Friday, May 18 - Monday, May 21, 2001

I had posted this trip with this comment: "Lots of BC history, abandoned cabins, and awesome scenery; I'm planning on frequent stops for photos. This is all doable by stock trucks; the only possible problem is snow." The original plan: drive to Boston Bar, take Anderson Main to Uztlius Creek FSR, head up the Uztlius power line road (I've only ever driven down it) to Spius, Petit Creek / Mini Whipsaw to Hwy 8, head to Promontory Lookout (if the snow's not too deep) either via the Promontory Mtn Rd or the road just east of Canford, north to Gnawed Mtn (lots of abandoned mines here to check out), north to Walhachin. Return via Hat Creek, Izman Creek, Hwy 12, take the reaction ferry across the Fraser at Lytton, then Westside Fraser road to Nahatlatch, Kookipi to Harrison West. Obviously, the actual route would depend on the snow level, whether or not the roads were passable (ie. overgrown, washed out, gated, or closed), and other factors, but hey, it's not like we had a schedule to keep or anything.

Anyways, y'all know what happens to the best-laid plans of mice and men!

THURSDAY

Last weekend, on the way to Saltspring Island, I had broken several teeth off my rear pinion gear. That unfortunate occurance required me to pull over and remove the rear driveshaft, lock the hubs, and drive the entire trip in front wheel drive. So, as this weekend fast approached, I wasn't even sure if the truck would be repaired in time. Al at 4OffRd built my rear diff on Thursday, and Doug and John installed the diff in my rear end on Thursday night. Everything seemed good, so I posted a note to our mailing list that I'd be attending the trip on Friday. Thanks, Al, Doug, and John!

FRIDAY

Warm and sunny, a good sign! I left work early, and on the way home went to Sears to pick up some bar oil and a jerry can for my chainsaw; they had a sale on so I picked up a 36" wrecking bar at 40% off while I was there. I could have used one several times during the past month, so the sale was just the excuse I needed. Nothing like a 'wheeling trip to add to the tool collection! I then headed home; Terry had already arrived, and was prepping food for the trip.

We loaded up the truck, and finally left North Vancouver at 18:15h. We gassed up in Chilliwack (68.9/litre compared to 82.9 in North Van), and met Brad, Norm, and Helen at the Wendy's for dinner. It seemed like everyone and their dogs were leaving town; Chilliwack's gas stations were filled with cars, 4x4's, motorhomes, and trailers loaded with dirt bikes, ATV's, Jet Ski's, and boats. The RCMP Highway Patrol were aware of this as well, and we spotted two of their radar/laser traps. We took the Flood-Hope Rd into Hope, crossed over the Fraser River, and headed north on Hwy 1 towards Spuzzum.

Just past the Alexandra Bridge, we turned right off the highway into Alexandra Bridge Provincial Park, and headed down the narrow trail to our usual campsite under the powerlines. We arrived just after 21:00h, and Terry, Brad, and I chatted until midnight while Norm and Helen retired early. It was at this time that Terry realized that we had forgotten to pack a pot for cooking. Doh! Fortunately, Brad had a few spare pots, and loaned us one.

The usual thousand frogs over in the pond were croaking all night as we attempted to sleep; they shut up around 04:00h when it started to rain. I awoke to the drumming of the rain on my canopy roof, but shortly fell back to sleep as the drumming faded into background noise.

This was my first trip without my military air mattress; I figured I didn't need it because I had installed a thick rubber bed mat on the floor. The mat was great for covering the floor ribbing, but didn't provide much in the way of padding and ended up being fairly hard. Even my military foamie didn't provide enough softness, so I had to rotate constantly to avoid getting sore. The mat did insulate the floor nicely though. Note to self: get a thick piece of sponge cut, for use as a mattress.

SATURDAY

We awoke at 07:30h. I discovered that I had a small leak along the top of my rear window frame, which slowly dripped water onto my sleeping bag and foamie. Fortunately, none of the water had made it through the bag's outer shell. Breakfast was clam chowder soup, heated up in Brad's pot with my new Coleman grille/stove. We packed up our gear, and hit the road at 08:45h.

