Back in the summer of 2017 we set out on a road trip, direction: North.
We traveled the iconic Alaska Highway, saw the gold rush town of Dawson City, drove the Dempster Highway and came within two hundred kilometers of the Arctic Circle before heading South again. We also lost a wheel, saw more bears than we could count (we stopped at 40), checked out the largest, road accessible glacier in the world, and drank a cocktail with a dead toe in it.
I hope what follows can be of some help if you're planning a trip up North yourself.
Melanie, her brother, my cousin, my brother and myself started out in Calgary, and also did Southern BC and Alberta. For this post I'll start and end the itinerary in Prince George, however, the gateway to Northern British Columbia, and focus on Northern BC and the Yukon. Don't worry, we'll talk about the other regions in future posts.
Here's a google map of the trip, so you can follow along.
The green line represents our route, approximately 5300 km long, the grey lines are side-trips or extensions that would be worth looking into, and that I wish we did; I'll mention those when they are relevant.
Prince George to The Alaska Highway
Maybe you came from Vancouver, maybe you visited the Rocky Mountain parks of Banff and Jasper, either way, Prince George is your gateway to the North; it has all the amenities you need, a decent sized airport with great connections from Vancouver and makes for a great starting and ending point for a beautiful loop through the North..
If you come in from the East, Ancient Forest/Chun T'oj Whudujut Provincial Park and Protected Area is a nice stop on highway 16, about an hour before you get to the town. This park protects a portion of one of the only inland temperate rainforests in the world. Some of the trees here are over a thousand years old, and their sheer size can only be understood when standing right next to them.
The Ancient Forest along highway 16
Prince George is the largest city of Northern British Columbia, but take that with a grain of salt; the population is under 100,000, and it feels more like a town than a city.
It sits at the confluence of the Fraser and Nechako Rivers, and the crossroads of highway 16 and 97. It's the latter we continued our journey on, due North.
There is a multitude of great excursions and side trips to be had in this area, but we drove straight through, towards the one and only Alaska Highway.
However, if you do have a bit more time to explore this area; Fort Saint James, a former fur trading post and now a national historic site, is an interesting side trip. Tumbler Ridge, situated in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, is worth visiting too (check out the interesting "Shipyard Titanic" rock formations). Nearby Monkman Provincial park would also be a beautiful stop, with Kinuseo Falls as a highlight.
In Chetwynd, we left Hwy 97 for 29, as the sun was setting, a fiery red ball piercing through a sky heavy with wildfire smoke, a sight that's becoming all too familiar for our North American summers.
We pitched our tents for the night along Moberly Lake, and finished the day with a very refreshing, after-sunset, swim.
The next day we followed Hwy 29 through the rolling prairies alongside the Peace River, until we finally reached the famed Alaska Highway.
The Alaska Highway
One of North America's most legendary wilderness drives, the Alaska highway is a mythical road-trip, and even though it's been paved over the years, it remains an incredible adventure.
The Alaska Highway runs from Dawson Creek, BC to Delta Junction, Alaska. It was built in an incredible effort during the summer of 1942, as a US army supply line. The original muddy route measured around 2700 km, but it has continually been reworked and improved to the current paved road, clocking in at 2200 km.
It's hard to fathom exactly how wild this place is. I'd driven some roads that could be considered isolated, before, but nothing compared to this. There are stretches on this highway where, other than the road itself and the sparse opposing traffic, you don't encounter a sign of human presence for hundreds of kilometers. The wilderness stretching out, to either side of the road, sometimes bigger than the entire state of California.
Make no mistake about it, this is a wilderness drive. It left a long lasting impression on me, and I'm sure I will be back, to drive the highway in its entirety, into Alaska.
Fort St. John to Fort Nelson
We skipped the official start of the highway in Dawson Creek, instead joining in around Fort St. John, as mentioned above.
The first part, up to Fort Nelson, is fairly flat, mostly surrounded by rolling hills, covered in a never-ending forest. Bears, moose, foxes and other wildlife are common here, as they are along the entire drive, and it didn't take long for us to spot our first bear. It wouldn't be our last either, we stopped keeping count after a while, but over the whole trip we must've seen at least fifty bears, with as much as nine in a single day. I wasn't lying when I said it was a wilderness drive.
