Monday, March 20 - Thursday, March 23, 2000

Doug and I both had Spring Break off from work, so we decided to get out of town for a few days. A camping/exploring/'wheeling trip up in the Thompson River Valley sounded good. We were supposed to leave on Sunday morning, but come 06:30h Sunday morning we were still in Doug's garage working on our trucks from the night before, doing all those "get around to it" things (like installing my dual-battery system) so we decided to delay the trip for a day. Doug's garage doesn't have any windows, so you can never tell what time it is unless you look at a clock. We rolled open the garage door, and the sun was coming up! Oops... Not like we had a schedule to keep or anything. After a few hours sleep, I headed back over to Doug's and we went food shopping at the local butcher's and the local chain grocery store.

We finally left the city on Monday morning, bright and early at 10:00h. Hey, we were on vacation! It was a balmy sunny day, and the first day of Spring. We stopped for brunch at the Ricky's in Sardis, then fueled up at 54.3/litre at the Mohawk. While we were there I got an oil change at McQuik since I never got around to it on Sunday. We chatted to the oil change specialist who was admiring my rock lights and diff protectors from his vantage point in the pit. He said he used to own an '84 Toyota pickup, and he broke the frame in half while un-sticking a buddy's high-centered full-size truck. Apparently he was using a tow strap as a yank strap. His comment was that his '84 was an underpowered piece of crap; we attempted to defend the Toyota name to no avail.

We made a bee-line for Lytton, where we refueled at 55.9/litre at the Esso. After about 18 km's and a couple of traffic stops courtesy of Emcon, who were repairing highway retaining walls, we pulled west off the highway and drove down the short path to the CN workers' suspension bridge for some lunch. After lunch, we headed back down the highway a couple of kilometers, then turned east off the highway onto the Sackum Creek FSR. Ahh! Finally on the trail. The plan was to follow the Sackum Creek FSR to Skeikut Creek, then take the Soap Lake FSR up past Soap Lake and then north to Spences Bridge. The road quickly became steep muddy switchbacks, climbing high up into sage-covered hills. Suddenly, at about the 1.8 km mark, I heard a deafening "BLAPPLE-BLAPPLE-BLAPPLE" from beneath the truck as the cab quickly filled up with exhaust fumes. $*#%!

A quick inspection showed that the exhaust pipe had broken about a quarter-inch foward of the catalytic converter. Hm, maybe the oil-change guy knew something after all! I briefly thought about using a tin can and two hose clamps to fix it, but it didn't look like Mickey Mouse would be able to hold on for the entire trip. We thought about welding it up as Doug had brought rod and goggles, but we didn't really feel like pulling out our four batteries just yet. Doug remembered seeing a repair shop back at the Lytton Esso, so we zoomed the 16 km's back as my tongue absorbed the exhaust's metallic-tasting fumes *ick*. The owner sleeved the pipe, welded it, and clamped it, and charged me $50 for the privilege of having him work on it, which was actually pretty reasonable considering it was closing time and we were in the middle of nowhere (relatively speaking). While this was going on, we ate dinner at the Chinese restaurant next door (Dinner for 1, Combination A). The metallic taste in my mouth finally disappeared near the end of the meal.

We zoomed back to the Sackum Crk FSR, and arrived at 17:55h. Back up the slippery switchbacks. By 18:15h, our trucks were covered in mud, and it was snowing heavily. I flipped on the 100w Hella Rally 4000 Eurobeams to help light the trail, which made a huge improvement over my 80/100w H4 headlights. We passed by a snow-covered lake or field at 18:30h (not sure what it was; it flat, treeless, and under snow), and soon found ourselves sliding around in the deepening snow. Doug suddenly had the bright idea to air down (uh, oh yeah!!), so we went down to 15 psi and found that our traction had improved tremendously. While airing down, I noticed that our tires were resting on about a 1" thick layer of ice. The snow and darkness made it difficult to see the side roads and forks, so we had to do a lot of guesswork and map-checking to figure out where we were going (not that we ever figured it out!).

