Central BC Adventure

Hi all, I am hoping someone might be able to help me out here. I am starting to plan a trip for this summer and looking into maybe exploring a bit in the Okanogan area and West.

We would be crossing over into Canada at Osoyoos and heading North probably stopping in the Oliver area and then up to Penticton. What I am wondering is if we want to try to head back West towards Vancouver is there any chance of taking an off-road path from Penticton and is there anything out in this area worth exporing?

 

@WormSquirts

 

Not sure about Pentiction area but once you get near Hope you could go north along Harrison lake up to Lillooet Lake then Pemberton to Whistler to Vancouver if you wanted a great end to your trip.

 

If you did the border crossing at Roosville Montana that opens up some good country around Fernie - Flathead valley, Crowsnest Pass up to Canmore pretty much all dirt.

 

I would highly recommend picking up a Backroad Mapbook. They are a local company that specializes in getting you off the beaten path. We carry them in our store. I've personally had mine for a few years, and it has been amazing.

There is a very famous trail in the Penticton area called the Whipsaw. Very rugged, and worth doing if you can. From there you have a tonne of options, and it depends how much time you have, and how comfortable you are, because if you venture off the pavement, is pretty easy to get lost.

If you go north you can do the Hurley pass, come back down from Pemberton through the West Harrison fsr and there's lots of cool stuff along the, hot springs, views, wheeling trails etc.

Or you could come back over the coquihalla, (featured on that tv show "Highway thru hell") and near the top of the pass you can get off road, cut over to Boston bar, explore nahatlatch area, hit up the fire lookout (if there's no snow) then carry on off road to east Harrison fsr and back .

Otherwise, the highway through manning park is very beautiful.

No matter which way you go, you have to stop by our shop, Overland Outfitters! We just opened 2 months ago

 

Its really hard to say, because there is so much just within a few hours of Vancouver, you could spend months exploring it all

 

Thanks for the info! Sounds like some good options there, I will definitely have to pick up one of those mapbooks. This is going to be kind of the extended route home during the end of a week+ long trip.

The plan at this point is to do the NW Overland Rally in Plain the last weekend of June and then head North on the WABDR. Planning to get up to my buddies cabin on Lake Osoyoos Tuesday then stay for for 4th of July. Thursday morning we will head North across the border, let the girls do some wine tasting in Oliver and then up to Penticton area.

I have driven the route home from this area on the US side plenty of times so I figure we can try something new, work our way West through Canada and see if there are any off-road options or anything worth taking a detour to check out. Probably don't want to take any more than a couple days getting from Penticton to the border crossing and Blaine and back home though so we can be home Saturday and have Sunday to clean up and get ready to go back to work on Monday.

 

Awesome! We will be at the sister rally to the NWOR, the BCOR.

If you drive back through manning park, you can make it to Blaine in around 4.5 hours. And if you're hitting the Blaine crossing, we are literally on the way, you'll drive right past us!

You definitely can't go too much further north in your time frame. You could come back either Coquihalla or Manning park way. Both drives are very beautiful. You could make a quick stop at Othello Tunnels, which is a really cool zone for a quick hike. It's especially awesome during salmon spawn season because you can watch the fish trying to get up the waterfalls... really amazing as you're standing on the old train bridges right above them.

The only off-road route that you could do in your time frame would be from Coquihalla>Boston Bar>East Harrison>Mission. Even that would be a full day of driving on dirt.

 

Great ideas here, thanks! This is exactly what I was looking for. Can't wait to make my way through and I will definitely have to stop by your shop on the way through.

 

Take a VHF with all the RR Chanel’s programmes so you can hop onto the forestry roads and be covered if there is logging. Tons of nice backroads in that area. Check out hedly area. You can get from Penticton south to there on some real cool roads.