Fort Nelson to Stone Mountain and Muncho Lake: The Northern Rockies
I'll mention a great side trip here, straight away. From Fort Nelson you can take the Liard Highway North towards for Liard and Fort Simpson, this will get you as close as you can get to the incredible Nahanni National Park and Reserve, top of the bucket list for me. The park has no roads, but is famed for river expeditions along the might Nahanni river as well as great hiking.
Once you pass the small community of Fort Nelson, surrounded by Boreal Forest, the landscape starts to change; the hills grow a little taller, and soon you'll catch a first glimpse of the Northern Rockies.
And then, abruptly, as you enter Stone Mountain Provincial Park, the hills give way to the weathered peaks of the Northern terminus of North America's greatest mountain range.
This place was one of my favorites of the trip, and I highly recommend camping at the Summit Lake campground. We arrived quite late, but still went for a bit of a walk around the campground, admiring the unique landscape we found ourselves in, while my crazy brother, brother-in-law and cousin went for a dip in the ice cold, blue water. Rather them than me, I suppose...
The wind was brutal when we arrived, and made for quite the challenge pitching our tent, howling well into the night, but the next morning we woke up to a perfectly still lake, pristine reflections, and a beautiful sunrise
After a good breakfast, we decided to go for a hike up to Summit Peak, officially named Mt. St. Paul. It's labeled as a 5 km return trip, but we continued along the ridge to the next peak and followed a river bed down, to make it a longer loop.
This hike will take you up a ridge that, essentially, sits at the edge of the mountains, meaning that on one side, you'll see Summit Lake and the peaks of the Northern Rockies, while on the other, you'll see rolling hills and forest, for as far as the eye can see. All this and not a human in sight. This is one of those places that will leave you feeling very, very small.
Another cool trail here would be the Flower Springs Lake trail.
After the hike, we continued on our way. Having only spent a day here, I know I will be back.
The road snaked its way through the Northern Rockies to, what many consider, one of BC's most beautiful lakes. Muncho Lake is situated in a long valley at the Northern terminus of the Rocky Mountains, surrounded by jagged peaks who's sediments, washing out into the lake with rain and spring melt water, give the lake its grayish-blue color.
There is a campground on either end of the lake, and there is a lodge as well (famous for back-country floatplane fishing tours), but that's really all there is. We just ended up doing a little sightseeing, spending the night, and packing up. If I could do this trip over again, I would definitely spend more time in this beautiful area, but it seems like that's true for a great many places we saw on this journey.
Liard Hot Springs to Whitehorse
Less than one hour past Muncho Lake you'll get to Liard Hot Springs, arguably the most famous stop on the entire Alaska Highway, and for good reason. These are incredible natural hot springs that have been developed in a very tasteful way, that only adds to the experience, and there's an attached provincial park campground.
The natural pool is enormous and is roughly divided in a hotter and slightly colder section, the latter continues down a little creek that you can explore further down.
This place is a must-do. Pause, relax, unwind and recharge here, you won't regret it.
We enjoyed this place so much that I forgot to take a single photo, so I'll link one here that isn't mine:
Moose and black bears are very common in this area, but there's one animal in particular that roams around these parts; Wood Buffalo/Bison. They are bigger than plain bison, which makes them the heaviest, living land animals in North America. Once you stumble upon them, they'll stop you dead in your tracks, that's how impressive they are. Well, that and, you'll often find them chilling on the middle of the road, so I guess you'd better ...
Sadly we couldn't soak in the heavenly waters of Liard Hot Springs forever, so on we went, less than three hours to Watson Lake, finally crossing into the Yukon.
There's one thing Watson Lake is known for, so we had to check it out on our way through; the Signpost Forest. It was started by a homesick soldier, Carl K. Lindley, in 1942. He was assigned light duty while recovering from an injury and erected the signpost for his hometown: Danville, Ill. 2835 miles. It has been accumulating signs ever since; there's over 80.000 signs already, and you could put yours up too, if you'd like.
After a quick stroll between the signs and grabbing some food we continued towards Whitehorse.
We saw a cute little fox, somewhere along the way, and did I mention bears? Lots of bears.
We stocked up on groceries, hit up the (inevitable) local Timmies (Tim Hortons is a Canadian coffee/sandwich/donut chain, founded by a former hockey player, for those of you who aren't familiar), and basically skipped town after that. I'm sure there's tons more to do around here, but it is also the major hub for the Yukon and has a fairly big airport, which makes flying here pretty easy from major Canadian cities, in case we'd want to come back in the future.
