There’s a greener way to travel west.
Mountain Man Mike’s, based in Kaslo, B.C..s is providing weekly biodiesel bus runs from Calgary to Vancouver, and Okotoks is one of its stops along the way.
“Originally we were running Highway 22 and we found it to be very windy, and I decided to stay on Highway 2 because there are more towns it can service and looking at population densities I noticed Okotoks had a clearly large population density and I thought it was worth the drive, the detour off the highway, to service the community,” said company owner Mike Hathaway.
He got the idea for his business when Greyhound announced it would be shutting down its service in October 2018. It took a while to get all the paperwork and approvals necessary to offer the service in both Alberta and B.C., and Mountain Man Mike’s ran its first bus to Calgary in December 2019.
The buses run on biodiesel to ease the impact on the environment, though they use regular fuel on their return trips.
“When we leave our main hub we leave on biodiesel, but we don’t fill up with biodiesel on the road because we don’t have biodiesel hubs on the road,” said Hathaway. “We just wanted to reduce the carbon footprint of our company, so we run on recycled vegetable oil.”
He said he’s been running the fuel in his personal vehicle for some time and wanted to prove it could be a viable long-distance fuel alternative.
So far the company has logged 70,000 kilometres on the biodiesel and he said there haven’t been any fuel-related breakdowns.
“It’s proven to be a very good fuel source for us,” said Hathaway.
Rides can be booked online from Okotoks to any of the stops along the route, at varying prices. The cost to get all the way to the west coast is about $230 ($130 from Okotoks to Kaslo, and $110 from Kaslo to Vancouver), but Hathaway said he’ll be looking at offering a 25 per cent discount for people booking the full distance.
At this time, there is no non-stop ride to Vancouver. Travellers can get to Kaslo on the first day, stay overnight, and then catch the mid-week bus from there to Vancouver, he said. But that will change in the spring when the weather improves.
“The mountain passes just aren’t safe for travel at night with the bus, so we’re waiting for springtime,” said Hathaway. “When the mountain passes are safe to travel at night we’ll be doing an overnight bus that will connect in Nelson B.C. around 1 p.m. and that will go all the way to Vancouver, non-stop.”
The Okotoks stop is at Lakeview Inn and Suites on Southridge Drive, arriving from B.C. at 5:20 p.m. on Monday evenings and departing westbound on Tuesday mornings at 6:40 a.m.
There is only one run to Calgary at this time, but he said as ridership increases the company hopes to also do an Alberta run on Friday and Saturdays.
The service currently runs from Kaslo to Vancouver on a Wednesday-Thursday run and a Saturday-Sunday run.
For more information visit www.mountainmanmikes.ca.
Krista Conrad, OkotoksToday.ca
