Botanie Valley Exploration |
Saturday, August 5 - Monday, August 7, 2000
Participants |
Note: This trip report was written as I had time between March 28 - April 27, 2001, seven months after the fact, so it won't be nearly as detailed as most of the trip reports, and some of the route details may not be exact. My problem is that these trip reports take so long to write, they impact on my 'wheeling time, so during the peak 'wheeling season they just don't get written. I had actually completely forgotten about this trip until I saw Lorilei's photos.
It was the BC Day long weekend, and what better way to to spend time than to wander around the backroads of BC? Our original plan was to check out an abandoned mine on Spider Peak, about 9km's east-southeast of Yale. Those of you who have read any of my previous trip reports know what happens when I start off with "our original plan was...". :) Saturday morning was bright and sunny, which meant the roads would be dusty. We headed east on Hwy 1 to Hope, then took Hwy 1 north up the Fraser Canyon. We crossed the Alexandra Bridge just north of Spuzzum, then pulled a sharp right turn into the Alexandra Bridge Provincial Park driveway. We stayed right, which put us on a narrow trail that paralleled the highway as it descended into the valley towards the power lines. We followed this road for a ways, passed our campsite from the first night of the Magical Mystery Tour trip, then joined the Cattermole Main logging road. This well-maintained road went in to the 11 km mark, where our progress was suddenly halted by a large steel gate across the road. Curses!
With the day's plans shot to heck, we had to find something else to do. We took the Cattermole Main back to Alexandra Bridge Provincial Park, where we ate some lunch and consulted the maps. Funny thing, my map books showed the gate at the 11 km mark. Who knew! After some discussion, the decision was made to head north up the Fraser Canyon via the Westside Road, then take the reaction ferry across the Fraser River to Lytton, where we would head into the Botanie Valley.
We headed north on Hwy 1 to Boston Bar, hung a left in town and crossed over the railway tracks, then took the bridge over the Fraser River. We passed through North Bend, and headed north along the Westside Road, which turned into a narrow shelf road high above the Fraser. It was warm enough that we stopped to dunk our heads in a couple of creeks along the way. Dave managed to loose his footing, and dunked his whole body. LOL! My map book shows a washout just before Nikala Creek, but the road was fine when we drove it. Just past Noholthin Creek, we hung a right and pulled up at the dock for the reaction ferry. This ferry is a free service provided by the BC Ministry of Transportation, and uses large pontoons to direct the water current to power itself across the river. The ferry only takes two vehicles across at a time; while we were in the lineup, a guy with a full-sized pickup truck pulled up behind us, and engaged Eva in conversation. He said his name was Crazy Joe, and that everyone in town knew who he was. When he found out that Eva and John were Polish, he started speaking Polish and gave them some fresh salmon that he had just caught. We packed the salmon into our 12v coolers, then took the ferry across the river to Hwy 12, where we fueled up at an old gas station just down the road.
We headed north on Hwy 12, then forked right onto the Botanie Valley Road. We turned left after about 8 km's, and started climbing the dirt road. On a couple of the switchbacks, we had a great view of the farmland in the valley, with Lytton visible in the distance. We continued up the road, and eventually found ourselves at the top of Botanie Mountain, 2042m above sea level. There are a number of radio and TV repeater stations up here, I know that IPARN (the Inter-Provincial Amateur Radio Network) usually has a repeater up here, but it appeared to have been removed for maintenance. The TV repeaters were also missing. There were a couple of other mountain-top repeaters still in operation; I am guessing that they would most probably be for RCMP, EHS (Provincial ambulance service) and Ministry of Highways. Brad pointed out damage on the Amateur antennas caused by snow. The main repeater building was made of wood, which was well into the rotting process. The lower door was wide open, so we poked around inside. A log book for the radio techs rested on top of one of the metal cabinets; hikers had signed the the pages, thinking it was some kind of guest book. LOL! The view was awesome! We could see for miles in every direction. There was a decent breeze up here, along with plenty of firewood; I figured that it would be a great campsite, so I staked out a flat spot. However, I was out-voted, and Botanie Lake, a small lake that we could see to the west-northwest, was to be the evening's destination.