We took the steep road out of the campsite, and arrived at the Cattermole mainline at the 3km mark. We drove north to Boston Bar to top up our gas; all you rednecks might be interested to know that Boston Bar has it's very own "white trash truck". :) As we were heading back south towards the Uztlius Crk FSR, Norm called Brad on the VHF and informed him that his fuel door was open. Brad pulled over, and discovered that he had forgotten to replace his gas cap, so he headed back to town while we waited at the side of the road. As Brad arrived back at the gas staion, we heard his voice on the radio saying "Oh look, somebody lost a gas cap in the middle of the road!" :)

Back down the highway to the Uztlius Creek FSR; we climbed up the short gravel hill and at 09:30 stopped to air down at a wide spot in the road. We stayed right at the branch to the Spius Creek FSR, stayed left at the branches for Anderson and East Anderson, and soon found ourselves at the powerline access road, a small offshoot that looked like it was just another short road to a tower. However, we had the GPS coordinates from the last time we came OUT through this road, so we knew better!

This road gets really steep really quick. Don't stop in the middle, or you'll have to back down to a section with less of an incline to get going again. Checking the inclinometer during the steep sections showed us that we were on a 20º slope. We took a brief break at the top of the ascent, as we tried to remember the correct branch. It was early enough in the season so that the summer leaves of the overgrowth had not yet obscured the trail; from June to October parts of the trail are almost invisible. We found a few small patches of snow around the 4000' mark; the absence of tire tracks told us that we were the first ones through since the snow. Thankfully, we didn't find any deadfall that needed removing, a common occurence when nobody else has travelled the trail after the winter.

As we crested the mountain, I stopped to play on the rocks under the powerlines. During our descent down the back side of the mountain, we took a brief detour to check out a road that should have met up with the mainline via a route around another mountain; this road was blocked by a landslide composed of soft dirt and mud, so we turned around. We eventually passed the sign marking the "start" of the Uztlius Crk FSR, and at 12:30h we stopped for lunch at the junction of Spius Crk FSR and Silver Lake Rd, by the bridge over Spius Creek. Jumbo hotdogs with all the fixin's for Terry and I, yum! We briefly consulted our maps, and decided to try the "Mini-Whipsaw" trail, so named because its terrain was somewhat similar to that found on the popular Whipsaw FSR.

We were mobile at 13:15h; we crossed the bridge and headed up the Silver Lake Road. I had to make a quick stop to tighten the screws of my mic bracket; it appeared that I hadn't reinstalled them correctly when I installed the altimeter/inclinometer. At 13:40h we passed Silver Lake on our left side; it's a pleasant Provincial Recreation Site and is easy to miss. However, the road we wanted branched off before the lake, so we turned around and drove back until we found the hole in the bush that Brad determined was the start of the loop trail that would take us to Lightning Lake and Cabin Lake, where we could exit via Petit Crk FSR or the long, steep descent back down to Spius Crk FSR.

We encountered snow about 300' into the trail, just before the first creek crossing. The entire trail wound around through the forest, so the sun had been unable to melt the snow. Brad led the way; Norm decided to hang back until we determined how passable the trail was. By 14:29h Brad's IFS diff/skidplate was high-centered on the snow, his front tires spinning in the deep ruts. I drove around him, and continued on through the deepening snow. I broke through the ice in a few spots, dropping into the deep puddles with a crack and splash. Soon the snow got deep enough to significantly slow my forward progress (okay, I couldn't get out of one of the puddles!) so I decided to reverse back down the trail for about a kilometer and turn around in a wide spot near Brad. After some jockeying, I got turned around, and Terry hooked Brad's tug strap up to my front bumper and I tugged him over the snow to the wide spot, where he too was able to turn around. We proceeded back to the trailhead to rejoin Norm. Once back on the main road, we checked out all of the side roads; they all went in a short distance to small clearings suitable for camping. We noticed that some type of animal had burrowed all over this area, leaving snakey tracks and holes.

