Going to canada next month (if the BA stikes don't mess it up!).
we've hired an RV and I was hoping for some guidance on places to spend time in. Doing Vancouver for a few days and planning on van island for a day. We're looking at squamish, whistler, kamloops, pemberton maye Fernie, Nelson. Really hoping to get to Banff but that may be too far. I'm taking my bike (home!) but won't be riding all of the time (Mrs with me), looking to do some trail riding (5.5" bike), any recommendations on routes would also be appreciated. We are there for 3 weeks. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

the island is worth much more than a day, it's HUGE, you'll only really get to victoria and back in a day.

your schedule sounds a little ambitious for 3 weeks, we easily spent a week doing just the southern half of van island.

some pics here with a few place names http://michael-wright.fotopic.net/list_collections.php (bottom of the page days 2 to 8

Don't rush it and try and do too much, we drove from Whistler to banff with an overnight in Kamloops, but I could have taken much longer over it and stopped off to do some walks at some of the ranges we passed. The scenery is stunning around that area and everything you have heard about it is true, it's awesome! Can't wait to go back. Didn't do much riding over there though.

Banff is a nice place to visit.

Think we ended up flying to Calgary and driving from there. The main 'road' to Banff is some little twisty thing so don't overestimate your travelling times based on our motorways doing 70. Much of their roads are 55ish, as the police explained to me is because everyone is looking at the scenery and dangerous to drive any faster.

Oh, and we ended up doing 5mph behind a copper car who was following a bear meandering up our equivalent of the A1.

riding wise, use the bike shops, they'll point you in the right direction or invite you along on a shop ride. don't be frightened by the level of riding, they are far more relaxed about mixed ability groups than this country IME

Van Island is huge so you might want to spend more than a day there.

Fernie has a pretty cool bike park, plus an awesome network of XC trails around the valley.

Kicking Horse is also worth checking out, its enroute from Kamloops to Banff

However, I would be careful that you don't try an cram too much in. BC is huge. If you try and take in all the places that you mention you won't be doing much else but drive!

If were you I would do Vancouver, Van Island, Whistler. Banff is about a 12hour drive (in a car) from Whistler and Fernie is about the same but a different way.

If you're going to Kamloops then Banff isn't that much further, but you will need permits to park in any of the National Parks – Banff is in one, Jasper another; I think they're $20 a day

We went last summer but in hindsight could have planned it better. We flew into Calgary, had 5 nights in Canmore, just outside the Banff NP so no permit needed. Then 2 nights in Calgary for a wedding, then we drove west. Overnight stop after about 6 hourd drive in Kamloops, then on to Vancouver for 3 nights. Returned via Lake Louise for the final overnight stop before flying back from Calgary

Calgary to Canmore is about an hour's drive; Banff is about 20 minutes further
Calgary to Kamloops was about 6 hours
Kamloops to Vancouver should've been abou 3-4 hours but I went the high plains route, which added about an hour
Vancouver to Lake Louise was about 9 hours
Lake Louise to Calgary 2 hours

Squamish is great for varied trails you can ride to from town and guide yourself around – easy stuff to challenging double-black descents.
Whistler – defo worth a visit for a day and the cost of a lift ticket. Fun trails, as hard as you want them.
Nelson – great spot. Nice town with superb descents accessed by long climbs (or shuttling) up fire roads. Probably good xc stuff there too. There's a guide book you can buy – check the local bike shops.
Pemberton – some great descent here, and probably xc too.
Chilcotins – epic xc and all-mountian stuff. Plenty of bears. Warner Lake float-plane drop is a winner.
North Shore – ace fun, and it's not all skinnies.
In fact, it's all mint and you'll wish you had longer. Enjoy your trip.

My GF used to live in vancouver and always goes on about it, says banff is great and all the local area, the brother inlaw so to speak owns a place in Fernie and keeps going on about it being great which is why I've invited myself and the GF out there next year,enjoy your trip, mind the bears as they're all around his logde.

just finished looking back through all my pics form that trip

😥

We did 3 weeks in BC a couple of years back – using a RV (the 5th wheel type).
Travelled every 3rd/4th day so we got to see each area better than just whistling through.
Headed East from Vancouver, then North to Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper and then back to Vancouver via Whistler.
Book your camp spots well ahead as they get busy. Some are "one out/one in" so you need to be there before lunchtime.
Distances look huge, but if it's every 3rd or 4th day it's fine.
Very tired when we arrived, so stayed a couple of nights in Vancouver to get acclimatised, get used to the RV and look around the area. I didn't fancy a long drive after the flight and getting taught all the drainage/filling procedures for the RV.

