Friday April 2 - Sunday April 4, 1999

This year's Easter camping/exploration trip has been dubbed "The Magical Mystery Tour" because none of us had any idea where we'd end up... mostly due to the fact that the snow level and road conditions were unknown because of the additional snowfall and the early Easter. The basic plan was to start off by exploring the lower roads of the Fraser Canyon and go from there. We might have named the trip "And Then There Were Three" due to all the last-minute cancellations by the other trucks...

Anyways, we met up at the Port Mann scales at 8:00 am Friday morning, and headed east in the sun. Jud's plan was to explore the Ruby Creek area before camping at the Alexandra campsite. At Popkum, we crossed over the Fraser River to the Lougheed Hwy, and drove about 17 kms to the Ruby-Lougheed Hwy FSR. We left the main dirt road after a few minutes of driving, and started off along a muddy track to the right. Jud was leading, and as he entered a particularly muddy-looking section, I watched his progress slow, then stop, as his front tires dropped into the ruts, and his IFS cross-member high-centered him (must be an IFS thing! lol).

No amount of spinning his tires or jockeying the truck would free him, so we elected to use the winch. I spooled out the cable, and winched him free of his position. I then attempted to turn around on the trail, and managed to get my rear tires stuck in the same ruts. The treads were solidly packed, and I was unable to free myself. I attached the tree saver to the nearest tree, and started to winch myself out. Whoops, the tree's bending... Attached the saver to a nearby double-trunked tree, and winched out of the ruts. Backed out of the trail until I was clear of the muddy section. Jud was still spinning his tires, so I re-attached the winch cable and pulled him the rest of the way out. Of course, Brad was cackling away during this whole time. Not bad for the first 30 minutes.

We took a branch off the muddy track through an overgrown trail, and encountered a large fallen tree which we cleared with the help of Brad's chainsaw. This trail led back to the muddy track, but on the other side of the section we were stuck in. The road passed through a Native logging camp, and continued on upwards towards powerlines. We followed this road for a bit, then checked out the road towards Slollicum Peak. Jud got temporarily stuck in a particularly deep cross-ditch, then realized he was only in 2wd. We got stopped by snow at around 800m, where we had lunch.

Back down, we turned on to an overgrown gas-pipeline access road. A steep hillclimb thwarted Jud, who elected to take the bypass after three attempts. I crawled up it in 4-low without using the lockers (solid-axle flex!), and Brad made it up with his rear locker engaged. I made some snide remarks about solid axles versus IFS, which were largely ignored by the others.

The gas-pipeline access road led us to a powerline access road, which got quite overgrown and off-camber until it terminated at one of the powerline towers. A plateau near the top afforded a nice view of the valley below.

On the way back down, a couple of curious horses watched us as we bumped along past their meadow. We wound our way down the mountain through a narrow, barely-visible, overgrown track (there were saplings growing down the middle of the trail), and popped out on a mainline road which led back to the highway, less than a km north of the Ruby-Lougheed Hwy FSR. We headed north on Hwy 1 towards Spuzzum and the Alexandra campsite. Just after the Alexandra Bridge north of Spuzzum, we hung a sharp right onto the road leading towards the Anderson River, and paralleled the highway for a bit before switchbacking down to the Alexandra campsite beneath the powerlines.

Since we still had plenty of daylight left, we took the steep road out of the campsite and checked out some of the nearby offshoots. We then returned to the campsite where we set up for the night, and retired early. A nearby pond was home to several hundred frogs, whose raspy calls were audible into the night until around 11:00 pm when the rain started to pour.

We awoke the next morning to near-freezing temperatures and a light sprinkling of rain. Looking up into the nearby mountains, we could see that last night's rain had turned into fresh snow just above us. We explored a little-used powerline-access shelf road close to the campsite, which ended at a tower near the top of the mountain. Erosion was undermining the road surface in one spot, so the chances of this particular road being drivable the next time we are in the area are slim. We climbed the steep road from the campsite again, which popped out onto the Cattermole logging road. On the way back down to the highway we got a glimpse of the Alexandra Bridge through the trees.

We took the highway north, and just before Boston Bar we hung the sharp right onto the Uztlius Creek FSR. A rapid ascent gave us a good view of the Anderson River Bridge below, and we headed east towards Spius Creek, where Jud got stuck in the snow. I tugged him out, and we headed back towards the highway.

Some highway driving took us to a short railway-access road just north of Goldpan Provincial Park, where we stopped for lunch and checked out the train tunnels across the river, built in 1953. A narrow suspension bridge at this point allowed rail workers to cross the Thompson River, but we didn't cross it as there was a "no trespassing" sign and a stout man-gate. Jud scaled a rocky outcropping to get a good picture of the tunnels, and wanted me make sure I got a pic of him doing so. :)

While Brad worked on his mapping program, Jud and I climbed down to the river's edge, which was exceptionally tranquil. Much like a lizard sunning itself, I relaxed on a large flat rock which was worn smooth by years of erosion, noting that this position would be under about 20 feet of fast-flowing water once the Spring runoff picked up.

After lunch, we continued north on the highway for a couple of km's, then turned right onto a dirt road which switchbacked high into sagebrush-covered cliffs. This road had numerous forks and bypasses, most of which rejoined the main road a short distance later. Jud said that there was a lake "somewhere back there" that he'd been looking for, for the last 15 years. We decided to take the only fork he had not taken before, and it was no surprise that we found Soap Lake a short distance later.