At one point we descended a slight hill towards what looked like a washed-out bridge over a creek; it turned out to be nothing more than boards tossed into the creek to serve as a crossing for less-capable vehicles. We eventually arrived at a small round pond in a field, and with the aid of the hand-held spotlight we could just make out a fence on the rise above it, almost hidden by the swirling flakes. Again we stopped to consult the map, but it didn't show the small pond. We could barely make out a path leading around the pond, and it looked like there might be a path heading towards the fence around the other side of the pond as well. We guessed that the fence indicated private property, and from previous experience figured that the second path would lead to a gate or driveway, so we took the first path. It turned out to be a trail leading to another small round pond, then another. The trail gradually became a bit more visible as it led us away from the ponds, and we soon found ourselves back in the forest.

By this time, we had no idea where we were. Well, we had a vague idea, which was getting more vague by the kilometer. In our defense, we had Doug's Lowrance GPS, but the course it was showing we had taken didn't match up with anything our map showed, and our Backroad Mapbook didn't have coordinates. So, we knew exactly WHERE we were, just not where on the MAP we were. Then, Doug said he spotted a light through the forest, several km's away. I had missed the light because the Hellas brightly lit up the area in front of my truck and overpowered the faint light in the distance. This was good; a light meant that something wasn't too far away. The trail soon dropped below the snow line; some of the tight switchbacks required two-point turns and made me wish I had installed some cornering lights. We rounded a corner, and were able to see the lights of a town in the distance, as well as a couple of solitary lights down below our shelf road to the right. Doug thought one of the lights might be a car, as he could see some red light in with the white, but it didn't appear to be moving.

We came to a fork, and took the right branch. I proceeded down the road while Doug waited at the top. It was a little-used road which decended in more-or-less the right direction. About half-way down I spotted a large hole in the middle of the road. I got out to check it out; it was about 3 feet in diameter and 4 feet deep, and appeared to curve down under the road and continue decending like a tunnel. It looked like it was caused by water undermining the hillside. Deciding that this particular road wasn't overly safe, I decided to back out to the last branch where Doug was waiting (it was too narrow to turn around on). As I backed up the hill away from the hole, I felt the passenger rear tire go *bump* over something. As I continued to back up, my headlights illuminated another similarly-sized hole that I hadn't even seen on the way down, partially hidden by a clump of sage, that I had just finished backing over! Yikes! I got out to inspect it; my tire tracks went through the center of the hole. Good thing I have big tires! Not wanting to fall into another unseen hole while backing up, I called Doug down to spot me out with his flashlight. I took a pic of him standing in the hole to remind us of how deep it was.

Back at the fork, we tried the left branch. We soon found ourselves on a wide, sage-covered plateau, overlooking one of the lights, which turned out to be a farm house. We could see semi trucks moving on the highway near the town's lights, but we were still several km's away. Then, to our surprise, a pair of car headlights came around a corner, lighting up a paved highway about 200 feet below us. What the?? We watched the car's lights follow the road until it disappeared, and consulted the map again. We came to the conclusion that we were on a plateau overlooking Highway 8, south-east of Spences Bridge. This meant that we had totally overshot Soap Lake, and in fact had taken the long way around the lake via the Skeikut Creek road. Who knew!

Now, the trick was to find the way down to the highway. Not finding another path down from the plateau, we decided to attempt the right fork road again. I drove around the two holes, and reminded Doug about them. Even though he was aware of the first hole, he totally missed seeing it, and drove right over the hole, straddling a tire along each edge. He spotted the second hole, and drove around it. I spotted a metal tower with a TV antenna, and just below the hill it was on was a house at the side of the highway, with a tree lit up with Christmas lights (what Doug had thought was a car from above in the hills). The road rounded a corner, and ended at a gate across the house's driveway, less than 100 feet from the highway. Doh! It was now 21:08h, and we were forced to turn around.