We loved it and will do it again.

Thanks for that, it's difficult to get an idea of the scale of the place. My head is spinning! So many great places, which ones to miss out?
May need to do some rethinking.
How's this;
Week 1; vancouver, van island, squamish
Week 2; whistler, Pemberton, Chilcotin
Week 3; Lilloet, Kamloops, Hope?
A bit more realistic?

i'd say you're best (if you have the RV already) camping up on the north shore somewhere and getting the river bus to van for day visits. the camping around the city wasn't exactly that inspiring

druidh – i'd love to see some pics of the fifth wheel camper, we had dinner in one with some fellow tourists and it was awesome

6 weeks till we go. Victoria and Banff flying between, i did drive last time i visited but it took ages and was a bit of a waste of time apart from the scenery.
Really looking forward to Victoria Island and biking myself into a state of blissfull exhaustion.

mrmichaelwright – Member

druidh – i'd love to see some pics of the fifth wheel camper, we had dinner in one with some fellow tourists and it was awesome

Your wish….

and to give you an impression of the size of the truck…

Awesome machine. I think he truck was a 5.5L Turbo Diesel.Massive torque and went like stink once decoupled. We liked the 5th wheel as you could park the trailer up, then use the truck for getting around the locale. We had the smallest type. Only downside was it didn't have aircon and temperatures were over 30 much of the time.

brilliant, they are just the most fantastically ostentatious form of camping 🙂

our camper was based on an F350 as well, love the bit where you put your foot down and about 10 seconds later the horizon dips and you roar off (albeit slowly with an RV on the back)

we took ours off road up to lake cowichan (which was a bit naughty) which would have been easier if we could have dropped the camping bit off!

got to drive Bushpilot Biking's chevy V8 truck up the hill in kelowna, now that was a machine 🙂

Took me a few efforts to get used to manoeuvring the beast, but by the end of the holiday, I was easily getting it into those tiny little gaps they give you at the Whistler camp ground.

I lived in Vancouver for a year. 8)
Highlights you should see/try
Vancouver and the Northshore
West Coast of Vancouver Island (ie around Tofino)
Drive the sea to sky highway and then Whistler for the bike park. Drive through Pemberton (amazing biking) and into
Chilcotins for a quick floatplane bike trip
Okanagan for the desert living/vineyards (silverstar bikepark is amazing)
drop down to Nelson for the biking/hippy kootenay lifestyle
Fernie – excellent biking
Cathedral lakes national park – stunning and unknown.

I would leave Banff/jasper for another trip. overated and very touristy. If you stay in the South of BC you will bet a better feel for the real "BC". and the biking is way better.

click on my profile name and you will see a pic diary of my year there to get an idea

you can get the helicopter to Vancouver island can't you??

Had a 3 week honeymoon in BC in 2002 – truly wonderful place. I wasn't riding back then, went for hiking and bear watching.

Vancouver is great as cities go, lots to see and do. Vancover Island is also great – have fond memories of watching the boats from the Beehive cafe in Campbell River. Jasper is nice. I'd recommend Banff, again lots to do – we walked from the town up to the summit of Sulphur Mountain, caught the cable car down (they only charged to go up) then eased our legs in the hot springs – they actually let us leave our kit there while we walked up.

Lake Louise is also lovely, just full of American tourists!

If you can stretch the budget – this place is heaven on earth:

http://www.grizzlytours.com

Lake Louise

more here

some in Alberta, some in BC

I would spend one week around vancouver/van island, one week out in the okanagan region then another week out in the rockies, thats only about 5 hours driving to get to each main area and gives you a week to explore.

On the island, maybe a day or two in tofino then down to vicotria, spend one day in whistler, a day or two in vancouver, out to wherever you feel like visiting around the okanagan then onto banff. We stayed at the emerald lake lodge about half an hour before you hit the start of the icefield parkway, I would thoroughly recommend that place for stop before travelling up the icefield parkway to jasper, then do the icefield parkway in the other direction back down to banff, it'll take a day each, you will be amazed by the rockies.

some of my pics (crowfoot glacier, crowfoot mountain, bow lake and the Athabasca glacier) are taken from the Icefield Parkway. Very impressive. We didn't do the trip onto the glacier as it was p&ssing it down at the time.

That's another thing – the weather in the mountains can be very changeable.

While we were in Canmore, there was at least one day when you couldn't see the tops of the mountains…

I did the glacier trip it wasn't really that great, bussed up, got to stand on it for 20 minutes then bussed back down, the bus was probably more impressive than the experience of being on a glacier. I would have preferred to hike up to the face and check it out from there.

