This all really started with a phone call to my friend that works at Enterprise rent a car. He hooked me up with a staff discount on a small Toyota from the Kamloops Airport.
I was originally just driving a bit out of my way to go visit family that I hardly ever see.
Last June I was a part of a cross continent tour speaking each night about my struggle with depression, thoughts of suicide and how you can get help if you also feel this way.
You can check out my work here.
I had two days off and decided to jump out of the van full of greasy un-showered mid twenty year old dudes, and jump into a tiny rental car with my Kiwi brother to go see family who live near whistler.
In my head, as I loaded google maps to check routing, I was just going through some small towns and I’m sure a couple mountains. Knowing that I was in The Rockies I gave it the generic “Well I’m sure it will be beautiful” preparation and didn’t think much of it.
I just wish someone had told me what I was in for.
The road is called The Duffy Lake Road, or HWY 99. We drove from Kamloops up Hwy 1 to Cache Creek where we then turned on to Hwy 99. Basically all you need to do is stay on that road. You will have to follow a few signs in Lilooet to not end up on 12 but just follow the RV’s and you will be ok. Or don’t and have a great time being lost and feeling free. You can take this road all the way to Vancouver, which is likely where you are heading anyways after you spend all your money in Whistler.
This road will take you through every thing you want and more. Crazy cliffs , sharp peaks, Meadows and flats, massive rivers. You can touch snow peaks, and witness that snow turn into waterfalls. It will make you question your cars braking system and wonder how mechanically sound it all is. You will wonder what it’s like to live there and why you’ve never heard of this place.
It really is something.
All of these photo’s were taken in the time span of about 4 hours.
If you can, take a full day to drive the road. You will thank yourself for that. We were late and had to keep moving so it was quite painful to drive by some incredible scenes.
I don’t really know what to say other than, It doesn’t often happen in life that you just stumble into something so incredible that it changes you. It was like, that day, out of the naive and normal decision I made to go visit family, everything went right.
You should do yourself a favour and plan to drive this road sometime.
Here is a map of the road that we drove.
I shot all of these on a Canon 60D with an 18-55mm kit lens.
Check those camera’s out here: http://amzn.to/2j0wsWN
And edited them in Lightroom
Thank you for reading this.
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Nick Pegg 