Day Trips & Getaways
Granite railway tunnels over a turquoise gorge, 80-plus chainsaw carvings, and a 90-minute drive most people waste by not stopping.
Hope sits at the meeting point of three mountain ranges and gets treated like a motorway services. Everyone's halfway to somewhere else and not actually stopping, which is a tremendous collective error, because tucked in that little town is the Othello Tunnels: a series of granite railway tunnels blasted through the Coquihalla Canyon cliffs a century ago, where a flat easy trail walks you through pitch-dark passages that open onto a turquoise river thundering through a slot gorge. It is genuinely jaw-dropping. It is 90 minutes away. Almost nobody knows this. Add Hope's 80-plus chainsaw carvings scattered around town, the misty cascade of Bridal Veil Falls a short detour away, and a slow small-town pace, and you have a low-key adventurous day that ends with you feeling smug about the road not taken.
door to door
~1 hr 30 min by car
from Vancouver
150 km
how long
Day trip or one night
best window
May to October (tunnels typically open ~April 1 to Oct 31
Hwy 1 east from Vancouver straight to Hope (~150 km, 90 min, no tolls). For the tunnels, take Exit 183 / Kawkawa Lake Rd to Othello Rd and the Coquihalla Canyon Park lot. The whole route is freeway and easy.
books out
