Stranded in Whistler

Stranded!  When one takes an older Ferrari on a 600 mile jaunt and get stranded, you immediately think of what broke, was it fixable there or how far did the car need to be flat bedded.

However, in this case, it was the road that broke, not any of the cars.

The NW and the Western Canada regions of the FCA planned a three day tour of western Canada last weekend (Oct 17-19).  The plan was to drive from Seattle and meet with the Canadian group for lunch in North Vancouver.  Then on to Whistler for the night.  On Saturday, drive up through Pemberton, Lillooet, Lytton and back down the Fraser canyon to Harrison Hot Springs.  Then back home on Sunday.

As we have a ski place in Whistler, my first thought about taking this trip in the middle of October was that it could rain the whole weekend.  Little did I know.

Friday was wet in Seattle with the forecast for showers and rain through Saturday and clearing on Sunday.  We met four of the other club members who lived on the eastside of Lake Washington and then drove north, catching up to the other four from Seattle.  The trip up to Vancouver was uneventful except that the rain kept getting harder and harder.

In Vancouver, the five Canadian cars joined us for lunch.  Joanne and I took off a little early since we were hosting a wine and cheese party at our place that afternoon.  The rain kept getting harder and harder.  On the way up, we were commenting on how much water was coming down the various creeks, streams, rivers and over the dam at Daisy Lake.  In fact, most of these were running faster and higher than we had ever seen them.

Photo by Dave Tegeler

It was good to pull into our place in Whistler as I was tired of driving through the rain and spray.  We also found out where a 308 spyder leaks when it's really wet outside.  That's kind of everywhere around the door, but mostly by the A pillar.

The rest of the group arrived over the next hour.  It was quite a menagerie of Ferraris, ranging from 308s to 360s and most models in between.  Sorry about the poor picture, but the weather wasn't cooperating.  This is taken outside of our condo.

That night several of us went out to dinner at one of the best places, Bear Foot Bistro.  The nice thing about Whistler at this time of the year is that there are few tourists and all of the restaurants run fixed price specials.  That made the dinner a bargain compared to what it would cost during the ski season.

The plan for Saturday was to meet at 9AM at the Westin hotel where most people were staying and head north towards Pemberton around 9:30.  When we got up in the morning, I was listening to the local radio station and heard that the bridge at Rutherford Creek between Whistler and Pemberton was out.  Further, the road back to Vancouver was flooded between Whistler and Squamish and the RCMP weren't letting traffic through.  A little later, the road was re-opened with alternating single lane traffic, but there were still several inches of water across the road.  The red Xs on the map show where the roads were closed.

When we met at the Westin, the general consensus was to hang around Whistler a while, get some shopping in, head to Harrison via Vancouver stopping for lunch somewhere along the way.  As Joanne and I didn't need to do any shopping in Whistler, we got ready to leave immediately.  Just about then, the parking valet told us that the road had been closed again with no timeframe on when it might re-open.  Everybody exchanged cell phone numbers and we headed back to our condo.  The rest checked back into the Westin.  The Westin was wonderful, providing secure parking and low rates during the forced stay.

Photo by Dave Tegeler

The news on the TV and radio wasn't very informative.  No pictures and just that the road closures were indefinite.  So Saturday was spent wandering and shopping in Whistler.  The women in the party were pleased as they felt short changed on the shopping in the original schedule.  By the time our wine and cheese party broke up, the shops were closed and wouldn't re-open until after we were to leave the next day.  BTW, the schedule was done by a husband!

The way down from our condo to the village crosses over Fitzsimmons Creek.  Normally the creek is about 1/4 of this level.  You can click on the picture to see a short movie.  If you listen carefully, you can hear the thuds of large boulders being rolled down the stream bed by the water.

We finally started finding out how bad the roads were that evening.  Here are a couple of pictures.

The bridge at Rutherford Creek is totally gone.  You can see the approaches towards the middle the picture.  I'm sorry to say that 5 people in 3 cars are dead from that bridge collapse.  The washout at Cheakamus River was in two places.  At one of them, the road was 2/3 gone and the road crew had to fill it in to a depth of 22 feet (~7 meters).

Stan Gordon hosted wine and cheese parties in the evenings.

The Survivors - Photo by Dave Tegeler

They finally re-opened the road about 8PM Sunday night.  Four of the club members had to be home on Monday morning, so they had flown out on the seaplane service to Vancouver that afternoon.  A couple of others left Sunday night, but most of us waited and left on Monday morning.  We took off early, about 5:30 AM and hit it just right.  We drove up to the lineup waiting for the pilot car just as it started moving and were the second to last car in that group.  The ones that left at 6:30 had about an hour wait.  The road was rough and the euro spoiler on my 308 scraped in a couple of places, but we got home safely.

BTW, a new door and roof seal is on order, so hopefully the car won't leak as much the next time we get caught in a 100 year rainstorm.

A couple of years later, this trip was much more enjoyable.