Eric and Mark's Cascade-Kootenay DH adventure!!

[VictorEric]

Day 1 - 832kms

Setting out early Saturday morning, we headed through Sumas crossing with Saint Nick and his gang. Weather was cloudy, but dry until Marblemount when the it got misty. Nick and Co. decided not to bother with the Cascade if it's going to stay misty. Mark and I continued on as our plan was to ride through Washington and then back up to the Kootenays.

Luckily for us it cleared up after Marblemount, just in time to take on the Cascade twisties. It's my first time through the Cascades and I must say it's a beautiful stretch of road. A series of tight esses gave my legs a warmup.

We stopped for lunch at Winthrop at a place called Three Fingered Frank's (read Saint Nick's post for smart remark of this place). For those who haven't been, tt's an interesting cowboy town with authenticity down to the wooden plank floors. The only missing is the bandit and sheriff showdown on the dusty road. As we saddled up again after lunch, we couldn't help to notice an interesting V8 Harley. A Boss Hoss conversion to be exact. If you look at the pictures, you'll notice the seriousness of this conversion. You definitely don't want to drag this thing at a stop light.

[VictorEric]

We continued on Hwy#20 to Republic. The road after Republic is clean, quite and fun to ride. It's all beautifully engineered with all the twisties banked just the right amount for us bikers. These americans know how to build good roads. We were doing some 30mph twisties at 140kmph. Yeeha!

[PUREVIL]

502 big block! Holy balls!

Nice fucking paint scheme too. God Bless America!

[VictorEric]

Log Cabin Gas station at Republic. The best looking one that I've seen.

[VictorEric]

Our original intentions was to ride through Idaho before heading north. However, with lack of feedback about Idaho, we chose to cut backup to Canada via #395. All was calm on this stretch with the exception of seeing U-haul Cube Van crashed in a ditch on the side of the road. It was facing the wrong way and had a tree splitting it down the middle. I wanted to stop for a picture op. but didn't know if the cop at the scene would appreciate it. :rolleyes

When we hoped back on our side of the border, we decided to stop at Christina Lake for a visit to Mark's old friend Orick (sp?). He ran a campground and conveniently had some cold beer. :drinkbeer

As the day the got dark, we decided to cut the chit chat and continue on to Creston for the nigh. I don't know if it's the fear of nightfall or the beer, but we were hauling ass going at 190kms all the way through. Thank god the cop going the otherway didn't stop to say hi. :thumbup

[VictorEric]

Day 2 - 860kms

Today was the day we were going to check out as many DH's as possible. After visiting the Sasquatch at the Kokanee breweries, we ventured on a brisk morning ride on DH1 (east side of kootenay lake). There were very few cars on the road, we only passed 5 going our direction. The lake on the west makes it a very scenic ride. However the corners were not as tight as expected, quite gentle most of them at 60kmph with some 40kmph ones. The pavement was o.k. and there were still wet patches on the dense tree lined portions of the road. The ride was very scenic, but the wet road, poor pavement and abundance of driveways from lakeside resorts did not allow us to take our liberties as we would've liked. The last set of 40kmp switchbacks just before ferry was a nice final touch. For anyone considering a similar loop but are short on time, I'd considering not doing this one because it's really not worth making the "trip out here".

[VictorEric]

The start of DH1 and what lies ahead.

[VictorEric]

DH60:
After taking the Kootenay Bay ferry to Balfour, we continued on to Kaslo. The road was clean and much dryer on this side of the lake. It had a mixture of fast sweepers and some tight corners. Coming up to a 30km hairpin, I was tempting to give it all until I saw "Don't crash here" graffitied on the side concrete barriers. Giving it a second thought, I eased into it instead. Amusingly, there was a bullseye graffittied on the barrier as you exit the hairpin, I guess showing you where you would hit if you didn't heed the first warning. Shortly after the ferry, we came upon a Cobra 427 which tried to give us a run for our money. It was doing ok in the straights, but definitely slowed down coming into corners. It was fun to watch the wife's expression, wondering why the heck her husband's suddenly driving so fast. We stopped playing cat and mouse with him as we drove into Ainsworth Hotsprings. It was alot more commercialized than what we had envisioned, so we road on.

[VictorEric]

DH5 (Kaslo - New Denver):
This quiet road started out with some wet patches and easy esses. The pavement went from fair to bad to perfect! at the last half. We took it easy at the beginning, but with fresh dry pavement, we found new confidence to gun it and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! This road is much better than DH1 IMHO, it's not as scenic, but there were nice twisties with no driveways! Like whipped cream for a good dessert, there were some tight hairpins at the end to finish things off.

We gassed up at New Denver and continued onto Nakusp. DH56 was nothing special; it has nice gentle corners and esses, but one worthy stop point would be Summit Lake. It's very pictureous and makes a good halfway break. We were zooming by too fast and didn't bother to stop. Fauquier is the stop point for the rope-tow ferry to cross the Lower Arrow Lake. Those of you making this route, make sure you gas up here because there's nothing else for 110kms and even then, it's a small hick town (Cherryville) where the only gas choice you have is Regular or Marked. You can as Mark about this because he chose not to take my advice on filling up.

