Friday, May 17 - Monday, May 20, 2002

May long weekend is traditionally the first camping weekend of the year for most people; we were already well into our camping season and welcomed another opportunity to leave the city and hit the backroads of BC.

Brad had the luxury of a day off work, so he and Lorilei headed off to our rendezvous spot early on, the Copper Creek recreation site just east of Manning Park. After work, I packed the truck and phoned Paul, who informed me that it would be around 20:00h or so before he was ready to leave. I headed out to Coquitlam to pick up Matt, then we headed east on the highway in the sun. We pulled off the highway at 232 St to grab a burger at the White Spot, and I phoned Paul to let him know what we were doing. He told me he was desperately searching for bolts to attach his canopy to his truck, and he hadn't even left North Vancouver yet. :)

Matt and I eventually arrived at Copper Creek; we had no problem finding Brad and Lorilei, who were camped in an open area just past the bridge. Lots of other vehicles were present at the site; everything from compact cars to huge motor homes, and smoke from numerous campfires drifted over the area. We got a small campfire going, and Lorilei broke out the marshmallows. We stayed up until 01:00h monitoring the VHF for Paul, then retired for the night. I was sort of half-asleep around 02:30h, when I heard a sudden loud hiss of air; it sounded like somebody was deflating one of my tires! Uh? I felt around for my flashlight in the dark. Another loud hiss. I yelled "HEY!" and popped open the back window, shining the flashlight around. To my surprise, I saw the silver paint of Paul's truck next to mine; he had cut his engine and had quietly rolled into camp without lights so as to not wake us up, and the hiss of air was from them inflating their air mattress.

Brad, Lorilei, Matt, and I were up by 07:45h; we let Paul and Alison sleep a bit longer as they had had a late night. Another sunny day; perfect for the start of our trip. When Paul awoke, he asked me if I had heard him screaming during the night; apparently he had a pretty bad nightmare. Nope, I had slept right through it; good thing he wasn't being eaten by a bear! After breakfast I had the hood up during the pre-trip, with Paul and Matt looking on. Then Paul said, "Your truck's rolling backwards!!" Matt and I grabbed the ARB bumper as Paul ran around the truck, threw open the door, and yanked on the parking brake. He's usually a pretty calm guy, and I've never seen him move that fast before! After taking the truck out of gear to start it up, I had neglected to apply the parking brake, and the activity around the front of the truck had been enough to start the truck moving down the slight slope. As the picture shows, the ground was pretty level. If we hadn't stopped it, the truck would have wound up in the Similkameen River, which would have been a bad way to start the weekend.

We headed north up Lower Placer - Belgie FSR. We checked out several side roads, crossed a few shallow creeks, and searched for Jack Crawley's Cabin. Built in 1905, it was restored by the local Scouts in the 1950's, and I wanted to show it to Paul, Alison, and Matt. A forest fire had ravaged the area since we were last through, leaving acres of blackened trees and scorched earth in its wake. Lorilei commented that perhaps the cabin hadn't survived the fire. We encountered a mushroom picker driving a silver Ford pickup; he said the only old cabin in the area that he knew of was up the next road and that there were "people there". We took the next right, and found ourselves heading up to the cabin from below.

We could see smoke from a campfire at the cabin; we when arrived we could see about six people and their two cars, and one of the men was next to the cabin cutting down a dead tree with a chainsaw for firewood. I asked them if they were staying at the cabin; they replied that they were "mushroom buyers", and that they'd be staying there until they had purchased enough mushrooms for their purpose. To our dismay, they had painted "Bob's Bug-Eye" on the cabin with bright orange spray paint, which as far as we were concerned was vandalism to a historical site. Morons. I wonder if Bob would appreciate it if we headed to his house in Princeton and spray-painted "Toyota 4x4" on his wall? I peeked inside the cabin to see how the floor and roof were faring; it looked the same as it did the last time we were up there, with the exception of all the alcohol bottles that Bug-Eye and crew had brought along to help pass the time.

We attempted to check out the tailing plateau above the Similkameen Mine, but the road we used last time was all torn up and covered with deadfall. None of wanted to visit the plateau bad enough to hike the several km's to the plateau, then hike another couple of km's to the edge of the plateau to view the mine, so we decided to forego it this time. I tried climbing a steep cat-tracked road that I successfully climbed last time, but I was unable to make it this time.