I did my BC trip last year, If I were to go back to anywhere it would be Nelson, Squamish and Kicking Horse resort, maybe fernie.

Definately wouldn't go back to Kamloops, Whistler, Banff, Calgary

Definately would do the 200km backroad from Pemberton to Kamloops through the mountains but not in an RV of any size. Perfect blasting through in my Subaru though.

My trip here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7dJlMYi6yQ

Plum

If you fancy a coffee in Vancouver then this place it perhaps the best I have ever had. The shop on West Hastings is my favorite.

Vancouvers Best Coffee Shop

rs – Member
I did the glacier trip it wasn't really that great, bussed up, got to stand on it for 20 minutes then bussed back down, the bus was probably more impressive than the experience of being on a glacier. I would have preferred to hike up to the face and check it out from there.

That's what I did – hiked over while the wife and daughter got the "moon-bus".

Here's Mrs B at the helm of our RV that we hired to use as our "support vehicle" when a I did the TransRockies in 2007:

28ft – slept 7 – nice.

Pics from our 2008 Summer Road trip which went through Golden, Vancouver, Vancouver Island (and then Moab and Yellowstone)

Oh and some vids here and here.

(I'll stop now.)

Been to Whistler, Fernie, Banff and Lake Louise.

Not during the summer though: what's the point? 😀

Have a great time – it's a lovely country.

Week 1; vancouver, van island, squamish – YES
Week 2; whistler, Pemberton, Chilcotin – YES
Week 3; Lilloet, Kamloops, Hope? – NO!!! Skip Lilloet & Kamloops and go to Kelowna (for the lake/swimming etc) and Silver Star Bike Park (about an 1½hr north of Kelowna). You pass thorough Hope to buy cheap fuel but there's no reason to stay there (though there is supposedly good hiking off Highway 5).

To give you an idea of scale vancouver island is about the size of england, but not much to see north of campbell river area, unless you want to go whale watching or something, most of the interesting stuff is is in the southern half of the island (Victoria Nanaimo(SP) cathederal grove etc)

You pass thorough Hope to buy cheap fuel but there's no reason to stay there (though there is supposedly good hiking off Highway 5).

Don't forget that they filmed Rambo there, theres even one of those things with a cut-out where the head should be so that you can be rambo and there are the othello tunnels which are nearby, some bits of rambo were also filmed down there 🙂

Not worth a night there, but a stop for a few hours maybe.

+1 for going to Kelowna

If you do go you must visit some of the vinyards. BC wine is absolutely phenomenal. Right up there with the best of the New World wines and has beaten French wines in taste testings.

We went to Mission Hill.

Such a shame you can't get it over here.

I would defo go to Kelowna rather than Kamloops.

We spent a night in Hope to break up the journey from Whister to Fernie.

No more than one night required.

Thanks guys, Kelowna looks brilliant.
Any more suggestions for week 3? Or should we just take more time in the places mentioned? i.e
Week 1; vancouver, van island,
Week 2; squamish, whistler, Pemberton,
Week 3; Chilcotin, Kelowna
What do you think?

Just done a quick route plot on googlemaps taking in the above locations and it comes in at about 730 miles / 17hrs of driving. Bound to take longer in an RV though.

If I were you I would stick with the above locations and spend more time on Van Island (only because when we went there we only spent a few days there.)

We spent a day in Victoria and then headed over to Tofino on the west coast to go Whale watching / surfing / Sea Kayaking. Absolutely loved the last activity and wished we had factored more time into our trip to do more of it.

If you can track down Ray Mears recent series that he did on Canada the last episode is all about Vancouver Island and Tofino – definately worth a look.

Am very jelous of you.

backhander – looks perfect to me…maybe add Nelson on the end?

Oh yeah, Nelson is supposed to be lovely, isn't it?
Perfect!
Definately getting me some of this on the island;
http://www.wildplay.com/nanaimo/index.php
Thanks everyone, really excited now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwSCHRQCIBY

when your in squamish take a hike up the back of the chief, its a bit touristy, ie. lots of hikers but worth it. The hike to garibaldi lake between squamish and whistler is also pretty good.

Wildplay also have a location in whistler with ziplines, very big ziplines, I've done that twice and its awesome.

I still think i'd want to fit in the icefields parkway, if your not going to be back in canada for a while it really is worth the drive out there. I did it from vancouver and back in a long weekend, think 8 hours driving each day but it was totally worth it. I'd rather do that than spend much time in kelowna. its nice there but doesn't have anything on the rockies.