We set up camp at the Takhini Hot Springs just outside of Whitehorse for the night. These are natural hot springs that have been developed and made into outdoor swimming pools, nothing special when you've just experienced Liard, but a fun place nonetheless, to relax and spend the night.
Haines Junction and Kluane National Park
Ah, Kluane... What can I say about this place... We didn't even scratch the surface, as for so many places on this trip I wish we had more time, especially because the weather was not in our favor during the two days we spent here.
Kluane is wild, impressive, big, unforgiving, and undeniably beautiful. If only we'd seen more of it! It's home to Canada's highest peak, the massive Mt Logan, standing tall at 5959 meters (19.550 feet ...!), making it the second highest peak in North America. Logan is believed to have the largest base circumference of any non-volcanic mountain on Earth, including a massif with eleven peaks over 5,000 meters. For this reason it is considered the largest mountain on Earth. The coolest thing? It's still growing, due to active tectonic uplifting.
Kluane is also home to the world's largest non-polar ice-field. The ice has a thickness of almost a kilometer in some places. It's wild.
Part of what makes it so wild is the fact that there are no roads in Kluane, the Alaska Highway passes to the North and in Haines Junction Highway 3 cuts off and passes along its East side.
There's a few hiking trails that go into the park, including multi-day ones, but none of them even coming close to the park's core; Mount Logan is never even visible from the road,, at least by my knowledge.
The best way to experience the vastness of this park and the scale of its Mountains, would probably be by air, judging by the multitude of plane tours offered and advertised in Haines Junction and Whitehorse (that, or a multi-day excursion into the back-country). Sadly, for the five of us, this was not within our budget, but if you're ever going to do a plane tour, it would be hard to find a better location. I'll say it again: one day I'll be back for it.
That being said, there is some amazing hiking to be had within this park, some of the trails go deep into the back-country and would make for a beautiful wilderness experience. It's definitely a place you can just dedicate a week or two towards, to truly experience it.
Haines Junction is a good 2 hour drive from Whitehorse, and it's the gateway to the Park. There's a really nice interpretive center, a few restaurants, lodging, and really not much more.
We camped just South of Haines Junction, at the Eastern border of the park, by Kathleen Lake.
Our original plan was to hike King's Throne the next day, but the weather did not cooperate, with a dense layer of low clouds covering the landscape, hiding the mountains and subsequently ruining our chances of those great mountain views we were after.
So we opted to try and find this ice-cave we'd heard about, instead, located at the toe of a glacier at the northern edge of Kluane National Park.
We researched it online, and with some vague instructions, we set out to find it. This proved harder than we thought, and after half an hour driving up and down the stretch of the Alaska Highway where the trail-head was supposedly marked by a small piece of tape, we decided to drive the few kilometers back to Haines and ask a local for advice. The first place we stopped pointed us in the direction of a nearby lodge, so that's where we went.
The lodge (it has changed owners now) was owned by a very 'interesting' Norwegian man, with possibly the most peculiar and high pitched laugh I've ever heard. After a slightly awkward, but entertaining, conversation, he offered to show us where the trailhead was (although not after offering us all a beer, it was 10 am so we politely declined). With his help we were finally able to start our hike.
I'm not sure if the ice cave is still there to this date, 2 years later, but if you'd like to find out, it's actually quite easy to find your own trail if you cant find the trail-head. I've marked the location of the ice cave on the map at the top of this article. Essentially, all you have to do is park your car on the side of the road, where the river that starts at the ice-cave comes closest to the Alaska Highway. You would then make your way through the bush and follow the river bed all the way up. Do this at your own risk though; a melting ice-cave can never be considered very safe.
I should mention here some great side trips from the Whitehorse and Haines Junction region: Skagway, Atlin and Carcross (with a mini desert!) are worthwhile excursions, and the region offers great hiking.
Dawson City
We backtracked towards Whitehorse, this is where we left the Alaska Highway, and headed North on the Klondike Highway, forever associated with the gold rush of 1898, towards the iconic gold rush town of Dawson City.
Dawson City, with a population of around 1400, is the second largest town in the Yukon. ( doesn't that just put things in perspective?) The city was build on the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers, it used to be a First Nations camp, until gold was discovered. Starting in 1896, the Klondike Gold Rush transformed the camp into a bustling city of 40.000 people by the year 1898. By 1899, the gold rush had ended, and the town population plummeted as fast as it had risen, just 3 years earlier; only 8000 people remained, and by 1902 that number had further decreased to below 5000.