We went back up through the tight switchbacks, looking for the branch towards Soap Lake. At 21:40h, during one of the map-checking stops, I noticed that one of the jogs on the GPS plot resembled a jog on the map, in roughly the same area we were in. We knew where we were! Or so we thought. At 22:50 we came to the conclusion that the jog on the GPS was merely one of the switchbacks on the road, and that the GPS was zoomed in too far. Since it was getting late, we decided to camp on a flat spot on a hillside amidst the pines.

At 06:20h the next morning, I awoke to the raucous cacophony of at least eight different bird calls. I promptly flipped my sleeping bag over my head, rolled over, and went back to sleep. Too early for me! When we finally awoke, Doug cooked up some bacon and eggs, and we were ready to go by 09:30h. It was a clear, sunny day, with not a cloud in the sky. Back at the switchback from last night, I noticed a faint track we missed in the dark. Perhaps this was the road to Soap Lake after all! Even in the bright sunlight, Doug missed the turn and I had to tell him where it was. No wonder we missed it last night! The path ended at a plateau with a nice view of the Nicola valley. Although the view was worth the climb, it wasn't the road we were looking for, so we headed back to the main road in search of the Soap Lake FSR once again.

We soon found ourselves back at the three ponds, so we tried the north-west fork that led between two of them. The fence turned out to be the boundary of a small ecological preserve plot. The path led to yet another pond, and then another; when we finally left the area we counted a total of twelve ponds, some frozen over and some not. The entire area was soft and muddy, so we carefully crept past the ponds to minimize the environmental impact. We tried a few different paths; one led to a pretty good muddy sidehill with a bit of snow, that caused Doug some consternation as the back of his truck slid about two feet to the right. I chose the line that he slid into, and made it past with no slipping.

Our efforts were in vain however, as the road quickly narrowed into a cattle track. We backtracked back to the sidehill. I again tried taking the low line, and suddenly the sidehill slid the back of my truck over the edge and into the sagebrush. Doh! Doug's voice on the VHF said "I wish I got that on video!". I attempted to crawl back up onto the road surface, and ended up sliding the entire truck over the edge. However, with a bit of work I was able to climb up and out without resorting to the strap. The sidehill tried to claim Doug's truck as well, but the Big-O's triumphed and he made it past with just a slight rear-end waggle.

We continued on past all the ponds, and eventually came to a major fork that we passed the night before. Doug checked it out while I made notes for the trip report, and reported that it headed back towards the same area that we had just come from. At 12:35h we discovered an abandoned homestead overlooking a stand of aspen; we had driven right past it in the dark the night before. I took some pictures of the old log buildings for posterity; I didn't take any pictures of a ghost town we found a couple years ago, and it was completely gone the next time I was there. Doug saw a road leading between the buildings, so we decided to see where it went. It wandered through the forest around the back of the homestead's fenced area, and quickly turned into a narrow snow-covered shelf road. Numerous forks led away from the road as it climbed into the mountains, and near the top we found a wide, snow-covered meadow. The snow on the road was over hub-deep at this point, and I had to get tugged over a slight incline by Doug. We explored the road for another few km's, but we eventually lost the track in the snow. We finally decided that Soap Lake had won this round, so we turned around and headed for the exit.

On the way out we noticed that our Big-O's were the only tire tracks on the roads, so we knew that nobody else had been in the area besides ourselves. At point along the road, I noticed that I was dangerously close to driving into an eroded washout that dropped straight down to the treetops far below. At 14:36h, half a kilometer before the Sackum Creek FSR reached the highway, I noticed an old log cabin nestled into the hillside, protected by prickly bushes. We got out to take a look, and I wondered aloud why the doorway was so low. Closer inspection showed that the lower hinge was almost buried by sediment, so I figured that decades of rain water had washed the soil down the hill and had deposited it onto the cabin floor and the surrounding ground. We stopped for lunch where the Sackum Creek FSR met the highway; sandwiches, and raw veggies with dip.

We hit the highway, and rolled into Spences Bridge at 15:40h where we gassed up at the Petro-Can for 68.9/litre. We headed down Highway 8, and I spotted a familiar-looking metal tower and TV antenna; we were on the highway directly below the plateau from the night before. We scoped out the area, but there were no other access points from the plateau to the highway other than buddy's driveway. The next stage was to head up the east side of the Thompson River, and work our way up to Highway 97C via the Laura Lake Road, then take the Woods Creek FSR towards Walhachin.