We took the Spius Crk FSR north, and checked out Jack Swart FSR, where we would have come out had we made it through the Mini-Whipsaw to Petit Crk FSR. One particularly large cross ditch forced us to drive through a ditch; Norm got a tire in the air, and I tried to do the same but only flexed the suspension. I saw my first orange Indian Paintbrush here; all the other ones I'd seen were red. We decided that there was no point in going further, as we knew that the snow would have eventually stopped us at the Silver Lake end. On the way back through the ditch, I played around trying to see how much I could lean the truck; 25º was the most I could get it to go. At 16:35h we found ourselves exiting Patchett Road onto Coldwater Road. We drove southbound on Coldwater Road, pulled into the Westcoast Energy road, then onto the gas pipeline right-of-way that Doug and I camped on during last year's Spring Break trip. It was quite windy here, and we spotted a little dust devil swirling around. Most decided that this wasn't a good place to camp, so it was decided that we would try to get to Seymour Lake since there was still plenty of daylight left.

We took Coldwater Road to Kingsvale, where we took the Kane Valley Road under the Coquihalla Hwy, and proceeded east along the well-maintained gravel road. At 17:15h we found ourselves in the extensive Nicola Ranch property, and decided that we had missed the turnoff to the lake. We backtracked to a road that I had spotted, named Figlinski Road. We took this road up past a couple of houses, avoided the barking dogs that did their best to get run over by our tires, passed a branch on the right, and soon found ourselves at a gate sporting a "No Trespassing" sign. Dang! We went back to the fork, and took the road east. About a kilometer in, we spotted an abandoned homestead in a wide expanse of cleared land on a slope leading down from our road, and I stopped to take some photos while Brad and Norm continued on to check the road out. They returned as we were walking back to the truck, reporting that this road also ended at a gate.

We drove back down to the Kane Valley Road, and headed back into the Nicola Ranch property. At the 9km mark, we turned right onto the Voght Valley Road, and headed south. The dusty soil and rocks turned to pale red here, a strange contrast to the bright blue sky. Just past the turnoff to Shovelnose Mtn Road, Brad spotted a huge field through the trees, and since it was past 18:30h we decided it would be a good spot to set up camp. Holy cow-pies, Batman! Most were dry and in the process of returning to the earth, but we still had to be careful about where we treaded. Brad gathered most of the firewood, Terry gathered rocks, and I got the fire started. Terry, setting up his tent, had a tough time with the tarp due to the steady convection wind, but once the sun set, the wind died down. Terry and I ate Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. Brad and I chainsawed the dead logs that he had gathered, and Terry stacked the wood next to our fire. It started snowing around 23:15h, and we shone our flashlights up into the sky for a few minutes while we watched the snow fall down towards us. Everyone packed it in for the night around 23:30h.

I climbed into my truck and wrote some notes for the trip report, and retired to the warmth of my sleeping bag around midnight, as the snow subsided then turned to rain. Drip... drip... drip... Oh yeah, I forgot about that leak! I grabbed a paper towel, dried off the window frame, then ran some masking tape along the track where the leak was, which channelled the water off to the side of the window and well away from my sleeping bag. I drifted off to sleep, listening to the rain pattering on the canopy roof.

SUNDAY

We awoke to overcast skies, and quickly made breakfast and loaded our trucks. We decided to take our newly-cut firewood with us, in the event that the next campsite was devoid of wood. We were underway at 10:17h. Driving without a clear plan, we stayed right at the Shea Lake FSR turnoff, where we spotted a little coroplast sign that stated "Lick Marc's feet at entrance". We headed south-east on Voght Valley Road until we got to the Davis Lake Rec Site, which was quite full. Good thing they didn't know about our field! We made a group decision to head towards Merritt for fuel, so instead of taking Voght to Otter Valley Road and then to Hwy 5A, we decided to turn around, and take Shea Lake FSR which, according to our "very accurate" maps, should have popped us out onto the Kane Valley Road about 3km's east of the Voght turnoff.

We drove past Shea Lake, which was full of people camping with full-size trucks and boats, passed a couple of little-used branches, and soon found ourselves at the end of the road. What the?? We turned around, and decided that we'd try one of the branches. The morning sun had come out by now, and its warm rays were quickly heating things up. My map book showed the road as "blocked" further on, but as it turned out we never found the block. We wound our way through the forest, and Brad, who was leading, kept to the left at all of the forks. I have to mention that this was an excellent area for exploring; there were numerous branches and I think we could have easily spent the whole day here wandering around. We popped out in a freshly-logged area, got onto a mainline, and eventually arrived at pavement. The street sign said that the gravel road we on was called Tillery Road, which meant that we were looking at Hwy 5A North, just south of Aspen Grove.

