(The summit of Gray Creek Pass)
Gray Creek Pass billed as highest non-paved road in Canada
East Kootenay backroads offer adventure, scenery, hot springs
In the summer of 1990, an unlikely caravan of vehicles that included five chartered buses ground their way up a steep gravel resource road to celebrate the official opening of the Gray Creek Pass route in the East Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia.
The pass is billed as the highest non-paved road in Canada that directly links two communities, with grades of up to 16 per cent and topping out at 6,800 feet above sea level.
The entire route extends about 55 miles from tiny Gray Creek on the east side of Kootenay Lake to the City of Kimberley and forms a section of the Trans Canada Trail described as an “extremely arduous” wilderness journey. (https://trailsbc.ca/routes/gray-creek-pass/)
My nephew, Brian Pynn, attended the official ribbon cutting as a 20-year-old cub reporter for a local radio station. The station’s van — “normally associated with broadcasting the hot dog and donut giveaways at your local car dealership” — provided a microphone and loudspeaker for the day's festivities.
Today, Brian is back at Gray Creek, this time aboard a 2016 Moto Guzzi Stelvio 1200 NTX, determined to complete the journey to Kimberley — and beyond.
Just us and the elements this time around. I’m his uncle, riding a 2009 BMW F650GS.
(Photo op while headed up Gray Creek Pass)
Our ride up and over the pass is part of a larger trip totalling about 250 miles through the East Kootenay region, including natural hot springs and gravel logging roads lacing the Rocky Mountains.
Brian and I rendezvous in the Town of Creston, six miles north of the Canada-United States border at Porthill, Idaho. (I rode east from Vancouver Island, BC, and he west from Cochrane, Alberta.)
Highway 3A extends almost 50 miles north from Creston to Crawford Bay, hugging the eastern shore of Kootenay Lake and winding through the Purcell Mountains.
Highway 3A is rated #1 in BC by the motorcycle guide book, Destination Highways British Columbia. The rating takes into consideration twistiness, pavement, engineering, remoteness, scenery and character. “Take it from us, you won’t find a better riding experience anywhere in the province,” the book asserts.
We camp at Lockhart Beach Provincial Park, and the next morning continue to Gray Creek Store, just south of Crawford Bay, where a seasonal ferry connects to the west side of Kootenay Lake.
For all its hype during the 1990 opening, Gray Creek Pass today seems virtually forgotten. Not a single highway sign. People working in the store tell us to "turn at the cemetery sign.” Then they scrounge through a storage room to produce a souvenir T-shirt.
With no place to eat breakfast, we load up on snacks, and hit the road — turning at the cemetery sign, right at a T-intersection, and left onto the now-marked Gray Creek Pass Forest Service Road.
It is a bright sunny day in early September. Much of the province is choking on smoke from hundreds of wildfires, but here the air is sweet and the sky powder blue.
The gravel road is in good shape on the western side of the pass, graded annually by the BC Forests Ministry for recreation use. Maintain balance and avoid the larger rocks on sharp, banked turns.
The uphill spiral is surprisingly gradual, with no death-defying cliffs.
You’ve reached the top when you see the sign, Oliver Lake Recreation Site, on your right — the perfect place for a picnic lunch or to camp free beneath towering peaks.
(Oliver Lake atop Gray Creek Pass)
A sign-in register near the picnic table shows that visitors from as far away as the Czech Republic, England, Utah, and Washington State ventured this way in the last month.
One local couple commented without apparent complaint that the “marmots across the lake watched” as they had sex.
The stunningly beautiful lake is a short walk through the forest, which includes 400-year-old larches — a rare conifer that sheds its needles in fall. On the shoreline, we spot dozens of western toad tadpoles squirming their way through the shallow water.
During our stop, one man from Kimberley rides up on an ATV — the closest thing to a motorcycle we encounter on this route.
After Oliver Lake, the road begins its long descent to Kimberley.
The divide is so narrow that Tom Lymbery, owner of the Gray Creek Store, said he once came across golfers on the summit “who were shooting golf balls, and alternating shots from east to west.”
A fallen tree blocks the right side of the road, but that’s the least of our worries. The road is built from lower-quality pit-run material. Conditions deteriorate. Loose and exposed rocks require constant vigilance, especially on rougher, steeper sections.
(The descent from Gray Creek Pass towards Kimberly)
“Due to less industrial use and lower overall traffic counts, the east side is graded less frequently, and the grading can be less effective on rocky soils,” the forests ministry told me.
Lymbery says road maintenance has been a long-standing issue. “When construction of the new road was originally announced, BC Highways promised up to $25,000 annually for maintenance, but this never came through.”
The pass behind us, the road levels out and we encounter several miles of new road construction. Clouds of dust are so thick we can barely see the vehicle ahead. We pull over, take a break, and proceed when safe.
Pavement returns closer to Kimberley, where we have a great lunch on an outdoor patio at the Burrito Grill, then ride to our campsite in the Village of Canal Flats at the base of the Rocky Mountains. The only dinner option in town is En-JOY Home Cooking, which offers excellent pizza, boxed and easily strapped to the bike.
The next morning a smoky haze fills the air, our brief one-and-only encounter with wildfires during our journey.
We quickly put it behind us riding east along well-graded gravel on the Whiteswan Lake Forest Service Road.
But first, a soak in the free Lussier Hot Springs.
A short walk downhill from the parking lot leads to a series of small, shallow rock pools of varying temperatures beside the Lussier River. The experience is a natural tonic for mind and body. But this is no silent retreat. Expect to chat with locals and tourists alike in such closed quarters.
Thirty minutes later we are back on the bikes and continuing eastward. Traffic falls away and road conditions deteriorate, though not seriously, past Whiteswan Lake Provincial Park. (https://bcparks.ca/whiteswan-lake-park/ )
Soon we are riding alone, wending our way through remote stretches of the Rockies. Sure, there is evidence of logging as well as past forest fires, but the scenery is ruggedly spectacular — and not to be missed, far from the tourist crowds.
(Riding the backroads of the Rocky Mountains)
As we continue south on the Bull Creek Forest Service Road we spot evidence of fall hunting camps. The menu here includes Rocky Mountain elk, mule deer, mountain goat and black bear.
We stop to chat with a couple of hunters in their 30s. One shows us a photo on his cell phone of a buck successfully hunted on a bare patch of rock visible far away atop the mountain.
It took them 10 hours to haul the meat back to camp.
“What was the deer doing that far up?” I ask.
“Trying to avoid people like us,” is the answer.
Riders will find some excellent riverfront camp spots along the lower stretch of the Bull River, including 40 Mile Camp, another provincial recreation site, as well as some more undeveloped pull-in sites.
Before long we are back on pavement and headed south for Kikomun Creek Provincial Park, on the banks of Lake Koocanusa, a hydro-electric reservoir shared by BC and Montana under the Columbia River Treaty between Canada and the US.
Tomorrow, we part ways, but are already thinking of new backroads less travelled in this remarkable part of the world.