After World War II, when the Alaska Highway bypassed the town by 500 km, the population dropped even more, going as low as 700, and Whitehorse replaced Dawson as the territorial capital.
These days, the population is stable and the town is quite lively, thanks to steady mining operations and tourism.
Many of the buildings in Dawson were hastily erected on permafrost foundations, and with the permafrost melting, some of them sunk in, giving them that characteristic, crooked look.
We stayed two nights in Dawson, one before our excursion to the Dempster Highway and Tombstone Territorial Park, and one after. On both occasions we headed down to Diamond Tooth Gertie's Gambling Hall, sort of an old-time saloon/casino, that hosts live shows. We didn't partake in the games, but enjoyed a few cold beverages and the entertaining shows (one of the singers bears a remarkable resemblance to Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau). The first night we continued the evening at the bar of the New Westminster Hotel, with some of the locals and even artists from the show, for what would make quite the interesting night, but I'll save you the details. What I will say, though, is that it's really just a weird feeling, when you're walking the streets at 2 am, and it's still light out. The midnight sun is truly something you have to experience for yourself.
We also drank the famous sourtoe cocktail - a shot with a dead, frostbitten, human toe in it. You have to let the toe touch your lips ( “You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips have gotta touch the toe” ) to become part of the Sourtoe Cocktail club and get your own certificate from the captain.
The origin of this strange custom? According to dawsoncity.ca:
"The legend of the first “sourtoe” dates back to the 1920’s and features a feisty rum-runner named Louie Linken and his brother Otto. During one of their cross-border deliveries, they ran into an awful blizzard. In an effort to help direct his dog team, Louie stepped off the sled and into some icy overflow—soaking his foot thoroughly.
Fearing that the police were on their trail, they continued on their journey. Unfortunately, the prolonged exposure to the cold caused Louie’s big toe to be frozen solid. To prevent gangrene, the faithful Otto performed the amputation using a woodcutting axe (and some overproof rum for anesthesia). To commemorate this moment, the brothers preserved the toe in a jar of alcohol.
Years later, while cleaning out an abandoned cabin, the toe was discovered by Captain Dick Stevenson. After conferring with friends, the Sourtoe Cocktail Club was established and the rules developed. Since its inception, the club has acquired (by donation) over 10 toes."
Food tip: Klondike Kate's (the blue cheese and jam burger was one of the best burgers I've ever had)
Tombstone Territorial Park and The Dempster Highway
There's no place along this trip that I would rather visit again than Tombstone, and that's saying a lot.
Tombstone Territorial Park is a unique and incredibly beautiful place, with rugged peaks and abundant wildlife. It's located along the Dempster Highway, only 50 km from its starting point.
Let me give you a quick introduction, if you've never heard of the Demspter Highway before.
The Dempster Highway is the only all weather route in Canada, that can take you all the way to the Arctic Ocean. It starts just South of Dawson City, as a turnoff on the Klondike Highway.
It's an unpaved, 740 km long bucket list drive, offering incredible landscape and wildlife viewing and one of the most unique road trip experiences anywhere. It crosses into the Northwest Territories to reach Inuvik, and from there you can go all the way North to the Arctic Ocean.
On this trip we only drove the first 50 or 60 kilometers of it, but it was more than enough to know that one day we'll do it all. If you have the extra time, it would absolutely be worth it to take the trip and head all the way up, quite possible the most unique drive you'll ever take.
But, as I mentioned before, we limited our visit to Tombstone Territorial Park.
Tombstone has a beautiful interpretive center that offers lots of information and history on the region, and the employees are extremely knowledgeable on the area.
The back-country is really where Tombstone shines brightest, it offers incredible backpacking and hike-in campgrounds. Our plan was to hike to Grizzly Lake, an 11 km trail that could technically be done in one day, making for a total of 22 km. But there is a campsite at Grizzly Lake we wanted to stay at, and we wanted to use the extra time to explore the area a bit more. That's where we had our first setback; we went to register at the interpretive center and they informed us the campground was booked full for the night. A few years ago this almost never happened, even though there's only 10 sites, but nowadays Tombstone gets a lot more visitors; it's far from crowded, but reservations are necessary.