[VictorEric]

DH2 (Needles - Vernon)
This is my favourite road of this whole trip and even the best stretch of road I've ever been on! It's a long 128km stretch of esses, tight twisties, and switchbacks. It was continuous left, right, left, right as my legs got a good workout. The pavement was fair-good and the road was quiet with very few cars. There's even some rolling hills for that special sense of surprise.

At Vernon, we decided to cut the trip short and compress it to a 2-day ride. Originally, we were going to do Spences Bridge and tag on the Duffy Lake road, but seeing how much fun we've had already, plus our asses told us it's time to go home.

DH11 (Veron - Kelowna)
I've never been on this road before and what a treat it was! The pavement was fair and there were more cars then the previous roads we were on. It had nice continuous twisties often tighter than you think. There's a beautiful view looking down onto Okangan Lake, however, the twisties comes up so quick that you should becareful not to get distracted by the view for too long. The view is gorgeous when the road is high up in the mountains, but I can see it being scary for those afraid of heights, especially when by the time your eyes are back on the road, the road has turned already and you may not be ready for it.
Mark managed to find an older BMW 325 to chase around with. It was doing a good job keeping up to him until we road into a little rain cloud. That's when we stopped and put on our raingear. Sure enough, after a few kilometers with the rain gear out, it was sun again.

[VictorEric]

As we got to Merritt, we decided to take the good ol' 5A back into Manning Park and then home. There's nothing much to report for this section as most of you know it well and these posts are getting really long. All and all it was a good 2-day ride and definitely recommended. We even managed to find Mark a few sheep pastures. :roflmao

[FLAX]

Eric:
Beautifully presented thread. Next time I will abandon ship and tag along.
Dana

[Hiroki]

Wow man great ride! :thumbup

[adamantium]

Very good read Eric, thanks for sharing.

[greenboy]

Eric,

Good read, thanks for sharing. Needles to Vernon, hmm ... I have driven some of the route around Arrow Lake and Nakusp before many years ago, by car, and I remember the roads being a lot of fun.

BTW am I color blind or is that someone else's bike you were on?

Steve

[SpideRider]

Nicely written Eric, but I personally have to disagree with you about DH1. I loved that road and didn't notice as much bad pavement as you guys listed. Since I rode it only a couple months back, I doubt the roadway could have deteriorated that quickly. I guess it's just a matter of perception. :D
Glad you're home safe!

[Danimal]

WTF is DH1, DH60, DH5?
Dumb Highway?
Dingo Hate (your baby) :roflmao
Dog Humper
Dangerous Hat
Damp Hands?

[VictorEric]

Eric,

Good read, thanks for sharing. Needles to Vernon, hmm ... I have driven some of the route around Arrow Lake and Nakusp before many years ago, by car, and I remember the roads being a lot of fun.

BTW am I color blind or is that someone else's bike you were on?

Steve

Yeah you better check your eyes. :p

I couldn't get the saddle bags around my undertail since I removed it and my buddy's bike needed to be broken in to.

[VictorEric]

Nicely written Eric, but I personally have to disagree with you about DH1. I loved that road and didn't notice as much bad pavement as you guys listed. Since I rode it only a couple months back, I doubt the roadway could have deteriorated that quickly. I guess it's just a matter of perception. :D
Glad you're home safe!

It's not so much the pavement as it was fair, but the fact that there were so many resort establishments with driveways and people walking that called for a more "calm" ride than what we had wanted. I guess to add to that was the wet patches on the rode as it had not fully dried out.

[VictorEric]

WTF is DH1, DH60, DH5?
Dumb Highway?
Dingo Hate (your baby) :roflmao
Dog Humper
Dangerous Hat
Damp Hands?

:roflmao
DH stands for Destination Highway. It's a book full of road reviews from a motorcyclist's perspective. The numbers are the ratings for these roads.

[Danimal]

hahaha..I know, just trying to spice up my morning with a lil laughter

[Dark()Knight]

Nice Job Eric :thumbup:thumbup
definitely going to have to do it again.

[scooter]

Yeah! that Kootenay area is motorcycle heaven. I like the road between Kaslo and New Denver along the river.

Scooter

[Lar]

sounds like you guys had a good trip, we just did almost the same trip the week before sportbike west and rode in the pouring rain for 2 days straight. i wanted to do the dh1 but there was a mud slide on the morning we were going to head that way so we didnt go, now that you said it wasnt that great im not too disappointed that we didnt make it.

heh, we laughed when we saw the dont crash sign spray painted on the concrete divider, we were going too slow in the rain for it to matter to us.

did you happen to notice the powerline cables that they had streched across the lake at a few points? they started way up on these mountains and streched for what looked like miles across these lakes, the weight of the cables must have been tremendous cause they sagged so much going that far across that it looked like they could touch the water.

how did you like all the seal coat from nakusp 3/4 of the way to the ferry? may as well have been a gravel road.

if your going to stop in nakusp sometime, theres a little pub downtown called wylies, kinda cool place, food was pretty good also.

[VictorEric]

how did you like all the seal coat from nakusp 3/4 of the way to the ferry? may as well have been a gravel road.

if your going to stop in nakusp sometime, theres a little pub downtown called wylies, kinda cool place, food was pretty good also.

Hated the #6 from Nakusp. There was a layer of fog when we were riding it, we didn't know if it was morning mist or gravel dust?! Although, we did see an indian teepee along the river. Very cool. :)