{"id":25208,"date":"2026-05-08T15:13:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T19:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aleta.life\/?p=25208"},"modified":"2026-05-08T20:07:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T00:07:14","slug":"okanagan-okay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aleta.life\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/okanagan-okay\/","title":{"rendered":"Okanagan, Okay?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Position: 49\u00b029’47.8″N 119\u00b035’38.7″W<\/a><\/h6>\n

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At the end of our house sit on Vancouver Island we could have headed straight south, or we could have arranged to meet our friend Tom<\/a> in Penticton in the heart of the Okanagan Valley \u2013 Canada\u2019s premier wine growing region. Given the alternatives, we opted for Penticton. Despite living in Washington State, a fine wine making region in its own right, Tom joined a couple of wine clubs in the Okanagan a few years ago. That gives him an excuse to scoot across the border every six months to retrieve his allocation. In our eyes that made him a local expert, and we looked forward to a bespoke tour of the area.<\/p>\n

Dialling in Penticton from Tsawwassen on Google Maps sent us down to Douglas, just over the border crossing at Blaine. From there we headed east along Avenue 0<\/a> all the way to Huntingdon. Avenue 0 is the border between Canada and the United States. Step out of your car anywhere along its path and you risk tumbling down an embankment and entering America illegally. Here and there we saw Customs & Border Protection-liveried Ford Explorers parked on dead end streets and keeping an eye on things. Mostly the roadside was trees and fields and hidden cameras. Occasionally a house butted up against the 49th<\/sup> parallel. If I lived there, I guess I\u2019d get used to the idea that a poorly tossed frisbee might end up as a cross-border incident.<\/p>\n

Slide<\/h6>\n

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At Abbotsford we picked up Canada Highway 1, taking it as far as Hope. There we headed east along Highway 3 through the Sunshine Valley and the rolling hills of the North Cascades range. Hope is the site of the largest landslide<\/a> in Canada. In the wee hours of January 9th<\/sup>, 1965, an avalanche blocked the Hope-Princeton highway, just outside town. A line of motorists waited for crews to come and shift the snow. At 6:58AM an earthquake shook the area and half of Johnson Peak sheared off and fell directly into the avalanche area below. Some 47 million cubic metres of rock, mud, and debris up to 500\u2019 deep smashed down, displacing a lake along the way.<\/p>\n

Boulders the size of houses tumbled down like quarter-minus gravel<\/a> burying a 3.5 km stretch of highway<\/a>. Four motorists were killed. If the avalanche hadn\u2019t preceded the slide, the death toll might have been higher. Almost immediately work began on carving a new route through the rubble. In less than two weeks of continuous work, repair crews had re-opened the road. Later, in the 1980s the highway was relocated away from the slide. We learned all this from an informational billboard at a nearby rest stop.<\/p>\n

The drive along Highway 3 twisted and turned through the rocky slopes and treed valleys. Late afternoon sunshine broke through the clouds and kept us company along the way.<\/p>\n

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