Sunday Sep 1 Sunny & hot Hope, BC
Our girlfriend Donna arrives today from the lower mainland. We last saw Donna when we visited Victoria back in April. It will be really nice to see her again.
Donna arrived about 1 p.m. We chatted for a while and had some lunch. I asked Donna if she was interested in walking the Quintette Tunnels just a short distance east of Hope. These dramatic series of tunnels were blasted/carved from sheer rock—truly amazing—at the start of the Kettle Valley Railway.
What else was amazing were the number of people! We were surprised but not deterred.
The sheer enormity of the rock on either side of the rail trail was jaw dropping.
We just couldn't fathom how one would go about surveying this route way back when with these unsurmountable hunks of stone absolutely everywhere. I guess the river "route" must have helped to some degree.
Here's Donna gazing at the beauty surrounding us.
We continued walking the trail and what seemed like a short time later, we came across this signboard.
Okay, it looks like it's decision time. Do we want to walk back to the parking lot through the crush of people, or take the route up the hill back to the parking lot?
We decided on the latter so off we went, climbing, climbing, climbing up to the viewpoint.
We continued our climb occasionally passing a few hardy souls coming the other way.
These pictures don't do the trail justice. It was steep and sometimes treacherous underfoot—lots of roots and rocks.
When we arrived at this signpost I checked our elevation...
From the parking lot, we'd climbed 179 m (582'). We were surprised but we had climbed pretty steadily all the way up. Perhaps my compass app on my phone was not telling us the truth. Who knows.
It was a great walk with a great lady. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
Tomorrow Donna has to head back home. Join us then to see what we get up to.