Once we were done with the view, we started back down the mountain. I was digging for a cookie and wasn't really paying attention to the road, and turned a bit too sharply on one switchback. My passenger front tire rode up a rocky ledge as I made the right turn, and I almost rolled the truck. Oops! That would have been embarassing. I only mention it here so that it may serve as an educational experience for others. :) I backed off the ledge and continued down the road without incident.
We continued back up the Botanie Valley Road, and just before Botanie Lake, we saw a large sign that stated something to the effect of "Native Land, No Trespassing Beyond This Point". Doh! I made some comment like "we should have stayed at the top of Botanie". :) However, all was not lost; we found the Botanie Lake Recreation Site located just south of the lake, so we pulled in. This was a treed, medium-sized site capable of supporting about 15 vehicles comfortably. Only one vehicle was there, a camperized VW van. The two occupants glanced over when our six trucks pulled in and took over one side of the campsite, but they saw that we weren't the rowdy type, so they went back to cooking their dinner. We cooked up the salmon, which turned out to be river trout; apparently it was excellent (I didn't eat any). I don't remember much about that campsite, but hey, it was seven months ago!
The next morning, we drove a short distance back south on the Botanie Valley Road, and turned right onto the Izman Creek FSR. The Izman Creek FSR wound north, then west, then north. It turned into the Laluwissin Creek - Laluwissin Creek North FSR, then turned into the Hat Creek FSR. We turned left onto 464 Road about 4 km's south of Blue Earth Lake FSR, which according to my mapbook would avoid a gate on Hat Creek FSR just north of Blue Earth Lake FSR. 464 Road was a pleasant road that wound through a valley before it turned east and rejoined the Hat Creek FSR just south of Upper Hat Creek. We then took Hat Creek Road (aka Oregon Jack Creek Road) east to Three Sisters Rec Site, where we had lunch. A passing solo motorbiker stopped and asked us where we had come from; he was also from the Vancouver area and was out exploring the backroads just like us. After lunch, we got onto the Cornwall Hills FSR, which led to the lookout at the top of Cornwall Hills, 2037m above sea level.
The motorbiker showed up again; he had taken a different route to the lookout, and we compared notes. We probably spent about 30 minutes at the lookout, checking out the view and chatting with the caretaker and the motorbiker. We could see a large dust cloud rising into the air about 30 km's to the the northwest; we thought that it might be from large machines working in a rock quarry or something. We decided to leave out the back way; the motorbiker said it was extremely steep and he didn't think that we'd make it; we headed off anyways, and the motorbiker watched us drive down the steep descent one by one. It wasn't all that steep. I have no idea which exact road we took after this; the roads that I've written down are, in the order that we encountered them: 457 Road, 454 Road, 453 Road, 4542 Road, and 4600 Road. We didn't necessarily take all or any of these roads, but I was recording the logging road radio frequencies that were posted on the road signs as we travelled through. My notes say that we met Hwy 99 about 5 km's east of Pavillion Lake; this would mean that we eventually ended up back on Hat Creek Road, and took it north to Hwy 99. I am guessing that the back way from the Cornwall Hills Lookout was a narrow road that shows on the map as heading north past Lone Tree Creek and Ashcroft Creek, and meeting Cornwall Creek FSR at McLean Lake. I do remember much of it being an extremely narrow shelf road, and remember passing through one closed gate (leave gates as you originally found them). I know that we tried to find a route through one area; we encountered many roads marked "Warning: Road Deactivated Beyond This Point. Irregular, hazardous road surface ahead. Drive with extreme caution." Most of these roads had huge water bars or tank traps dug into their surface; by "huge" I mean a 3' straight drop down, followed by a 4' berm with a sharp break-over angle. Since Doug and I had the "big" trucks, we were the ones who scouted out the roads after these obstacles. If we determined that the road actually went somewhere, we either tugged or winched the other vehicles across. I had to winch my truck off of one of the berms; the break-over angle was too sharp and I got high-centered on my frame. Since I only had a front winch, I had to winch the truck forward over the obstacle, then turn around, and climb over the obstacle again. I actually made it back without the winch, due in part to the fact that my frame had "graded" the top of the berm enough so that the break-over angle was greatly reduced, and also due to some creative shovel work. It's situations like this that make me glad that my exhaust system is routed up nice and high. I believe we camped somewhere in this area on Sunday night. I would then guess that we took Cornwall Creek FSR west to Hat Creek Road, then Hat Creek Road north to Hwy 99. There are a lot of old turn-of-the-century log cabins in this area; some are abandoned, some are on private property. We turned left onto Hwy 99, and headed towards Pavillion.
