Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) and Myra Canyon

Dear New Addiction,

Thanks for your post. My family and I intend to cycle Kettle Creek for the first time in the summer of 2009. Our 'clan' will include a 8 year old cycling his bike, myself towing our 5 year old in a wagon, and my wife's parents of 67 and 68. Any insights from your experience would be most welcome.

Cheers, Andrew

I just finished cycling the KVR from Midway to Brookmere about a month ago. Actually I wanted to continue to Hope on it from Brookmere but the trail to brodie was too rough. Actually the trail was bad enough over most of the whole length of it that I would not recommend that anyone atempt the whole thing (it took me two weeks, BTW).

The trail from Midway is VERY bad - I'd recommend starting from Rock Creek. The trail is very sandy starting on the way to Summit Lake and gets worse until Chute Lake. It is good in Myra Canyon itself but degrades after that until Bellevue trestle. Then it gets better (and is downhill) to Penticton.

I found the trail on the West side from Penticton better in general, although there are lots of rocks on the trail near Princeton. It was very washboardy almost everywhere. This is made worse by the ATV and trail bike traffic which by far exceeds cyclists on this section. From the Trout Creek trestle outside Summerland to Faulder the KVR can't by traveled because of the steam train. There is a separate parallel TCT trail but the first part can only be reached via a very steep climb, and the part into Faulder is deep gravel that cannot by cycled at all. The road is the only option.

There are essentially NO services except at Rock Creek and Penticton and Princeton. The Brookmere hotel was closed. McCulluch Lodge is still closed and the Chute Lake restaurant was as well. The campground past Tulameen seems perpetually full. There is no water for much of the Midway-Penticton section and where there is, must be treated.

I hope I am not being too negative. The KVR is an excellent concept, but some of the execution is missing. They spent $13+ million on restoring the trestles which is a very good thing, but if only 1% of that were spent on proper signage, it would help a lot. The BOOK is absolutely essential for this trip. And something needs to be done to improve the surface, probably including some serious barriers to ATV's. The section around Myra Canyon shows that it can be done right, and the TCT section into Faulder shows who bad a NEW trail can be.

I would certainly recommend secions of the KVR for day trips, althouigh I'd have to think hard about where to do that. It is certainly a shame that motorized vehicles are required to access it so it is a pleasure rather than hard work it turned out to be. Personally I'd much rather still have a running tourist railroad on it, than a substandard rail trail.

Barry