A Short but Sweet (and unexpected) Ride

July 8, 2019

As we left the lower mainland and headed up into the interior of BC, we stopped in the small town of Hope for an overnight. With our Overlander App, we had identified the end of the Kettle Valley Road as a good spot to stay. When we arrived, we found that the parking lot in question was, in fact, a trail head for the Kettle Valley Rail Trail (the southern end of the one we had to give up cycling on this year) – how handy! The parking lot was lovely – surrounded by trees and very quiet. We parked and went for a stroll up the trail, finding it to be fairly rocky but ok. The grade, being a rail trail, was very minor and the views of the river below spectacular. We enjoyed our walk and talked about going for a longer hike in the morning.

an empty parking lot and lots of trees - perfect!!!

After a good night’s rest, we sat beside the van, having our morning coffee when a woman walking her dog stopped to say hi. We said we were going for a little hike and she recommended that we go up to the Othello Tunnels, about 4.9 km up the trail. As we needed to get up to Peachland on this day, we decided to take the bikes up instead of hiking. Although there were some rocky patches, the trail was pretty nice to cycle on with our wider (2.75”) tires and before we knew it, we came upon the tunnels. There are 4 of them very close to each other, with bridges going over the river below providing some beautiful scenery. The tunnels themselves were pretty dark inside and this is where we made a fairly major discovery. The bikes had been all tuned up and test ridden, but we had not even thought about our lights. Both of us have Dyno Hubs which connect to our lights, so that, theoretically, we will always have good lights. Jim’s has been giving him some trouble, but mine has been very reliable over the past couple of years, hence our not even thinking about them until the moment in the tunnel when we couldn’t see anything in front of us. And, of course, no light!!!! The connection seems to be broken somehow and so there we were, using our phone flashlights to guide us through – duh!!! Oh well, you are not supposed to ride through the tunnels anyways, as there are many tourists! Turns out there is a parking lot up further where you can simply drive, park and go on a very short walk to get to the tunnels. It reminded us of our Fern Canyon fiasco in Elk Prairie Park, CA. We had trudged for hours through the redwoods, thinking we were going to be the only ones at this magical place, only to get there and find out that, same as here, you could simple drive around and park! Ugh!!! It takes away from the experience if you don’t have to suffer just a little to get to it!!!

Ok, rant over. The Othello tunnels, no matter which way you get to them, are totally worth seeing. It is amazing to see how the rock was blasted and then men, using only pick axes, moved the material away using no machinery at all. The tunnels look like they would just barely fit a train – I would love to see the clearance! We really enjoyed out little jaunt, taking the time to not only grab some pics but fly the drone for a bit. If we had known about this spectacular place and planned our day better, we would definitely have gotten up early to get to the tunnels before the teeming hordes of tourists showed up. It is unfortunate that we could only fly the drone once as there were just too many people around. Oh well, maybe next year?

kind of dark in here - a light sure would have come in handy!!!

on our way back down - we probably pedalled twice the whole way

One thing for sure, we are looking forward to heading up to Kelowna next summer and riding the other end of this legendary trail! For today, we finished and basically coasted the entire 4.9 km back to where the van was parked and headed off to Peachland to see our friends Jim and Laura (from our time in Cuba). Next bike blog should be up in the Jasper/Banff area! If you are curious about how the trip in general is going, you can navigate over to thepricesofwandering.com and see how we’re doing in between!

Today's ride: 10 km (6 miles)
Total: 35 km (22 miles)

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