We eventually popped out on Combination Creek FSR, and turned left and down towards the entrance to the Similkameen Mine. We stopped for a photo of the mine tailings filling the valley, then headed north on Copper Creek Rd. Matt and I were in the lead, and we saw lots of deer along this stretch; we warned the others via the VHF radio in case the deer decided to leap out across the road. We passed August Lake Road on our right, then took the next left to the ghost town of Allenby for lunch. We wandered around the cement ruins for about an hour, this time checking out the structures up on the hill that we missed last time. I checked out the tunnel below the storage tank that I couldn't climb into last time due to a back injury.

We drove back to Copper Creek Rd, and took August Lake Rd. We spotted a bright yellow woodpecker flying through the trees, and Lorilei got a few good photos with her big zoom lens. We turned left onto Darcy Mine Rd, and followed it to Hwy 3, then drove a couple km's west into Princeton for fuel and ice cream. Our next destination was the mountains and mines around Hedley, so we got back onto Hwy 3 and headed east. Our 80-90 km/h cruising speed was too slow for everyone else, and once the highway allowed passing, several dozen cars and semis pulled out and passed us. Lorilei told us that she wanted to stop at a little rock and gem shop just past Bromley Rock that had always been closed when she had stopped there in the past; today was no exception and it was closed once again.

As we neared Hedley, we started looking for Gold Mountain FSR, a mainline road that climbed into the mountain south of Hedley. The first mainline we found was named Stirling Creek FSR, but it appeared to be in the correct location so thought that perhaps the map was wrong or the road was known by two different names. We climbed up the mountain, following what I think was Smith Creek, and took a branch labelled R500 Rd. R500 switchbacked high into the valley south of Hedley, and we periodically got a good view of the town and the mine above. In the photos, the long gash leading from the town to the top of the mountain was for the tram line. Looking at the photos of the scarring that industry has made on the landscape, I'm surprised that I get email from environmentalists telling me I shouldn't be in the back country with my truck because I'm "damaging the environment". We encountered one large piece of deadfall blocking the road; a few minutes with Brad's chainsaw cleared it and we were on our way again. We eventually arrived at the end of R500, a small high-alpine meadow. Decided that we didn't want to camp at such a high elevation, we turned around and looked for a suitable location that would be a bit warmer at night.

We found a good-sized cleared field that we figured would work; it was fairly rocky but had enough level spots for us to park and pitch our tents. We got a good-sized fire going, started with some pine kindling that Paul had packed with him, and I sharpened my chainsaw chain while Matt cooked dinner. Paul and Alison decided to cook hot dogs over the fire, which was fairly hot by then; they quickly discovered that their weinie roasters were too short and had to shield themselves from the heat. :) A pile of slash had been left in the field, so Brad and I cut some firewood with our chainsaws. Lorilei broke out the marshmallows again, and after some coaxing, Paul and Alison finally tried them out. Alison commented, "These are addicting!". We heard periodic rustling in the bushes across the road that Matt figured was a bear, so he fired off a couple of bear bangers to let the bear know that we knew that it was out there.

In the morning, we discovered that the bear had gotten the last word in; it had wandered through our campsite and had left a large pile of scat right in the middle, equidistant between the three trucks, to let us know that it knew that we knew that it was out there, and really didn't care one way or the other. Matt said that he had heard the bear quietly moving around outside during the night, and had lain very still in his soft tent. Yesterday, Paul had been experiencing a difficulty with shifting, having had to shut the engine off to get into reverse. Before we left camp, he adjusted his clutch and suddenly discovered that he had reverse gear again.

The weather was still cooperating, and it had been warmer last night than it had been at the Copper Creek campsite. We checked out all of the branches and offshoots on the way down; all were either dead ends or had too much snow. Rather than take the Stirling main further in from the R500 branch, we opted to egress and tackle the north side of Hedley instead. We finally arrived back at Hwy 3, and discovered Gold Mountain FSR just a bit further down the road. Who knew!

Rather than explore roads that would have been very similar to what we had just seen, we felt that it was time to explore the roads on the north side of the Similkameen River. We checked out the Old Hedley Road; the route we wanted quickly ended in a logging operation; we could see the remains of the road on the other side of the cut, but it was blocked by lots of deadfall and slash. Numerous cows curiously watched us turn our trucks around; Matt got out to see if he could get his picture taken with one, but they nervously moo-ved away.

We then turned off onto Stemwinder FSR. It wound up and gave us a nice view of the valley and mountains across from Hedley, that we were exploring yesterday. We continued on for a few km's, but eventually decided that it wasn't taking us in the direction we wanted to go, which was more to the east. I made a mental note that there were numerous offshoots and branches, which warranted further exploration some other time. The mainline will eventually take you to either Princeton or Summerland, depending on which route you select.

