Touring - Alberta Hwy 40 info please...

Its looking like my original summer tour plans are going to require some modification thanks to the lack of space on the ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert. I am on a wait list but who knows. Anyway I am looking at alternate routes and am thinking North Eastern BC into Alberta looks interesting. Have any of you been on Hwy 40 from Grand Prairie to Hinton? It looks like it has lots of camping opportunities. Is the road decent? It looks to be mostly paved with sections of gravel.

I lived in the Grande Prairie area for 11 years from 1980 to 1991. At that time, Hwy 40 was completely gravel, extremely remote, and usually travelled by large trucks which threw rocks everywhere in their wake. You could always tell the people in the Grande Prairie area who had used Hwy 40 to get to or from Jasper ... they were the ones with the cracked windshields!

I believe some paving has been done, but I haven't been on it since sometime in the late 1980s so I couldn't say for sure how much has been paved or what sort of condition it is in.

You might consider heading west to Hwy 43 and heading up it. It is paved all the way and was in pretty decent condition in the early 1990s. If I'm not mistaken they were twinning it to Whitecourt last summer. Going that way you would also encounter more civilization ... more opportunities for acquiring supplies etc.

Thanks for the input. Dont need to worry about it this year as I found out last Friday that I have a spot on the ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert. Back to plan 1.

Thanks for the input. Dont need to worry about it this year as I found out last Friday that I have a spot on the ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert. Back to plan 1.

You'll love that trip big time!!!!!!!!!!! Make sure you have a camera and lots of film/memory. Leaving Prince Rupert following the Skeena River will simply amaze you!!. Enjoy

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