A few kilometres up the road was Marble Canyon Provincial Park; it turned out that the large dust cloud we saw from the Cornwall Hills Lookout was the wind picking up the surface dust from the white marble cliff face, a graphic example of erosion. We took Hwy 99 to the town of Bridge River, where we took the bridge over the Fraser River to the Bridge River Road (who was the original thinker who named this town, anyways??). We took the Bridge River Road as it followed Bridge River (the river) northwest towards Moha, then southwest to the east end of Carpenter Lake. We crossed the Mission Dam and got onto Mission Mountain Road, and quickly climbed above Carpenter Lake to Mission Pass. We could see several brick structures located along the south side of Carpenter Lake; these were water intakes which fed huge pipes that travelled under the mountains, then emerged on the south side of the mountain to travel down the hillside to the power station on the north side of Seton Lake, providing electric power to the area. A wooden sign on a tree noted that the "Mile Breakers CB Club" monitored Ch-9 and Ch-19 in this area. We then switchbacked down to Seton Lake, passed the pipes and the power station, and headed west to Seton Portage.
We continued west along the Seton Highline Road, which is also known as the Anderson Lake Road and the Old Douglas Trail. This is a neat shelf road, high above Anderson Lake, and offers a really nice view of the lake and the mountains on the other side. We could see a gigantic slide across the lake near the southwest end of the lake; when all that earth slid into the lake it probably created a pretty big wave. Our group really spread out along this road as it was extremely dusty; I was tailgunner and at one point I was about 30 minutes behind the rest of the group leader. Good thing we had VHF radios to keep in contact. Just before Telford Bridge, a new Bailey Bridge across from the slide, I spotted a stone cairn in a small campground. I pulled over to check it out; a small plaque read:
Very fitting. As I stood there in the bright sunlight, looking out over the lake at the mountains, a small breeze picked up and rustled the leaves in the trees. I remember thinking that not much had changed in this area since 1878, and that the mountains would still be standing sentinel over the lake long after I'm gone.
We finally hit pavement in D'Arcy, at the southwest end of Anderson Lake. We took the road southwest to Mount Currie, where we split up. Jud, Dave, and I went east, and the rest of the group went west, where they would take the Sea to Sky Hwy (Hwy 99) south past Whistler and Squamish, and eventually arrive in West Vancouver. I actually should have taken this route as it would have taken a couple hours off my return trip, but I elected to take the long way.
Jud, Dave, and I headed east on Hwy 99, then headed south on the In-Shuck-Ch FSR down the west side of Lillooet Lake. This road soon turned into the Pemberton-Douglas FSR as it followed the east side of the Lillooet River towards Harrison Lake. Just north of Port Douglas, we took the Fire Bridge over the Lillooet River to the West Lillooet Lake Road, and headed south. This road turned into the Harrison West FSR as it passed through the Tipella logging camp, and we followed this long, dusty road to the south end of Harrison Lake where it turned into Morris Valley Road just past the Weaver Creek Salmon Hatchery. Morris Valley Road is paved, and led to Harrison Mills and Hwy 7 (Lougheed Hwy), about 46km's west of Hope.
Photos by Doug and Lorilei.
Logging-Road Radio Frequencies |
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