Backroads of Southwestern British Columbia

Kenneth Woollard is a crew supervisor with Transalta Utilities and an
avid outdoor recreationist.

For those drivers who sometimes view the interior of British Columbia as
a bobsled run of paved valleys shooting us out into downtown Vancouver,
this latest of the Lone Pine Backroads guides is a revelation. Like
previous volumes in the series, it is intended for adventurous motorists
who are looking to explore the less-traveled roadways in its focus
area—in this case, the back roads off the Fraser Valley Trans-Canada,
the lower Coquihalla and Hope-Princeton Highways, and the “Sea to
Sky” run from Lillooet to Horseshoe Bay and the Sunshine Coast. An
introduction containing important advice on logging-truck etiquette is
followed by chapters devoted to each of these main highways and its
associated backroads. Each chapter opens with a route map of the
relevant stretch. Within the chapter, the author has broken the various
side roads into sections driveable in a day or less.

These are gravel roads for the most part, and the author rightly
assumes that the time taken in getting from point A to point B is
secondary to the enjoyment of the space in between. It is here that the
book shines. The easy narrative combines information necessary for
navigation with an interesting mixture of history, geography, geology,
and natural history. In addition to black-and-white photographs, there
are sidebars containing snippets of local trivia ranging from the
harnessing of semiwild stagecoach horses on the Cariboo Wagon Road to
British Columbia’s own Bre–X—the 1910 Steamboat Mountain Swindle
(enterprising gold mine promoters created a multimillion-dollar rush by
firing ground-up gold coins from a shotgun into the mine’s walls).

For tourists and Lower Mainlanders alike, this guide is an enticing
invitation into some of the most fascinating parts of the province.