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UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2003 -- This area was devastated by wildfires and we know
that most, and possibly all, of these beautiful trestles were destroyed.
What heart breaking news! We happened to be in British Columbia during this time
and heard on the news the promise of the Provencal Government to replace these
treasured trestles, but to lose the original ones is so very sad. We sincerely
hope the restoration will begin immediately, it was a great tourist attraction. After
all, it drew us all the way from North Carolina and we considered the experience
well worth the trip.
Following is our experience when we rode this trail September 2001.
And what a fantastically beautiful trail! No wonder the Myra Canyon
area, with its 18 trestles and two tunnels, has been described
as the most spectacular section of the Kettle Valley Railway Trail.
We are in awe of the
engineer who, in the early 1900s,
surveyed and designed a railway system through canyons
with trestles so high
that it takes your breath away. Occasionally
my husband would would remind me "Don't look down!"; I didn't need
the warning!
We found the book Cycling the Kettle Valley Railway
by Dan and Sandra Langford to be a valuable source of information.
In fact, without this book and the maps it provided
we could not have found the trail. We inquired for directions
at our hotel in Kelowna and no one could provide them.
The only information they had was "There's BEARS up there!"
The book can be ordered from their web site,
Cycling the Kettle
Valley Railway or it can be
purchased at a Tourist Information Center, which is where we
found it.
We took Highway 33 from Kelowna and drove
up the mountain to the Okanagan Falls Forest Service Road,
which the trail
crosses, and began our ride there. It was approximately
10 miles to Myra Canyon. The trail surface was not the
best by any means; sometimes soft, sometimes rocky and some
of the mud holes were huge! But the surface improved
significantly as we approached the canyon and was
very good in that area.
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