If there's one thing you're assured on the Rocky Mountaineer, it's an endless panorama of incredible scenery. Since its first voyage in 1990, the tourist train service has built its reputation on offering access to Western Canada 's wildest landscapes. Over the years, it has expanded its service to include two more routes across British Columbia and Alberta, and a couple of years ago, it ventured south of the border into the vast canyons and deserts of the Colorado Rockies.
But if there's one route that remains its flag-bearer, it is the First Passage to the West. It's a journey that takes two days, setting out from the coastal city of Vancouver and cutting through the meandering rivers and craggy peaks of the Canadian Rockies before ending in the resort town of Banff - in other words, about 600 miles of prime Pacific Northwest territory.
Earlier that morning, we had pulled out of a rainy Vancouver, waved off by a bagpiper in a kilt; then, a couple of hours later, we were chugging through the Fraser Valley, often referred to as the 'breadbasket of British Columbia.' These have been the lands of Coast Salish peoples for thousands of years, specifically, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, who've relied on and safeguarded its fertile sweep and sockeye population.
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