No big deal, we would just tackle the 22 km in one day instead, still making the most of it. We set out on the trail, under progressively darker skies, and were able to make it up to this viewpoint (photo just below), right before the clouds really came in and it started pouring relentlessly. We decided to backtrack to our car, since we only just started the hike, and we weren't keen on a 22 km hike with obstructed views, in the rain. I guess, once again, we'll just have to come back another time.
The Stewart-Cassiar Highway
Back down the Klondike we went, to Whitehorse, once more stopping for groceries and Timmie's, before backtracking even further to Watson Lake, or almost at least. Just before getting to the town we turned South to get on the Stewart-Cassiar Highway, the other road, besides the Alaska Highway, connecting Southern Canada to the Yukon (And secretly, I think this one might be even more beautiful than the Alaska Highway).
The Highway is named after the towns of Cassiar and Stewart, which used to be the main places serviced by the road. Cassiar is a former asbestos mining site, turned ghost town and Stewart was a thriving mining center and port. Mining still continues to this day around Stewart, its Canada's most northerly ice-free port and has been named a World Port. Nowadays Stewart is a popular (relatively, it's still Northern BC) tourist destination as well. We'll get to that later.
Here's a really beautiful video by Absolute Cinema to get you excited for this part: https://vimeo.com/193969644
Boya Lake
Our first stop on the Stewart Cassiar Highway would be Boya Lake. This place has been called the Caribbean of the North, with its blue waters and white sandy bottoms, it's truly a little slice of heaven, an oasis in the North.
We set up camp here around noon and went for a paddle. There are canoes and kayaks available for rent at the campground, through the honor system, meaning you can take one and are trusted to deposit the correct amount in a little box.
We drifted through the beautiful blue waters between the many small islands of Boya Lake for a few hours, saw a huge beaver dam that raised the water level by at least a meter on one side, and our appreciation for this place only grew.
The one thing you grow to appreciate most in these wild, northerly places is the solitude and the silence it brings; true silence, no humming of cities or highways in the distance, just you and the sounds of nature around.
After our paddle we went for a swim in the warm (yes warm!) turquoise waters before heading back to our camp and starting dinner.
Make sure to stop here if you're ever passing through!
Dease Lake
The next morning we hit the road again, totally disconnected from the outside world; there is no cell service for about 1000 kilometers here, a rarity in today's connected world...
Every now and then you pass a small sign of civilization, some abandoned buildings, a few small settlements, but there's no Tim Hortons here for a long while.
One of these spots we passed was Jade City, an interesting little spot you might've heard of through Discovery Channel. About 90% of the world's Jade originates here. We stopped for a bit and admired the stones in the little store before continuing south.
Intermission: Public safety announcement - Please don't only check your tire pressure on long road trips, re-tighten your wheel bolts every now and then too!
I wish someone had told us to... Somewhere halfway between Jade City and Dease Lake our car started shaking, we slowed down, thinking the road might be the issue, but within a few seconds the shaking intensified. Definitely not the road. We tried to stop but before we could, the left rear side of our car dropped, and our entire left rear wheel came rolling past us and onto the other side of the road. We managed to get the car to the side of the road, before coming to a complete stop.
Now if you remembered the part about no cell service... Not exactly the place you'd want to break down...
I ended up hitchhiking the hour and half back to Jade City with a friendly traveler, The people at the shop told me about a mechanic in Dease Lake (basically the midpoint of the Stewart-Cassiar Highway), who owns the only tow-truck around. I used their landline to call and the friendly gentleman who brought me to Jade City drove me all the way back to our crash site, where we would wait for the tow-truck to arrive from the opposite direction.
The car was towed to the shop and as expected there was quite a bit of damage, the rim and the shock, which took most of the impact, both had to be replaced. But, being the remote place that it is, Dease Lake only gets a delivery truck once a week, that meant we had to wait a minimum of 4 days until the next truck arrived.
We were dropped of at the only campground in the small town, about a 5 minute walk from the only gas station with the only grocery store and "restaurant" (good poutine though) in town.
It would be the start of 4 long days without a car, and nowhere close enough to go on foot, other than the gas station/town hub.
While the areas surrounding Dease Lake look very interesting and full of promise for travelers, the town and its immediate surroundings were not. We ended up walking all the way to Dease Lake (the actual lake) and back one day, going for a swim and watching a float plane take off, making it the highlight of our time in Dease Lake (the town).
