Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
Good luck with that....
Just edited, didn't realize BC had 2 Highway 3's half a province apart, unconnected. Odd.
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It runs from the TCH at Hope all the way to AB border at Crowsnest Pass...(and then runs as AB3 all the way to Medicine Hat, essentially rejoining TCH)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britis...mbia_Highway_3
There are certainly a few concurrencies, most notably 95/3 running SW from Cranbrook and 93/3 running SW from same. And the ~7km east from Hope that is both 3 & 5 (Coquihalla) before they split.
Hope to Med Hat via H3 = 1161km
Hope to Med Hat via TCH = 1289km
Hope to Med Hat via Coke + TCH = 1112 km
One of the reasons the most southern route for TCH wasn't considered waaaaay back in the 19th century was it's proximity to the 49th parallel and concerns that the US could invade and cut it off easily.
It wouldn't have been without it's own difficulties, but nothing nearly as challenging as Kicking Horse and Roger's passes. At the Kootenay Pass between Salmo-Creston reaches 1774M (about 130M higher than TCH peak near Lake Louise), but it's a lot straighter (albeit a bit steeper) than Roger's Pass and without significant avalanche concerns. TIL that Salmo-Creston stretch opened in 1964, only 2 years after the TCH opened through Rogers Pass.
I've never driven it, but
Princeton-Hope (Allison Pass) is probably at least as windy/dangerous/challenging to construct as any other pass, though perhaps a bit milder in the winter?
I've always been interested in what the fastest/easiest/best route would have been with all of the information we have today. Certainly Howse Pass > Kicking Horse, though that was known pretty well at the time and simply an issue of corruption.
I suspect Crowsnest --> Kootenay --> Allison passes would have still been a bit more efficient than KH/Howse --> Rogers --> Coquihalla, though it's hard to weigh smaller sections like the big hill near Osoyoos and the stretch to Salmo vs. Revy to Meritt