We hit the highway, and headed north towards Merritt. Just south of Corbett Lake, I spotted a large black bear meandering through the aspen trees on the other side of the small valley, and I stopped to let Terry take some photos, which he happily did. The bear was far enough away to make him wish that his digital camera had a higher-power zoom (yes, there's a bear somewhere in these photos!). The bear eventually wandered back into the trees, neading north towards the lake. We continued on and soon passed the lake; numerous people were floating around on inner tubes and walking around the shore, oblivious to the approaching bear.

We arrived in Merritt at 12:38h, and fueled up at the Petro-Can under a clear blue sky. We drove down to the A&W, where we ate lunch and planned our next route. We decided that we'd try to reach the Promontory Fire Lookout, north-west of Merritt. We took Hwy 8 west out of Merritt, and I made a brief detour at Mamit Lake Road, to allow Terry to take a picture of a carved wooden bear I had spotted at the Mojo Gas station the last time I was through here. We soon caught up with Brad and Norm, who were pulled over at the side of the road just west of Woodward Road. We were looking for Promontory Mtn Road on the right side, and we soon turned right off of Hwy 8 onto Miller Road, a newly-paved road for a new housing subdivision on the hillside that we figured was in the right area for the road we were supposed to be on. We got to one cul-de-sac that ended at a driveway; it appeared that if the house wasn't there the road might have gone through. Hmm. Maybe there was an access route that we missed.

Back down at Hwy 8, we noticed that Miller Road, which wasn't on the map, was directly across from Sunshine Valley Road, which was on the map. A quick consultation of the map showed us that Promontory Mtn Road was actually east of this point, so we turned around and retraced our steps. The only road in the area was marked Woodward Street, and was the road to the municipal dump. At 14:30h we took this road to see what would happen; when we arrived at the dump we found a narrow road to the left, which climbed its way through the forest and the wild daisies, passed above the new housing subdivision, and eventually arrived at a sign that said Promontory Lookout FSR. Success!

We continued to steadily climb the grade, and at the 3200' level (according to my altimeter) I noticed that my engine temperature was almost in the red. I pulled over, kept the engine running to circulate the coolant, and turned the heater on full blast (great on a hot day!) to assist the cooling process. The temperature soon returned to normal, and we continued on. We kept right at a fork just past a cow skull, and kept left at the next fork. We passed the point where we had to turn around the last time we were up here in April '98, and at 14:45h and a couple of turns later arrived at the Promontory fire lookout at the top of the mountain.

What a view! It's sights like this that make all that driving worth while. Mountains as far as you can see, which is really far. We had arrived at the Great Wide Open; clear views, clean air, blue sky, and no other humans to disturb us. Does it get any better than this? The lookout is 1734m above sea level, and is the highest point in the area. The mountain top is also home to several repeater stations for area television, telephone, and two-way radio communications. At the base of the steps to the lookout observation deck, I spotted several dozen ladybugs crawling out of a crack in the green-painted cement. Looking south, we could see the ginseng farms in the Sunshine Valley below, and the snow-capped peaks of Mt McInnes, 13 km's and a couple valleys away.

After we had soaked up the view and taken our photos, we consulted the maps once again. The maps all showed a road leading north-west down the back of the mountain; we were unable to find this road at the top, so we headed down to one of the switchbacks near the top where we had seen a small track into the bush. This was a steep descent; we passed a closed gate and arrived at a small clearing on a slope. We decided to go through the gate; this was obviously a seldom-used trail as evidenced by the overgrowth and the grass and the saplings growing up in the middle of the road. We followed the fence line for a bit, then the trail turned into the forest. This was a tight, twisting trail, requiring 4-low to keep from descending too quickly without using the brakes.

