CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A proper escape from Vancouver with roads worth waking up for. Out of Vancouver and back again: 925 km, roughly 11 h 53 in the saddle. On the way it passes Merritt and Okanagan. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Vancouver is one of those cities where the mountains feel close enough to touch from downtown. The North Shore peaks rise straight out of Burrard Inlet, the Lions Gate Bridge leaps across to them from Stanley Park, and on a clear day you can watch floatplanes take off over the harbour while snow still sits on the summits. It is a big, busy, expensive city, but for a rider it is above all a gateway: to the Sea-to-Sky Highway north, the Fraser Valley east, and, for these rides, the ferries across the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver Island.
Merritt likes to call itself the country music capital of Canada, and for years it hosted a big country music festival; the town is decorated with murals of country stars, and a walk of stars on the main street honours musicians who have played here. It is that kind of place: a ranching town in the Nicola Valley, in the dry interior of British Columbia, surrounded by grasslands, pine forests and low, rolling hills.
Ask anyone in the Okanagan about the lake and sooner or later they will mention Ogopogo, the serpent said to live in the deep waters of Okanagan Lake, a legend rooted in the Syilx stories of a lake spirit and kept alive with cheerful enthusiasm by the tourist trade. You are unlikely to see it, but the lake itself, long, narrow and deep blue between dry, pine-covered hills, is worth the trip anyway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.