Because of this four day delay, we had to give up on our plans of a side trip from Dease Lake to Telegraph Creek at the confluence of Telegraph Creek and the Stikine River. This would make for a beautiful drive along the steep walls of the Stikine River, but alas.
Mt Edziza Provincial Park would be another very interesting destination in this area; remote, spectacular, volcanic landscapes waiting to be explored; as well as the Spatsizi wilderness to the East. More trip ideas for another time, as if there weren't enough of those already.
We got back on the road after our forced four-day break, which, sadly, forced us to spend much less time exploring other places along Hwy 37 than we'd hoped for.
Some great areas to stop and explore would be:
Iskut
Kinaskan Lake
Bell II
Meziadin Junction and Stewart
Meziadin Junction is where Highway 37A splits of the Stewart-Cassiar highway towards Stewart. There is a great campground at Meziadin Lake as well.
Highway 37A is a gorgeous drive through some of the most beautiful landscapes in the province. It only takes an hour, without stops, but I could see it taking much longer. You're surrounded by steep glaciated peaks, lush forests and cascading waterfalls, more often than not shrouded in layers of mysterious, drifting fog, that will make you want to pull over after every corner.
Stewart itself is a charming little town, surrounded by even more breathtaking natural beauty, that definitely deserved more of our time. Time, however, that we didn't have this time around. After a quick stop for some gas and groceries we continued and crossed into Alaska for the day.
Hyder, Alaska and the Salmon Glacier
When I say for the day, I'm really exaggerating; we did cross into Alaska, but after a few kilometers, the road bends back into Canada, before reaching a dead end (and there's no turn-off's either).
Right after crossing into Alaska you enter Hyder.
Hyder is a small ghost town, cut off from the rest of Alaska by miles and miles of wilderness.
Nowadays most people visit to watch the grizzlies catch fish at the Fish Creek Wildlife Observation site. We waited around for quite a while but weren't as lucky as the people who'd been here earlier in the day and saw some bears. Because we saw more than our fair share of bears on this trip already, we decided not to keep waiting and head on, further down the dead end road, leading back into BC, towards the Salmon Glacier.
The Salmon Glacier, the fifth largest glacier in Canada and the largest road accessible glacier in the world, was one of those places I'd been looking forward to seeing for a long time, but as seems to have been the theme on this trip, we didn't exactly get lucky with perfect conditions. When we made our way up the dirt road towards the glacier, and visibility decreased dramatically, we were literally driving in the clouds. Our hopes of seeing the glacier were low, as we couldn't even see 5 meters in front of us. We did, however, catch glimpses through openings in the clouds, and even in those brief instants the glacier looked impressive. After waiting for a while at the main viewing area, we drove a little further, and, because we reached lower elevations, we were lucky enough to dip beneath the cloud cover and see more of the mighty Salmon Glacier. I can only imagine the view on a clear day.
Remember to bring your passport for this leg of the trip, as you are crossing a border! And while there is no longer an American border control, the (obsolete) Canadian one is still there upon re-entering Canada.
Back to Prince George
The Nass Valley, Kitselas, Kitwanga and the First Nations culture along the Southern portion of highway 37 are worth looking into, and offer plenty of worthwhile excursions if you have the time.
Wildlife is still ever present in this region, and around every corner another adventure is waiting, but for us this meant the end of this particular portion of our adventure, and we made our way back to Prince George.
Alternative Ending: Terrace - Prince Rupert and the Inside Passage to Vancouver Island.
An incredible continuation of this trip would be to head West on Hwy 16 at the end of the Stewart-Cassiar Highway, towards Prince Rupert. With stops such as Seven Sisters Provincial Park, Terrace, Kitimat and Skeena on the way, this would be a beautiful drive.
Prince Rupert offers its own wealth of opportunities, none the least of which would be the Inside Passage. The Inside Passage is a 15 hour ferry ride, from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island, that takes you along 500 kilometers of incredible BC coastline. Whales, eagles, sea lions and other wildlife are regularly spotted along the way, and the scenery is unforgettable.
Once on Vancouver Island, you can explore what it has to offer, with places such as the West Coast Trail and Tofino drawing visitors from all over the world, or you can continue down to Victoria (BC's capital) or Nanaimo and take a short ferry to Vancouver.
Feel free to comment below if you have any questions about our trip or if you're thinking of doing it yourself!
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That's it for now! Thanks for reading!
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