At 16:09h, we turned off Highway 8 onto a dirt road that headed north up the east side of the Thompson River, and passed through the Pemynoos Indian Reservation. Sections of the road were twisty and narrow, and we found an abandoned early-'50's car that had been driven off the road in a tight corner, with most of its chrome intact. Further on, I spotted on old '40's car in a field, it looked pretty complete and even had all of it's window glass, which probably meant it's interior was in reasonable shape. We passed a small cemetary, and then turned off the main road onto the right fork about 8 km's from Highway 8. We spotted four bighorn sheep way up on the steep hillside above us, and observed them for a bit with our binoculars. They appeared to be bedding down for the night.

We followed the main road as best we could, but there were numerous forks and side roads which made it difficult to figure out the correct path. Again, nothing on the map matched the GPS plot. We tried one direction, only to have to turn around when the road became one with the bushes about a kilometer past a large, fallen tree that was lying across the road. I was beginning to have doubts as to whether or not we'd be able to find our way, and didn't relish the thought of having to backtrack all the way to the Thompson River again. We encountered three black horses running through the snow, and found ourselves climbing four very steep snow-covered switchbacks in the growing darkness. I flipped the Hellas on again, and they lit up the deep snow like it was daylight. We were running in first gear, four-low, with front and rear lockers engaged, doing our best to stay away from the massive irrecoverable drop-off over the cliff. We finally crested the summit at 19:09h, and found ourselves in a recently-logged area. We could still smell the smoke from the burnt underbrush. The road was plowed here, and there was only a couple inches of snow on it, a welcome change from the hub-deep switchbacks. We decended the plowed road at a relatively-rapid 40km/h, and soon found ourselves below the snow line on a very muddy road. I could see mud being flung forward in the headlights, and could hear chunks spraying into the wheelwells and landing on the hood and roof. As we slid around the corners and spun our tires up the rises, I was glad I had opted for self-cleaning mud tires. At 19:22h, we came to a cross-road that led to the Highland Valley Copper Mine, with a sign that stated the road was accessible to "left-hand-drive vehicles only". The sign for the road we had just exited stated we were on the Laura Lake Road. Whoo-hoo! I could hardly believe that we'd actually found it! We followed the road out to a highway; a check of the map showed that we had popped out on Highway 97C, between Ashcroft and Logan Lake at Landon Road. I was quite surprised that we were able to punch our way through the maze of forestry, mining, and range roads to arrive at our destination. It was now 19:42h, and we decided it was time to find a camping spot and make some dinner.

We drove down the highway, and turned north onto the Woods Creek FSR. We immediately found ourselves in foot-deep snow, and since the road was steadily climbing and the snow was getting deeper, we decided to find an alternate route. We decided it was too dark to cook, so we headed down the highway to Logan Lake to find a restaurant. We arrived at 20:55h, and after checking a few places discovered that Logan Lake's sidewalks roll up at 21:00h. We encountered Ken and his wife, a friendly couple out for a walk. They directed us down the road to the Black Bull Pub, whose grille might still be open. It wasn't, but the waitress there phoned around and found that the pizza place at the shopping mall was open until 21:30. Back up the hill to the mall, where we walked around in the dark looking for the pizza place. Ken and his wife showed up, and led us up behind the mall where we finally found the establishment and ordered a couple of baked lasagnas.

We drove south on Highway 97C towards Merritt, and turned off at Woodman Road. A short distance in, we took the left branch onto the gas pipeline right-of-way, where we set up camp. We hungrily devoured our hard-earned lasagna by the light of my auxiliary reverse lamps, and hit the sleeping bags around 23:00h.

