This past B.C. Day, I wanted to get out of Metro Vancouver, where I’ve been “stuck” for the past five months, but I only had the one day free to do it. I was debating whether to do a trip up north to Whistler, or to the east to Manning Park (pretty much the only two directions one can drive from Vancouver. However, I’ve been to both of these places. I wanted to explore something new.
I remembered that I had wanted to do the Coast Mountain Circle Route, the smallest “loop” that one can make going out of Metro Vancouver one direction and coming back another direction.
For a description of the different communities along the way, see the Tourism BC website. This route travels through both the scenic Fraser Canyon, and the Sea to Sky.
Most of the guides I’ve seen on the Internet suggest travelling in a clockwise direction. I elected to drive it counter-clockwise, because I am familiar with the Sea to Sky section so I wanted to see the Fraser Canyon section in the daytime for sure.
I’ve actually driven portions of this from Vancouver to Pemberton to the north, and from Vancouver to Lytton to the north east, so the section completely new to me was the part from Lytton to Lillooet back to Pemberton, roughly 2.5 hours out of the total 10 hour drive.
Since I only had one day, I didn’t plan to stop for long in any of the places. Also due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I wanted to keep to myself as much as possible, so brought my own food and pretty much only stopped to fill up gas and to use restrooms, or some photo ops around the car.
This is the dashcam video of the entire trip:
There’s definitely a lot to see along the way, so I am looking forward to driving this loop again making more stops along the way.