The road got even more overgrown as we descended further, and we soon encountered deadfall. A lot of deadfall. Brad hauled out his chainsaw, and proceeded to cut the deadfall while the rest of us removed it from the trail. We quickly tired of walking down the trail, cutting, clearing, then walking back up the trail to the vehicles, driving down to the next set of deadfall, and repeating the whole process again, so we elected Terry to leapfrog the trucks down the trail after us while we cut and cleared. I'm happy to say that this worked very well! After several hours and several kilometers of this, we found ourselves coming out at a Y branch. The trail in front was so overgrown we could hardly discern it from the surrounding brush. At one point I didn't wind up my window fast enough, and received a large branch in my face for my efforts; I had to stop and reverse to remove it, or it would have broken my window with its leverage. Terry and I grabbed my portable VHF radio and went for a walk through the trees; it didn't get any better after a kilometer or so, and we hiked through the trees to the original road, where we rejoined the trucks from the opposite direction, having done a complete circle.

We decided to take the other path in the Y, so we turned our trucks around with Terry spotting. Brad, Terry, and I elected to walk a couple kilometers down this trail before we drove it, it wasn't nearly as overgrown as the other direction, so we hiked back to the trucks and proceeded down it. We only had to make a few stops to remove deadfall, and we actually found a really nice campsite in a field over-looking a valley in our travels. However, it was too early to camp so we passed it by, making a mental note for future reference. The road past the campsite was actually quite reasonable, and it wound around the mountain in a gentle left-hand curve.

We crossed over Baldi Creek, and eventually found ourselves back on the Promontory Mtn Road, rejoining it from the west side just north of the 5km marker. We drove down the road, and turned left onto a path that led north into the forest, in search of a place to camp. We split up here, and kept in touch with the VHF radios. Terry and I drove for a couple kilometers, then took a trail to the right, which led to a nice-looking field we thought might make a good camping spot. However, it turned out to be next to a swamp, which we knew would mean mucho mosquitoes, so we kept going. The road descended, and twisted its way through the forest. We decided that we'd explore this road, so the Brad and Norm tried to figure out where we had gone, from the description we had given them. Then Norm called on the radio that they had spotted a little bear cub snuffling around in a field, and had stopped for photos. The cub soon provided the answer to that age-old question, then disappeared back into the woods.

Once we were all together, we continued along the road. One area we checked out was covered with dead, dry grass; not a good place for a campfire. We found a huge field spanning several acres that cows were grazing on, but we couldn't find an area that had level ground without being in the middle of the cows. I led the group along a narrowing shelf road, which eventually petered out on an off-camber slope near a fence, overlooking the Craigmont Copper Mine. Terry and I exited the truck to check out the terrain on foot; we discovered that there was a barely-visible and quite off-camber path next to the fence. The fence ended just around the corner, and there was an old trail that crossed our path, with the right side leading down to a gravel road.

I carefully eased the truck along the path, with Terry spotting. According to the inclinometer, it wasn't nearly as off-camber as it felt, only about 15º. We headed east along the gravel road, passing numerous small structures built into the ground that we couldn't figure out what they were for. We peeked into an open one; it was filled with sawdust. The road soon took us to the back fence of some farms as it followed the utility poles. One stretch of the road didn't even have poles, and the wires just lay on the ground for about a kilometer until the poles started up again. At 20:30h we found ourselves on Stumbles Road, and we eventually passed through an abandoned-looking farm and exited on Woodward Avenue at Paige Street, where there was a "No Exit" sign for the direction we had just come from. We followed Woodward Ave to Aberdeen Road, where we turned right and headed south back to Hwy 8, two kilometers from where we had started on Woodward Road 6.5 hours ago.

Norm said he knew of a place to camp just south of Merritt, where they had camped on the first night of the April 13th trip, the trip where I had blown my motor. So, at 21:00h we found ourselves bombing down Lily Lake Road as the darkness approached. When we got to the proposed campsite, Terry and I decided that it was too close to the road, too exposed, and just not acceptable. We drove back along the road, and five minutes later had found a nice campsite under the pine trees. The entire area was completely covered with dry pine needles, and appeared to be a cow-pie free zone. I swept a 15-foot diameter circle of pine needles from the ground for a fire break and got the fire going, as the others gathered rocks for the campfire ring. We unloaded the firewood that we had brought from the last campsite, and stacked it next to the fire. A steady wind from a single direction kept the mosquitoes away, and provided plenty of oxygen for the fire. A loud red-and-black S-10 Jimmy with large tires and shiny rims passed by our campsite at speed; we could hear him roaring around the roads surrounding our hill for a few minutes before he got bored and drove off. We went to sleep around midnight.