The road in got very muddy very quickly, and to top it off, it started to snow once we were into the hills. Sections of the shelf road were deeply rutted and off-camber, and despite our best efforts, we kept sliding into the ruts. If off-camber driving bothers you, this is not the road to be on. :) We passed by an ecological preserve, and eventually got stopped by snow around 150' below the pass.

We turned around, and headed back down to the highway. We turned north towards Ashcroft, and turned left at Hat Creek Road. After passing through a large cattle ranch, we switchbacked up the hills towards Oregon Jack Creek. We passed by a stand of white birch which was half-gnawed by busy beavers, and passed their dam a short distance later. Again, our progress was halted by snow, so we turned around and headed back to the highway.

It was beginning to get late, so we started to look for a suitable place to camp. We drove through Ashcroft, took Hwy 97C to 4400 Road, and took 4400 Road to Willard Lake. Willard was devoid of any firewood, so we continued on to Barnes Lake, and camped beneath the Ponderosa pine trees. By the way, the long, dry, dead Ponderosa pine needles make excellent fire starters.

It got quite cold that night; a check of the thermometer in the morning showed -4 degrees C with the sun out. The sun eventually rose above the hillside that sheltered us from the wind, and it warmed up to 0 degrees during breakfast.

We headed out along 4400 Road which followed Barnes Creek, and turned off into the forest at 4441 Road. A light layer of fresh powder snow covered much of this road, and we followed another vehicle's tracks until we came to a fallen tree blocking the path. We could see that the other vehicle turned around at this point, but we brought out the chainsaw and removed the offending tree. We encountered several other fallen trees along this road, but were able to remove them either by lifting them or by using a handsaw. We noted numerous side roads branching off our road, and Brad marked their locations on the mapping program for future reference. One section of the road appeared to be a natural thoroughfare, as evidenced by the recent animal tracks in the fresh snow. We eventually arrived at Pennie Lake, located in a pleasant, wide, sunny meadow in the mountains. We followed the road back into the forest, where it turned into a narrow, off-camber shelf road high above Hwy 97.

The panoramic view below was taken from a bluff directly across from Deadman's Valley. It shows Hwy 97 snaking through the Thompson River Valley. We were travelling through the forest and then suddenly found this spectacular view through a break in the trees. I took it with 4 shots from the digital camera, and joined them with Paint Shop Pro. It is 246k, so it will take a while to load.

The road eventually wound down the hillside near Walhachin (between Cache Creek and Kamloops), where I noticed that much of the surrounding hillsides had been "terraced" by glaciers. We passed by a wooden door embedded in a slight hump in the ground; Jud said he had checked it out in the past and that it appeared to be cold storage for cattle feed. We left the hills, passed through another cattle ranch, and crossed the Thompson River via an old steel bridge with a wooden deck surface, built in 1911.

Once on Hwy 97, we headed west towards Cache Creek, and then back to Ashcroft and the 97C. Just outside of Ashcroft, we took the Kirkland Ranch Road, which put us southbound on the east side of the Thompson River. We passed by a herd of very cool-looking Western Plains Bison at the Sundance Guest Ranch, and slowed for the ranch hands who were leading a group of visitors on horseback out into the hills. We exchanged waves as we passed by, then proceeded along the road. We kept straight at the Drinkwater Road turnoff, and the road slowly climbed and turned into a shelf road high above the Thompson as it passed through the Nighthawk Ranch. The road eventually decended into the valley around Black Canyon, and is the road that is visible below you to the right as you climb Hwy 1 on your way in to Ashcroft.

We passed a couple of old log cabins that looked like they were built in the 1890's, then turned off the Kirkland Ranch Road onto the road that leads to Highland Valley, where we encountered a horse skeleton in the middle of the road. A short while after this, we were stopped by the land-owner who informed us that he didn't want us using the road, so we turned around and headed back to Ashcroft.

Back in Ashcroft, we aired up and bought ice cream, then headed for Hwy 1 and home. I stopped for a picture of the rock formations in the Thompson River near Gladwin Creek, and again near Skihist Provincial Park where we watched kayakers shoot the rapids.

We pulled onto a short, dead-end road just north of Spuzzum, which was actually the remains of the original highway, and hiked down to the old Alexandra Bridge. The bridge, shut down in 1963, now sits almost forgotten behind the trees, the concrete crumbling and the steel rusting. Many people had left their mark on the old bridge over time; we saw everything from initials scratched into a metal support back in 1948, to email addresses spray-painted on the metal curb. One of the grafitti notices said "Max fell off here" with arrows pointing down, and in another location there was a small metal plaque attached to the mouldering cement in memory of somebody from 1995. We walked across the see-through steel surface of the bridge deck (not a good idea for those who are affected by vertigo) to the other side, where there was a nice view of both the old bridge and the new bridge.

From there, it was a boring highway drive in the rain back to the city, where Brad and I had dinner at the Coquitlam White Spot. We decided that next year, we'd do the trip in May when there was less snow and more of the roads were passable. I had a great time, and the much-needed break from work provided me with an excellent opportunity to check out some of BC's historic places and backroads.

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