I awoke the next morning at 08:06h to the sound of Doug doing his best to be quiet while rattling around with pots and pans. I popped open the canopy door, and... *blink* *blink* It was snowing! Now I know how a bear feels when he wakes up too early from hibernation. Our camp was covered with snow (except under our trucks), and Doug had set up a tarp and was preparing pancakes. We leisurely ate our breakfast, and were packed and warming up the engines by 09:40h. It's nice to not be in a hurry.

Where to go? We wanted to stay in a somewhat lower elevation, as we knew that there'd be a fresh dump of snow on the passes. We headed down the highway to Merritt, and wandered in to the Forest Service office. The receptionist wasn't able or willing to sell or copy topographical maps for us, so after looking at our map in their parking lot Doug suggested we try to make it to Bob Lake, a route he had been on two years ago with our friend Jud Barnes.

We left Merritt on Highway 5A, and took the Monck Lake Road just east of Nicola. Note: Beware of stray cows on the road. The road became muddy, and slowly climbed up the hills, giving us a nice view of Nicola Lake. We took the left fork at Monck Provincial Park, and we hit snow as we passed by the Gerard Guichon Ranch. Once past the gas pipeline right-of-way, which was criss-crossed with snowmobile tracks, the snow on the road got just over two feet deep, as I discovered when I exited from the truck and sank in up past my knees.

We were again running in first gear, four-low, with front and rear lockers engaged, and eventually decided to call it quits as the snow got deeper and the road continued to climb (sounds familiar!). I started backing up, and suddenly found my truck sliding into the snow-covered ditch off to the left. While I tried to free my truck, I noticed that my left front tire was not turning when power was applied. Hm. I got out to check the hub; yep, it was locked. Maybe the ARB wasn't engaging. I hit the front locker switch a few times; no hiss of air and the compressor didn't kick in. I hit the rear switch with the same result. Uh-oh, I was open-diffed! Maybe that's why today's snow was being so difficult. We checked the compressor wiring, tracing it back from it's connection at the fusible link. Doug noticed that the fuse holder was warm, so we pulled the fuse and discovered corrosion on one end. The corrosion was causing a resistance, which had heated up the fuse so much that the solder inside the fuse had melted down the side of the glass, even though the fuse was still good. We cleaned up the fuse-holder's contacts with a file, sprayed them with WD-40, and popped in a new fuse. The familiar sound of the ARB compressor powering up filled the air (no pun intended!).

When the compressor stopped, I hit the rear ARB switch and heard the click of the solenoid engaging. When I hit the front ARB switch, the compressor kicked on, and kept running... It didn't shut off until I switched off the front ARB. Uh-oh... I switched on the front ARB again, and the compressor again kicked on... Doug then informed me that he detected air coming out of the front diff breather. It appeared that I had blown a seal in the front ARB. Zounds! Doug happily tested out his in-cab, dashboard-mounted winch control, and extracted me from the ditch.

We headed back down the road, and turned off into a small area at the edge of the Guichon ranch. Doug amused himself by putting his front tires up on a large rock, and I showed off by putting my truck off-camber until the left rear tire came off the ground and the truck was gently rocking. We sat on the large rock and had a very relaxing lunch of barbequed smokies and potato salad, as we admired the view of Nicola Lake.

We left the rock at 14:55h, and drove back down to Highway 5A. We crossed the bridge over the Nicola River, and turned onto the Princeton Bypass Road (aka Old Nicola Road) at the Nicola Lake Dam. The plaque at the dam said that it was built in 1986 to improve the irrigation water supply, fisheries resource maintenance flows, and flood control. We took the left turn at the Sutter Ranch, and started climbing the twisty road into the hills over looking the ranch. We found two old mineshaft accesses west of Sugarloaf Mountain, and at 15:56h popped out at the junction of Highway 5 and 97C, near the Merritt Tourist Info Booth. We got on to the Coldwater Road heading south, and observed dark clouds gathering and snow falling in the distant mountains. Doug, who was monitoring IPARN (the Inter-Provincial Amateur Radio Network) on his hand-held VHF radio, reported that truckers were chaining up on Highway 5 near the Coquihalla Summit, due to extreme winter weather conditions. We marvelled at how quickly the weather changes in this area, and headed down the road in the warm sunshine.