MONDAY

Terry and Brad awoke at 08:00h; the rest of us slept in until 09:00h. It was sunny and warm, and it hadn't rained during the night. Brad went for a short walk, and found white and orange posts marking a fibre-optic right-of-way. We could hear the conversation of a couple of loud-mouthed mountainbikers down on the main road as we packed up our gear; after about 20 minutes they ran out of things to say and continued on their respective ways. During my pre-trip inspection, I discovered that a pointed 1.75" stick had struck my floor under the passenger seat, and had punched through where the rubber wiring harness grommet was. While I was removing it, Terry snapped a pic of the extensive snack collection in our cab (snax!! yum!). We left the campsite at 10:15h, waited for a herd of cattle while they criss-crossed the road in front of us and tried to make up their bovine minds which side they wanted, and once again headed into Merritt for fuel. We decided that we wanted to try to take the Nuaitch Crk Road west towards Mimenuh Mtn, then north to Hwy 8 and the KVR (Kettle Valley Railroad) railbed at Shakan Creek.

Back onto Hwy 8 westbound again; we were becoming intimately familiar with this stretch of road! We took Sunshine Valley Road south, went past Prospect Crk FSR, and followed Sunshine Valley west to Jack Swart FSR. I was leading, and took a wrong turn somewhere, and we arrived back on Hwy 8 at the old Canford KVR station. We turned around, and took Jack Swart FSR into Sunshine Valley before we decided that we weren't going in the correct direction. We searched around for the Nuaitch Creek Road; the only road that seemed to lead in the right direction was Shakelly Road (marked with a "Dead End" sign), which accessed the Nooaitch Indian Reserve and soon forked; the right fork appeared to end in a driveway and the left fork wound up the hillside to a new sub-division, with brand new pavement over some of the roads and no houses yet. We couldn't take the KVR right-of-way either; Brad checked it out and reported that there was a wire fence across it as it entered the reserve land. He also said that it would be really tough to see the fence at night.

What to do? Was the old road obliterated by the new subdivision roads? Brad decided to take another look down the right fork; he reported that the "driveway" was actually a descent hidden behind a house, and the road did indeed continue on. Ah ha! We drove through the reserve, and suddenly I remembered driving through this village in the opposite direction, back in April '98. The road soon forked again; Brad and Norm took the left fork, marked "Dale Shakelly", while Terry and I took the right fork towards the cemetery. The cemetery road goes right through, and meets up with the other road. We turned left the gravel pit, and followed Nuaitch Creek for several kilometers until the road suddenly ended at a quiet two-truck campsite. Hmm. We could see that there was a landslide on the north side of the site; Terry took a walk up around the slide and reported that the slide had come down over the road that we wanted to be on, and that even if there was a way to get over the slide, it was extremely overgrown and definitely not worth the considerable effort it would take to winch the trucks up, assuming it was even passable further on.

We drove back to the gravel pit, and took the other fork, which was actually the KVR right-of-way. It followed the Nicola River as it headed north-west, and we could periodically see Hwy 8 on the other side of the river. The last time we were up here, we encountered a blocked trestle south of Dot, so we figured that we'd head up that far, have lunch, then come back. Terry and I were last; I spotted an abandoned cabin partially hidden by brush so I stopped for some photos. Nobody else had seen it, not even Terry. We checked out an old cast-iron stove that was sitting outside the house, and briefly inspected the debris that littered the property. Norm and Helen came back for some photos of their own, as Brad continued on. When we climbed back into our trucks, Brad informed us that he was just on the other side of the trestle, waiting for us.

