British Columbia’s “Tail of the Dragon”

December 23, 2021 by touring03 2 Comments

Kaslo to New Denver

The south end of British Columbia provides Western Canadian riders with some of the best riding in the country. There are many multi day trips that can be taken like the “Kelowna Loop”, Kelowna north to the Trans Canada Highway, east to Revelstoke, south through the East Kootenays to Nelson, west on the Crowsnest Highway to Osoyoos then north back to Kelowna. This loop can be done in two days but three makes for a much more pleasurable experience.

One of my personal favorites is from the Hat Creek Ranch Historic site situated at the junction of highways 99 & 97 just north of Kamloops, you travel southwest to North Vancouver via highway 99, this route takes you through high elevation ranch country, narrow rock canyons and past mountain streams and lakes. At one time the road was too rough for fancy Vancouver automobiles and motorhomes and seven wooden deck one lane bridges added a real New Zealand flavor to the trip. Over the years flooding wiped out all but one of the wooden deck bridges and a major upgrade and new asphalt project has made the road accessible to the fanciest of automobiles. Ride it mid week if you can and you’ll have it mostly to yourself.

Even though there’s lots of great riding in British Columbia, the road with the “big reputation” is highway 31a between Kaslo and New Denver. This road has sections of scenic easy riding interspersed with sections of tight tricky corners and some of the corners are “off camber”, these sections will take all your skill and concentration to safely navigate “at speed”.

British Columbia has a great variety of roads for motorcyclists, whether your focus is touring or you like to rip it up a little there’s roads to accommodate and challenge you.