Coast-to-Coast Across Canada by Rail … Part Six.

By 3:00 we’ve reached the mountains and the Canadian begins threading its way through imposing peaks – some with sheer faces of gray rock, others dark green with spruce trees somehow clinging to their flanks. Most of the mountains are topped with snow descending in white streaks toward the valley floor below, then dissolving into icy water that tumbles down into lakes offering mirror images of the peaks above.

Almost everyone in the dome car is snapping pictures through the glass. “I can’t get it all in,” complains a woman. “It’s all too big.”

After a 90-minute stop in Jasper for refueling, the train continues its climb into the Rockies, gliding left then right then left again as it winds along mountain ridges and cuts through rocky passes, in and out of shadows cast by massive mountains, the snow on their peaks now dazzling white in the late afternoon sun.

In another hour, we meet the Fraser River, swirling around boulders and plunging through crevasses as we follow it to the northwest.

Two black bears come into view on the right side of the train, rooting industriously at the base of a dead three stump.

As I enter the dining car for my dinner seating, the steward tells us we’re passing Mount Robson, at not quite 4,000 meters, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. Today its obscured in mist, but many of us dutifully reach for our cameras anyway. Conversation over dinner is about the two black bears – who saw them and who didn’t.

The next morning is my last aboard Train # 1 and for almost an hour I’m content to stay in bed, comfortably propped up on an elbow and watching the mountain passes gradually give way to a broad fertile valley.

The day is beautiful – bright sun and clear blue skies over a panorama of tidy farms surrounded by lush green fields. Well behind us now, snow-capped mountains provide a magnificent backdrop.

The Fraser River is alongside again, but very wide now and moving at a gentle pace toward Vancouver and the sea. There are several large lumber mills at the river’s edge. Thousands of huge logs are simply lashed together upstream and floated down to the mills, emerging as lumber that’s stacked, wrapped, loaded onto rail cars and sent back east over these same tracks.

As the train sweeps around a long, graceful curve, the Vancouver skyline appears up ahead. In another hour, we’re in the suburbs and, minutes later, the train stops, then begins rolling slowly backwards into the Vancouver station.

A gentle stop and my transcontinental train journey is over. VIA crews are standing by to service the train for it’s return trip to Toronto this afternoon and, truth be told, if I had the time and if they had the room, I’d be with them. In a heartbeat.

(This story originally ran in International Living magazine and subsequently appeared on the SoGoNow.com web site.)