We continued on to Hedley, drove into the town and stopped off at a corner store for ice cream and a pit stop. Lots of antique and historical items were displayed around the store, and the wood floor looked like it was the original floor from the mining days. The proprieter was quite friendly, and I asked her about a road leading from the town to the valley behind the mine that Larry Soo had said that he'd heard about. She said the only road she knew of was an old road that was washed out. We decided to check it out anyways, as some people's idea of a washout is other people's cross-ditch. After a bit of exploring, we found what we thought was the road, but it ended rather quickly and turned into a walking path along the west side of Hedley River. However, we could see a good road on the east side of the river, so we turned around and looked for the trailhead.

We soon found it at the end of a paved road, and followed it to a branch. Going straight along the branch put us on a very narrow shelf road that just ended. Taking the other fork allowed us to switchback up the mountainside above Hedley, heading towards Aberdeen Ridge. We encountered a few cement structures, and stopped for photos. One section was composed of thousands of dumped core samples, and Lorilei and Matt stopped to check them out. Some of the switchbacks were tight enough to require 2-point turns from our long-wheelbase trucks. We stopped for lunch at a shady switchback part-way up; Alison noticed a tick on my collar and quickly flicked it off. The mosquitoes made a nuisance of themselves, and I received a few bites.

We continued on up, and found a plateau with the remains of a rail system for mine carts, leading to an opening in the middle of the cliff above us. From this vantage point, we could see Hedley far below to the south-east, and again the mountains across the valley from yesterday's journey. I grabbed my flashlight and one of the ASP LED lights, and Matt, Paul, Alison, and I scrambled up the loose rocks to the entrance and headed in to the gloom.

This was a steep climb; a straight line heading up into the mountain at an angle. A puddle of stagnant water right at the entranceway made us wrinkle our noses, but the smell was soon replaced by a cool breeze gently cascading down the steep shaft, a great way to cool off on a hot day. Old wooden steps on the right side of the shaft allowed us to climb with relative ease, and my flashlight allowed us to spot the occasional broken step. The steps soon disintegrated into broken pieces of kindling and we found ourselves carefully climbing up on wet rock and loose dirt. I occasionally played my flashlight around the shaft; once in a while we spotted a piece of metal rigging or an electrical fixture. Two rusty pipes ran along the bottom edge of shaft, most likely to supply water and compressed air.

We reached an opening on the right; it turned about to be a small storage room, roughly carved into the rock wall, with what looked like the remains of a wood partition and door at the entrance. We spotted some sort of rusty skidder and a pile of steel rope lying along the shaft, which we almost missed in the dark by not playing the flashlight around enough. We found another small room on the right, and decided to turn around at that time because my flashlight was dying. I switched to my ASP LED light, which was bright enough to illuminate the way, despite it's small size.

Descending was slow going; the bright dot of light shining up from the shaft entrance below us provided too much contrast, and we had to shield our eyes from it to see the ground in front of us. The loose ground was held in place by timbers, and we took extra care during foot placement so that we didn't fall. When I was shining the ASP behind me for Paul and Alison, I missed a stray timber off to the side and almost tripped over it. Alison wasn't so lucky, she slipped on some loose dirt and landed on her butt and her palms. She wasn't seriously hurt though, and showed she was a good sport by remaining on the ground to allow me to fire off a quick photo. :) I told her "If you start to fall, grab onto somebody else; it won't stop you from falling, but at least you'll have some company in the hospital!"

Matt, who had no problem with footing or seeing in the dark, descended the shaft ahead of us, and emerged into the warm sunshine a couple minutes before us. A lone hiker climbed up into the tunnel to cool off when we arrived back outside; Lorilei had been talking to him, and he said he had hiked over from Nickle Plate Mountain to the east. I looked over at the rest of the road; it definitely continued on, but had some good-sized boulders and trees on it. The hiker emerged shortly after, and when asked, told us the road got progressively worse, and was barely hikeable, never mind driveable. Oh well! He was fairly tired from his hike, so Matt and I rearranged our cargo and gave him a lift down into Hedley where his car was.

Our next target was the Hedley - Nickle Plate FSR. The access is on the Chuchuwayha Indian Reserve, and it snakes up the hillside towards Nickle Plate Mountain. The road switchbacks and cuts through a rock-strewn landslide, and the section along the top of the landslide is not for those who suffer from vertigo. Matt and I were lagging behind due to stopping for photos, and at one point I slammed on my brakes, startling Matt who had been looking out his window and not at the road in front. A snake had slithered out onto the road in front of me, and had stopped in the middle of the road. I slowly pulled up next to it, leaned out the window, and snapped a photo so Matt could see it.