We continued along the road, encountering a large washout near Shackelly Creek where the Nicola River had taken out the bank and the railbed. A bypass along a fence line allowed us to get around this obstacle, and we were quickly back on the KVR. As we approached the trestle, I realized that this was the trestle that was blocked last time, and it was now cleared and passable! Whoo-hoo! When Brad had said he was on the other side of the trestle, I didn't twig that it was the same one that was formerly blocked. Very cool, now we wouldn't have to turn back. We stopped on the trestle for a few photos, and I found a long, thin branch with fishing line tied to the end of it lying on the span, and thought "What an excellent way to spend a lazy afternoon in the sun, sitting on the edge of a trestle casting a line."

It was now 13:15h, so we pulled over in a nice field between the KVR and the highway and ate lunch under the shade of the trees; sandwiches for Terry and I. A road here led up to the highway; a sign on the highway was marked "Dot Ranch Cutoff Road Ahead". We finished lunch and were back on the KVR at 14:00h. We crossed over numerous trestles, large and small, passed a pond filled with bullrushes, and passed through several gates marking ranch property borders (AC Ranch, Vee Jay Ranch, etc.). When Helen was closing the gate at the AC Ranch, I started laughing, and called out "Hey Helen, you probably want to be on THIS side of the gate before you close it!" LOL! We crossed over an angled, curved, double trestle at Shakan Creek. At one pond, we startled a huge blue heron, and Terry rapidly fired off a quick photo; unfortunately the camera was set to low-res instead of hi-res, so the heron is just barely visible in the center of the photo. It was getting pretty hot out, so I pulled over to change into a pair of shorts. I noticed a glint on the ground out of the corner of an eye and wandered over to see what it was; it turned out to be a glass insulator from the old telegraph line that used to run alongside the KVR, marked "Dominion 42".

We saw several dead cows at one farm, leading to jokes about alien abductions and computer hackers. We spotted a couple of young ladies sunbathing along the riverbank, and briefly wondered where they came from. Just before we crossed into the next farm property (marked by a fence), we came to a sudden halt at a waist-deep trench dug across the railbed by a back hoe, as evidenced by the metal scrape marks on the rocks. Zounds! Should have brought the TrailMax expedition ramps. If we really wanted to, we could have repaired the road, but we weren't into that, as we could just backtrack to the last driveway, bypass the trench via the highway, then rejoin the KVR at the next driveway. A check of the maps showed us that we were right by Skeikut Creek and the northern boundary of the Nooaitch Indian Reserve. Since the trench was on the south side of the fence, and therefore on reserve land, perhaps it was in place to deter vehicular traffic coming into the reserve from the north the way the wire fence was in place at the south end.

So, we turned around, drove back to the last driveway, and hit the highway. We spotted a black Honda Accord at a pull-out, and guessed that it belonged to the sunbathers. We didn't rejoin the KVR right away, but waited until we arrived at the trestle by Skaynanelschst Crk, where we walked to the edge of the span, which had no hand rails or barriers, to photograph our shadows against the rushing water below. Back on the KVR again; this stretch was frequently visible from the highway, and we watched people turn their heads and point at us as they drove by on the pavement.

I slowed down to let Brad and Norm get a few minutes ahead of us to reduce the level of dust in the cab. We were driving fairly slowly, taking in all the scenery, and realized just how slow we were actually driving when a swallowtail butterfly passed us, rested on the hood briefly, then took off, pulling away from us! We observed some kayakers in the Nicola River, who looked up and gave us a surprised look as they didn't expect to see vehicles on our side of the river. We continued on; the KVR ran along the back edge of several farm properties, allowing us to see old trucks rusting away in the back forty, old cabins abandonded and rotting, and other neat sights that you can only see if you take the road less travelled. And that's what it's all about.

We pulled into Spences Bridge for fuel and ice cream; the two girls in the Honda pulled in shortly after. I chatted with them, and it turned out they had been waiting to photograph the kayakers. We hit Hwy 1 here, and joined the weekend traffic heading back towards Vancouver, totally relaxed and ready for another week of work before the next weekend's trip.

ADDENDUM

We figured out the source of my overheating problem; when we rebuilt my motor after I broke it on the Easter trip, we installed a new radiator, and it turned out that the rad shop had supplied me with a radiator for a 2wd truck. We replaced it with a new HD 3-core radiator; no more trouble.

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