HOPE & THE OTHELLO-QUINTETTE TUNNELS

16th & 17th July 2008 HOPE & THE OTHELLO-QUINTETTE TUNNELS

A little aside…The China Bar Tunnel is named after the gold bearing sand bar in the Fraser River. “Here the hardworking Chinese gleaned a fortune by reworking a supposedly exhausted area after others moved on to new and more promising creeks.”

We spent 2 nights and 1 day in Hope. We had visited it briefly 4 summers ago when we traveled with Alan and Matt and cousin Dave to Waterton National Park. Then we did a short excursion to the Othello-Quintette tunnels. This time we walked quite a bit further.
The historic Othello-Quintette tunnels are abandoned railway tunnels and have been used as settings in a couple of movies. They are within walking distance of where we were staying. These tunnels, designed by an Andrew McCulloch were built between 1911 and 1916 to complete the Kettle Valley Railway. This involved cutting through solid granite in order for the railway to span the 300ft deep Coquihalla Canyon, rather than having to go around the canyon.
It seems as though there are 3 tunnels, however Tunnel #3 is actually 2 tunnels with an opening out in the rock in the middle, hence the name Quintette. Between the tunnels are 2 bridges with spectacular views down into the gorge. Of course this stretch is all perfectly aligned so a train could travel along it. We tried to imagine what it must have been like to be one of those poor guys working in that canyon. Apparantly, they had to hang ropes ladders from the top down into the gorge for access. Then when they needed to blow out the rock they would lay and light the dynamite and then climb up the ladders as fast as they could to escape the blast. I can only imagine that lives were lost. It must have been incredibly hazardous work.
Once it had been completed there were constant washouts and rockslides. Evidently the passenger trains would only travel this section at night so as not to terrify the passengers. In the end it was closed in 1957.
This Andrew McCulloch loved Shakespeare’s plays it seems, and the stations along the Coquihalla Pass line have names such as Iago, Portia, Romeo, Juliet and Lear.
Today it is part of a much longer walking and biking trail, a lot of it along the old rail bed.

Early on Thursday morning, exactly 5 weeks from the day we left London, we drove the final stretch to Vancouver and Tsawassen, to catch our 11am ferry to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island.
Oceanside RV Park, our home for 6 weeks, is very new and well cared for with attractive gardens. It is on the Saanich Peninsula about 15 minutes from the little town of Sydney and about 40 minutes from Victoria. With a sigh of relief Eric unhitched the trusty trailer knowing that it wasn’t going anywhere for a while.