Further on, at Cyanide Gulch, we encountered signs warning "Boxer Dog, never lost fight", and "Beware of dog, who bites bad". :) Just below Nickle Plate Mine, a ground hog ran out across the road in front of Brad and Lorilei. Looking around, they were able to see dozens of the little animals scampering amongst the boulders and pipes, so they stopped for some photos. I spotted a small ferret-like creature with a long neck, but it had ducked back down by the time I had the camera ready.

The Nickle Plate Mountain FSR was totally covered by snow, so we continued on. Matt and I stopped for a photo at Cahill East FSR, also covered by snow; in the photo Matt is standing on top of the snow next to a stop sign. We soon arrived at the Apex Mountain Ski Area, where the road became paved and turned into Apex Mountain Road. We wound our way down Apex Mountain Road, and turned right onto Green Mountain Rd; if we had turned left we would have find ourselves in Penticton, approximately 22 km's east-north-east.

Green Mountain Rd threaded its way along a valley floor as it headed south to Hwy 3A. Once at the highway, we turned left in search of the Twin Lakes area, and pulled in to the Yellow Lake rest stop for a break. When we were ready to head out, Paul detected a strong smell of gasoline coming from his truck, and quickly switched the engine off. I could even smell it from my truck, two parking spots away. We inspected his engine bay; no obvious leaks, and the odour had dissipated. Paul started his truck up again, and everything appeared to be fine, so once again we were on our way. We chaulked it up to a weird carburetor thing. Brad and Lorilei had continued on ahead, and told us to turn right at the sign for the golf resort, the start of Twin Lakes Rd.

We turned right onto White Lake Rd, then left onto Grand Oro road which turned into Rill Creek FSR about 50 feet later. It was fairly late into the day, so the first order of business was to find a suitable location to camp. Once we were clear of the rural area, the houses were once again replaced with forest, and we began to check out the side roads. We spotted several deer along the road, and one of them even waited for us to take its photo before bounding away. We soon found a little side road with a wide switchback that we made a note of; we continued on up the road but there wasn't an area with enough level locations to support all of us. We went back down to the first switchback, and decided that it would have to do.

Once again we got a decent fire going, and during this time the clouds rolled in. It was still plenty warm though, and debated whether or not to cover the truck with a tarp. While we were sitting around the campfire, we felt the occasional droplet of rain, so I grudgingly went over to the truck and threw the tarp over it. Shortly after that, the clouds disappeared, and the sky was clear again.

We took turns petting the dogs, who, like us, were starting to tire. I was giving Saavik a gentle neck massage with one hand, and she fell asleep and tumbled off my lap, to the amusement of the others. Eventually the clouds returned, and it started to rain for real this time. It was pretty late, so we packed it in for the night. The rain pelted down in earnest, and between the drumming of the rain drops on the tarp I could hear the low rumbling of thunder in the distance.

The rain kept up all night, but slightly subsided by the morning. It started back up during breakfast, and we all took cover under Brad and Lorilei's spacious tarp. By the time Brad and Lorilei were done breakfast, the rain had stopped again so we helped them pack the tarp up. We decided that we wanted to try to find out way south to Fairview Rd, where we'd be able to rejoin Hwy 3 at Cawston. We continued on Rill Creek Rd, and noted that the road surface was coated with a thin layer of soft mud. After spinning the tires up an incline and sliding around the switchbacks, I decided to stop to lock in the front hubs. The truck seemed to have some difficulty along here; I was experiencing an intermittent loss of power; it was bucking and bogging and barely had enough juice to crest the hills. We continued on with some misgivings, and along a misty ridge the truck finally had lost enough power that forward progress was a real chore. The road ahead was an extremely steep downhill drop, and I knew that if I went down it there was no way I'd have enough power to make it back up. Brad went on ahead to scout the road, while I hauled out the repair manual and popped the hood.

Paul and I checked the symptoms; it idled fine, but when throttle was applied the engine bogged, creating the loss of power I was experiencing. If we held the throttle at the point where it bogged, it would cycle the engine; bog/rev/bog/rev etc. The repair manual didn't have this specific problem listed, but we figured it was something related to the vaccuum or electrical system. Perhaps something was triggering a sensor, and the computer was attempting to compensate. Once again, the rain started up; a light drizzle that was just enough to be annoying but not enough to soak us. Alison wisely remained in Paul's cab out of the rain, while Paul and I checked over all the vacuum lines and electrical connections. Over the VHF, Brad asked Alison what we were doing, and she replied that we were under the hood and that "it looks serious".

