Tunnel vision in a 2014 Jaguar F-Type
A wild ride through the Fraser Canyon’s 7 tunnels
By 7 a.m., I’m already beyond Hope.
The Jaguar is snug and warm inside, buttoned up against the shifting downpours, early morning rain making starbursts of the arc-lights of never-ending Trans-Canada construction. But that’s far in the rearview now.
There are seven tunnels on the snaking road between Yale and Boston Bar, seven boreholes driven straight through solid rock that turn a twisty, treacherous wagon trail into one of the best stretches of road in Canada. They were built in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They are, in order of south to north, Yale, Saddle Rock, Sailor Bar, Alexandra, Hell’s Gate, Ferrabee, and the longest, the China Bar tunnel. This last was finished in 1961 and at 600-plus metres long is one of the longer road tunnels in North America. Its long, boomerang shape was the site of a fairly spectacular PR stunt by Mercedes-Benz in 2010, where they ran an AMG SLS through a barrel-roll around the inside of the tunnel — look it up on YouTube.
Of course, that feat was through the magic of computer-generated trickery, and I imagine the RCMP take as dim a view of attempts to drive upside-down as they do of driving 40 km/h over the speed limit. Which is why I’m not going to do either.
Never mind the fact that this is the more-sensible supercharged-V6 FType rather than the bonkers blown- V8 model, it’s still got 380 horsepower and an exhaust note like suppression fire laid down by a Maxim machine gun. You kinda have to get out of the city to stretch its legs.
The roar of the Jaguar bounces off the hard walls of the Yale tunnel, doubling and redoubling, screaming along for a thousand feet in a maelstrom of speed and noise before rifling out into the darkness as though fired from a cannon.
There’s a series of curves to work through, the wind whistling around the cabin, the heater on full blast, the hiss of the tires on wet pavement. Dawn is coming; the mountains no longer loom unseen in the dark, but resolve into bristling silhouettes, and eventually show mottled orange-and green.
The same symphony is performed in the Saddle Rock and Sailor Bar tunnels. The last tunnel is twice the length of any of the others, and by the time I get to the far side, I may have tinnitus.
But in the tunnels of the Fraser Canyon, in just 40 kilometres of winding road, with no radio and no technological distractions, it’s back to basics.
Brave the cold. Roll your windows down. Remember driving.