1. Register
2. Login

Honorable mention
 A Winter Trip
 Larry Carter

Reading all the whining posts regarding heat, or the lack thereof reminds me of a trip I took with my friend Tony Smith to recover his broken down 72 Triumph TR6 (motorcycle) from Medecine Hat Alberta. This happened in 76.

I had a 69 VW van, nothing special, only one seat in the back, usual poor heat, it was January. The weather was pretty mild when we set out from Vancouver Island, the miles passed easily. As we went farther east it got colder and colder, crossing the rockies was no problem. We wrapped ourselves up in army blankets and rolled along, finally arriving on the second day, driving in shifts.

Tony had to visit all over Medicine Hat as friends and aquaintences insisted on showing us their motorcycles, and winter motorcycle rebuilding projects, and partied hearty with all the outlaw types there. We located his motorcycle and loaded it into the van, it was so long that the front wheel was between the front seats, with the rear wheel high on the hump to the right. We had to take the back seat out to fit the bike in.

The plan was to drive in shifts all the way back, about a thousand miles, with one sleeping while the other drives. Then winter hit, the temperature dropped below -35 and after reaching Calgary it started to snow. By this time all the tires were pretty bald, so we stopped and put our spare on the left rear, as it had more tread then the ones that had taken us this far.

There was a hill west of Calgary that very few cars could climb, making it up about 7/8 of the way then sliding out of control to the bottom. We sat and watched the performance for about an hour before we attempted it. By then most of the Bozos had given up, and a few had made it by staying hard to the right at the top. I wound it up from about a mile back, and slid helplessly back down twice before I finally made it with Tony pushing the last hundred feet. Once we were past that the highway was completely deserted.

As we gained altitude in the foothills the drifts got larger and larger across the highway, several times we stopped before attempting to blast through drifts that went right across the highway. We had the whole highway to ourselves, and drove on the wrong side for miles at a time, to avoid drifting snow, and to pick the best path up hills, using the shoulder for traction when nessessary.

We fueled up at Banff, and continued westward, against the advice of the people at the gas station. We saw the occasiional vehiclle, usually chained up, the road was a little better but because of the higher altitude it was quite a bit colder, with the occasional wind gust to contend with.

I can't remember how many times, during this stretch, that I lost control and slid helplessly down hills, and had to make 2 or 3 attempts to climb other hills, all the while freezing behind the wheel. We wrapped ourselves up in blankets, head to toe, covering the pedals. We tried to not direct our breath towards the windshield, to keep it from frosting over.

We made it as far as Lake Louise, where the Mounties stopped all traffic, east and west bound, while the army had some artillary pieces out to shoot down some potential avalanches. We had to wait there for more than 2 hours, and were in danger of freezing to the spot. The Mounties let us warm up in their vehicles, but that made it all the harder to get back into the VW. After 2 hours the Mounties were tired of us, and allowed us to continue westward. Of the group of 12 or so vehicles they had stopped, we were the only ones that attempted to continue. After we left them it was scary, eerie, and often terrifying.

We made it to the snow sheds to find the highways dept digging the entrances out, and blasting out of the other end to survey the landscape and guessing where the highway was under the snow. The most terrifying was a 4 mile, mostly out of control slide down into Golden I remember, from the trip east that most of the drop offs on this stretch of highway were not survivable, if I blew it. We warmed up in an A&W, and decided that whatever was ahead, it couldn't possibly be any worse than what we had already been through that day, so we fueled up and continued. That was another bad decision, the hundredth or so that day. Tony drove on from that point, within 25 miles I made him stop so that I could drive. His driving was terrifying me, and without the intermittant fear, of driving, to keep me warm, I just about froze.

We decided to stop in Revelstoke for the night, and after another 6 hours of frozen fear, with many near-misses and close calls, we made it to a motel in Revelstoke. I couldn't sleep, still seeing the highway zooming by. I had a long hot shower, and managed a couple hours of sleep.

We walked around Revelstoke the next day, and since the snow had stopped, we decided to press on. We had snow tires put on, and the rest of the trip was pretty much uneventful, We had a long slide coming into Hope, but managed to stay on the road.

Along the way we saw hundreds of abandoned cars, and trucks, some of them running, some overturned, and one overturned and running. We got Tony's bike back during the worst winter storm in ten years. When I checked out the bike, one of the points had loosened off and closed up. That was the only problem with the bike.

When people whine about the poor heat in their VW vans, I can't help but think back to that trip.