I finally phoned Doug with my 3w cell phone; the connection was pretty scratchy but we were able to hear each other. I am SO glad I have that phone; a handheld cell phone wouldn't even get a signal out there. Doug said it sounded like the TPS (throttle position sensor), so I adjusted it; there was no difference, and the engine continued to cycle. I shut the engine off again, and we pondered for a while. In desperation, I unplugged the TPS to see what would happen, and started the engine. It fired up, and the cycling problem was gone! Whoo-hoo!! The mysteries of EFI. We decided to go with it, and I relayed the good news to Brad. The truck drove fine, although the idle was slightly higher than before. I phoned Doug to see if driving with the TPS disconnected would adversely affect the engine; he stated that it would give more idle and might make the "check engine" light come on eventually (it never did).

Since my truck wasn't operating at peak efficiency, we decided that instead of continuing to try to find our way through the bush to Cawston, we'd turn around and hit the highway. Looking back on the situation, the TPS only affected the idle, and we would have been fine if we had continued on; in fact, after adjusting the idle, I drove around for a week with the TPS disconnected.

We retraced out route back to Hwy 3A, and headed south past Olalla into Keremeos, where Brad and Lorilei stopped to buy fruit from a roadside stand. The traffic was horrendous for a small town; it was the end of a long weekend, and in addition to the usual run of tourists, dozens of custom and classic cars towing mini travel trailers were passing through. Paul and I continued on back to Hedley, where we stopped for fuel. The rain started back up again, and it pouring buckets by the time we reached Princeton, where we stopped for lunch. The line-up at the Subway was about 30 minutes long, so Matt, Brad, Lorilei and I decided to cook lunch on our tailgates while Paul and Alison toughed it out inside. They eventually emerged with subs in hand; the rest of us had almost finished our lunch by then. Brad and Lorilei left for home as Paul aired his tires up with his on-board air; during this time, DaveG was passing through town in his 4Runner, spotted us in the parking lot, and stopped in for a chat.

By the time Paul, DaveG, and I left the Subway parking lot, Brad was about 10 minutes ahead. We could still reach him on the VHF radio, although conditions were spotty through the mountains. The rain kept up intermittently through Manning Park; there would be periods where it would be difficult to see the road in front, interspersed with periods of sunshine. Paul and I stopped at the Hope Slide for a break as we were getting tired; Brad informed us that he was crawling along at 20 km/h on the Hwy 1 somewhere west of Hope. We decided to take Hwy 7 instead of Hwy 1, which was a more scenic route anyways.

As we approached Hope, I discovered a tick on the back of my neck, and quickly removed it, accidentally dropping it onto the floor by my feet as I tried not to swerve. Matt hunted around for it on the floor, but was unsuccessful. Rather than allow it to crawl around and possibly lie in wait on my seat later, I opted to stop to remove it from the truck. We pulled into a parking lot, and looked around for it. The wiley tick had moved, and Matt spotted it between the seat and the tranny hump. He attempted to grab it, but the tick would have none of it and craftily sidled out of his reach. Matt then tried to squish it with the tip of his finger, reasoning that if it was dead, it wouldn't be a threat. "I think I got it," he said. "You think, or you know?" I asked, sounding a lot like my boss. "I'm pretty sure; I squished him pretty hard."

Hmm, I didn't think he sounded sure enough, so I decided to remove my seat for a close-up inspection. My socket set was buried at the front of the box behind all of our gear, so I borrowed Paul's. I unbolted the four seat bolts, pulled the seat out, and carefully examined the sand, leaves, twigs, and other debris that lay on the rock-guarded floor. Ah-ha, there it was, and it was still moving. Good thing I checked! I picked it up and dropped it onto the ground. I bolted the seat back in, and gave Paul his tools back. Then I discovered that I had trapped the seatbelt latch beneath the seat track. Doh! I re-borrowed the tools as Paul laughed hysterically, and loosened the seat enough for Matt to retrieve the errant seatbelt. We were finally on the way; the weather cleared up and I arrived home around 18:00h with no further incidents. I was pretty beat, so after I unloaded the truck and had a quick shower, I had a nap and didn't get up until around 22:00h.

Photographs by Greg and Lorilei.

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