I spotted an old log cabin just past the Gwen Lake Road turn-off, and stopped to take a picture while Doug continued on. We turned off Coldwater Road at 16:49h onto the Spius Creek Road (aka Patchett Road). Once we had driven past all the farms on the plowed road, the Spius Creek Road turned into the Spius Creek FSR. We reached the end of the plowed road at 17:07h, and began climbing up into the hills. We followed a snow-mobile track; the snow depth ranged from a couple inches to a couple feet. As long as we stayed on top of the slightly-compressed snow from the snow-mobile, we were fine; straying to either side dumped us into two-feet-deep snow. We stayed left at the Peter Creek Access road, then stayed right at the Airport Road. Doug radioed that he was temporarily immobilised in a ditch on the left side of the road, and warned me to avoid that particular spot; unfortunately he managed to extricate himself before I showed up with a camera *darn*.

When I saw his tire tracks weave to the left and into the ditch, I attempted to steer to the right to get out of the tracks. Unfortunately, when my truck found traction, I headed off to the right, overshot the snow-mobile track, and dumped the truck into a snowbank deep enough to swallow the passenger front 33" tire. I tried to get out, to no avail; without the front locker I was unable to back out onto the crust. The only movement I had was forward, which put me into a four-foot-deep tree well. Doug came back down the hill, and of course took a couple of pics before pulling me out. He tugged me back for about thirty feet before I could steer out of the soft stuff and back on top of the compressed snow. He said that he was having difficulties at the next switchback anyways, as the snow was even deeper. We decided to get out of the snow and look or a place to camp. We headed back to Coldwater Road, and headed south.

We spotted a little road off the left a few km's later; it led to our old friend the gas pipeline. We followed the pipeline for a bit, and pulled off into a cleared field that turned out to be about 500m from Highway 5. We camped at the edge of the field in a wind-sheltered area amongst the pines. It was a bit cold, so we lit a campfire for the first time during this trip; there was plenty of firewood nearby from fallen trees. I flipped on my auxiliary reverse lights so we could see to cook; we had barbequed steaks with baked potatoes and sour cream for dinner, and we got to sleep around 23:00h.

We woke up at 08:00h; it was lightly snowing. Cheese omelettes in pita bread for breakfast, and we were ready to go at 09:46h. Off we went as the snowflakes began to cover our campsite. I spotted the remains of an old cement overpass near the Murray Lake Road, and realized we were paralleling the KVR right-of-way. We could see the old railbed just above us to the left, between Coldwater Road and Highway 5.

At the Coldwater exit (exit 256), we passed a Department of Highways salt plow standing by; hopefully the road conditions didn't warrant his activation. We quickly checked out the toll-bypass route at the Coquihalla Lakes exit (exit 228); it was plowed to just past the Department of Highways yard, then ended at a six-foot-high wall of snow. We could see the tops of the signs poking up through the snow-mobile-tracked snow down the road. Oh well, back to the highway. There was freshly-plowed snow on the highway just south of the Coquihalla Summit, the remnants from the weather system the day before. We were still aired down, so we had no problems and safely passed the slower vehicles who were timidly creeping down the slippery, slushy hill. We checked out a few side roads that we spotted from the highway, but most ended rather quickly at creek edges and camping spots. We aired up in Hope, and gassed up in Chilliwack at 62.9/litre. We had put just over 1000 km's on our odometers in the last four days.

This was a slight departure from our usual multi-day trips where we had a specific destination and schedule in mind; it was quite relaxing to be able to just meander around the backroads not caring about how long each stage took us, or even how far we travelled. We both enjoyed it immensely, and we're already looking forward to the Easter trip.

All this gear, and we STILL were lost!

Addendum: We fixed the front ARB locker; it turned out to be a tiny sliver of metal in the U-ring seal; no idea where it came from, and there was no evidence of other particles in the system. Thanks to Todd of North Shore Off Road for staying late on a Friday evening so we could pick up the new seal and the new bolts, and for not charging for them even though it was a month out of warranty.

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