Date:         Tue, 13 Jun 1995 17:20:49 +0000
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "Harry Yates" <hyates@bcit.bc.ca>
Subject:      A short trip /F

Hi everyone.  I had the opportunity to do a short trip from the 
Vancouver, BC area to the Kootenays (Southeast corner of BC) this 
past week in our Syncro Westy.

We really enjoyed Hwy 3 which goes from Hope, to Osoyoos, through the 
Kettle Valley, and into the various small towns of the Kootenay 
District.  It is a great drive.  We drove, in total, 6 mountain 
passes.  The most brutal of all was the Kootenay Pass near Creston.  
This is the highest PAVED pass in Canada with a final elevation of 
5280 feet (sometimes called the Mile High Pass).  This hill is a 
killer, folks.  It is long.. didn't measure it, but it is around 14 
km at approx. 8% grade.  The ol' van was in second gear at 3100 rpm 
doing approx 45-50 km/h.... when in 2nd, I like to enjoy smelling the 
roses at the side of the road, and admiring all kinds of interesting 
pavement deformaties one normally misses at high speed :)  

It was real nice travelling this time of year as the roads are nearly 
deserted, and the campgrounds are nearly abondoned.  The Kettle 
Valley near Rock Creek is gorgeous, as is most of Hwy 3.  I've always 
travelled through this area, but never stopped at some of the 
Provincial Parks before.  We stayed at Champion Lakes Prov. Park, and 
at Moyie Lake Prov. Park.  They are very nice, but not much in the 
way of hiking in these particular parks.  Lots of fishing though.

>From Cranbrook, we headed north on Hwy 95 to Golden, and then west on 
Hwy 1 through Revelstoke, and Sicamous.  The only rain we had was on 
this stretch... and did it ever come down!  All the rivers were 
flooding and the Crowsnest Pass into Alberta was still closed due to 
flooding and mud slides.  From Sicamous we headed south via Hwy 97 & 
Hwy 3 to the Okanagon District.  This is a pretty route going by Mara Lake, 
Vernon, Kelowna, Summerland, Penticton, Princeton, and back to Hwy 1 
at Hope.  

There is a killer hill by the mine just west of Princeton that our 
van has a hard time on.  Sometimes it'll climb it in 3rd gear, and 
other times in 2nd.   Well, this time she climbed very strong in 3rd 
gear doing a blistering 69 km/h... this is an all-time record for our
van on this particular hill.  It beat our previous record by 9 km/h!!  This hill is approx 
7%, and also quite long.. maybe 5 km or more.

In all, we travelled 1945 km (approx 1200 miles) in 5 days.  The van 
averaged 24.7 mpg (imperial) with a high of 26.1 and a low of 23.0.  
The van has never performed this well before (owned since new).  I 
attribute this to the Bosch Platinums I just put in in April (but 
first really long trip) along with the injector recall that I just 
had performed not too long ago.  What else could it be?  I know the 
tank is full at each fill up as with the Syncro one can get a 
consistently full tank very easily as the fuel goes in vertically.  
Oh yes (disclaimer), I ran the van at a constant speed of 95 km/h (59 
mph)

Anyway, I thought that some of you would be interested in my little 
get-away, and van performance.

Having fun in our Westy,
Harry.
------------------------------------------------------
Harry Yates      Internet: hyates@bcit.bc.ca  Burnaby, BC
'90 Syncro Westfalia
'87 Golf Diesel