper, often tends to
bustle in a way Jasper seldom does. Jasper NP’s
4,200 square miles of mountains, lakes, valleys, and
the occasional glacier is open all year, although not
all facilities are open year around—nor is the
entire park accessible in the cold white of winter.
In
Jasper NP you can generally do all the hiking, climbing,
and scenery ogling one expects in the Rockies while
encountering far fewer people than you might in other
parks. Among the many things you can do in a relatively
brief time reasonably near the town of Jasper are getting
right up to a small glacier at Mt. Edith Cavell, visiting
the hottest hot springs in the Canadian Rockies at Miette
Hotsprings, and riding the Jasper Tramway up Whistlers
Mountain.
This
cable tramway, about 5 miles south of town, makes a
7-minute climb most of the way up the 7,946-foot mountain
for what guidebooks accurately term "stunning vistas"
of the Miette and Athabasca rivers, lakes, and (on a
clear day) six mountain ranges. If the tram terminal
isn’t high enough, take the rocky but good trail
to the peak.
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Sharing The
Planet
Wolves, moose, elk, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats are among
the larger animals in Jasper NP. We kept having to get out of the
way of elk, but our attempt at wolf communication was one-way at
best.
Talking with Wolves In Jasper you can arrange to go wolf howling.
Wolves often howl at night, and, if in the mood, they answer those
they hear. They’ll even answer blatantly inauthentic howls,
such as those produced by tourists or train whistles.
On a wolf howl,
a guide takes a small group in the dead of night to where wolves
are thought to be (which is most places around Jasper), offers advice
on howling technique (essentially the overcoming of inhibitions),
and leads the group in the call of the wild. It isn’t fool-proof.
The rainy night we tried it, the wolves (which, we later learned,
are too smart to come out in the rain) probably had a quiet laugh.
Ill-tempered
elk Elk get the right of way in the town of Jasper, as they do throughout
Jasper National Park. When we arrived, some were standing at the
station watching trains. Others walk up and down the main street.
In the fall, during mating season, the well-antlered bulls are especially
touchy as they gather their harems.
At Jasper Park
Lodge, we saw an elk destroy, apropos of nothing, one of the large,
highly manicured shrubs on the Lodge lawn. Its harem stood around
as though this sort of thing happened every day, which apparently
it does in season. Last autumn, four people were treed by "love-stricken
bull elk." During our brief visit, one bull singled out a Pontiac
caught in Jasper traffic and inflicted C$4,300 damage. The driver
was quoted as saying, "Maybe I look like another elk. I don’t
know." The Jasper Environmental Association blames tourism
for such incidents.
Accommodations
A variety of accommodations is available in Prince Rupert, Prince
George, and Jasper. The AAA Western Canada and Alaska TourBook
lists several possibilities for each.
In Prince Rupert,
we stayed at the Crest Motor Hotel, and considered it a good hotel
with an especially nice location on a rise overlooking the water
and within walking distance of the train station. In Prince George,
we stayed at the Ramada. All its rooms were non-smoking; when one
of our fellow passengers asked for a smoking room, the clerk accommodatingly
reached under the counter and handed him an ashtray.
Jasper hotels
can be expensive, but extremely nice. The Jasper Park Lodge may
be the best. It’s on a mountain-backed lake, often sports elk
on the lawn and golf course (despite an elk-resistant fence), and,
although relatively young (built in the ’50s) is gracious in
the elegant-rustic mode of yore.
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If
you’re going...
Although
there are but three cars on most runs of the Skeena,
the two classes of passengers don’t mix. The dome
car is exclusively for first class passengers (at press
time, VIA Rail PR people were still pondering what officially
to call "first class" service). The cars are
of early 1950s vintage, but relatively recently rejuvenated.
On our run, they were comfortable and clean. Food is
served at your seat, airline style. Quality was above
airline but below what it might be. Service was excellent.
Freight trains have the right of way, and since much
of the route has but a single track, Skeena occasionally
goes on to a siding to let a freight train through;
delays are few and short; bringing a stopwatch mentality
on a ramble through BC would be counterproductive anyway.
Tourist
season on the Skeena (when there are two classes with
the dome car open only to those in first class), runs
from May 16 to October 15. Eastbound schedule calls
for departure from Prince Rupert at 8 a.m. Sunday, Wednesday,
and Friday, with Jasper arrival at 4:15 p.m. the following
day. Westbound, departures from Jasper are Sunday, Wednesday,
and Friday at 1 p.m., reaching Prince Rupert at 8 p.m.
the following day. Each way, the train stops at Prince
George overnight. One-way fare is C$275, not including
the hotel stay in Prince George.
Information
sources:
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Your AAA Travel Agency can help you ride the Skeena
with a variety of travel/accommodation packages.
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AAA Western Canada and Alaska TourBook.
Prince Rupert Information Centre, 100 First Avenue
West, P.O. Box 669, Prince Rupert, BC, Canada V8J
3S1. (250) 624-5637.
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Jasper Tourism and Commerce, 632 Connaught Drive,
P.O. Box 98, Jasper, AB, Canada T0E 1E0.(403) 852-3858.
- Tourism
BC, 802, 865 Hornby St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V6Z
2G3. Attn: Distribution. (800) 663-6000.
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Alberta Tourism, Third Floor, Commerce Place, 10155
- 102 Street, Edmonton, AB, Canada T5J 4L6. (800)
661-8888.
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