I recently drove 2700 km (around 1700 miles) in a motorhome with a friend and our two dogs to the north part of British Columbia. With us, but in a separate truck, my son and two friends. They were finding amazing mountain biking trails and features to film for their annual YouTube video. Curious? Check their last year’s video here:
My son invited me and I invited my friend. We were independent but still traveling together and following their incredibly good schedule, driving between two and four hours a day on the way up, stopping in strategic places to check the local trails and people my son has been in contact with for months, preparing for this trip.
Our first stop was Williams Lake, where the wooden features and trails were good enough for them to stop on the way back again. On this trip, despite planning to stop at Quesnel (we don’t pronounce the S!), we only did on the way back to check the local bakery. As a dear friend, a travel agency owner, tells me, you have to leave something for the next trip.
Quesnel is what I left for the next time. Recently they decided to invest in their mountain bike parks and trails and have been building some interesting features and developing the area. Quesnel is also the place to start a famous canoe circuit called Bowron Lake Circuit that I intend to try sometime soon: 10 days in remote lakes and rivers 100 km east of Quesnel. An outdoor paradise that recently entered my bucket list.
From Williams Lake we drove to Prince George, known as the Northern Capital and a major hub of the Cariboo region of BC. Prince George is a “big city,” with almost 90K people living there (this is certainly considered big for the Northern region of British Columbia!)
Prince George also offers a few nice areas for mountain biking but it was pouring rain and we decided to explore on foot one area. It was the first time during the trip that I experienced the luxury of having a dry place to cook, eat, and rest while parking on a trailhead!
The next leg was a short drive to Burns Lake, home of around 1700 people, on the shore of the lake and a very nice free camping! The place was so nice and so strategically located we stopped there on both ways. They had a good set of trails and wooden features but, unfortunately, not so well developed to keep us there longer than one morning. The video below, of Bruce trying a “skinny,” was filmed in the parking lot of the mountain bike trail area.
From Burns Lake we went to Smithers, a mountain town facing the Hudson Bay mountain range, in the Bulkley Valley. This is where we had the heaviest rainfall and I had to work long hours—kind of perfect weather for that! On our way back, we stopped for a hike/bike ride in one of their mountain biking areas. Smithers is a typical mountain town but, for some reason, not that appealing to me. Alex Cuba lives there and it’s impossible not to sing and dance listening to his songs, like Dividido:
Next step, Terrace. During COVID, my son and I spent time in Terrace, including a few months of school for him. He made friends and competently kept in touch with them. Terrace is in the Coast Mountain range and has some incredible outdoor options: mountain biking, of course, but also water activities like kayak, canoe, stand-up paddleboarding, world-class fishing, rock climbing, skiing, hiking—you name it!
We drove the beautiful highway to Prince Rupert to see the Pacific Ocean and let me dream about Haida Gwaii, “only” eight hours away by ferry. This is another thing I left for the next time: visit this magic island and its people.
The north was all yellow and green, clear signs of fall and winter arriving soon. The temperatures were much lower than the one in the Okanagan, it was raining more than half the days we were on the road and, still, I left the north with a heavy heart and wanting to stay. The strong pull of the north I can’t quite explain. What a beautiful, vast, wild, and magic place of this planet we were blessed to visit and experience.
Helena artmann - life coach 
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