BC Hikes 2023

We mucked about with our Garibaldi Park & ferry reservations and then managed to miss our early afternoon ferry booking on September 12  and had to wait a couple of hours for the crossing over to Horseshoe Bay. On the bright side, it had stopped raining at the Alice Lake campground when we arrived that early evening.

The following morning, we drove through upper Squamish out onto the gravel Garibaldi Park road to the Elfin Lakes trailhead. We lifted our backpacks and walked up the old road  and then along a ridge before dropping down to the Elfin Lakes after about 10km. The lakes are more like ponds, but they do offer impressive views of the western edge of Garibaldi Park.  It was our first visit there and we set up our tent on one of the many platforms, while the clouds slowly cleared. In the afternoon we walked up to "The Saddle", however the clouds had not fully cleared and Sheila slipped on the steep descent and banged up her hand. The back-country campground almost filled up that mid-week evening.

It was a cold, frosty night and we didn't sleep well. We had underestimated how cold it would be at 1500m and had left additional sleeping bags behind in the car. Sheila wasn't feeling up to it, so I head out on my own to Opal Cone. The trail heads down to a bridge over Ring Creek and then goes up around an old moraine wall and then over to another moraine wall. There was one steep section with poor footing to reach the rim of Opal Cone. I walked around the cone rim and enjoyed views over Garibaldi Glacier and the surrounding peaks. The round trip hike was about 15km. I encountered a black bear on the return walk, that had a look at me and then moved along.

Our second night at Elfin Lakes was about 5C warmer than the first and we all slept better. We had a nice walk out to the car and drove back into Squamish to share a Tacofino vegie burrito. We drove the Duffy Lake road,  with a stop at the Pemberton Community Centre for showers, out to the pleasant, free Seton Dam campground near Lillooet for the night. It wasn't busy and it was much warmer than Garibaldi.

Saturday, September 16 was primarily a drive day. It was smokey for a couple of hours. We did stop in Kamloops, at Walmart (for stove propane canisters) and Superstore (for produce and fresh items) and continued along the Trans Canada (with light traffic) till just before Revelstoke. We drove south on #23 to Shelter Bay to wait for the hourly ferry crossing of Arrowhead Lake. Once across the lake, we headed north and east on the mostly gravel #31, past Trout Lake and halted at the Howser Recreation Site on Duncan Lake around 4:00pm. There were a few campers, but none within sight of our campsite. It was a nice evening by the lake.

On Sunday, we packed up and drove around the south end of Duncan Lake and then drove east on Glacier Creek FSR to reach the Monica Meadows trail head. It was about 40km of gravel road and the last couple of kms of the road were fairly steep and a little rough.

The Monica Meadow trail starts with 7 switchbacks before reaching the sub-alpine. We were pleased to see that the larches were changing colour. We met a group on the way out (they had camped at the meadows) who told us about a grizzly in the meadows but we never saw it. We wandered the beautiful lakes and then up to the northern viewpoint at almost 2400m. There was some smoke haze to the south west, but it was mostly clear. 

We returned to the car and drove down and halted about half a kilometre past the road junction to Jumbo Pass to camp at a spacious clearing along side the road. There was a creek hundred metres down along the road. It was a quiet night.

We had a shorter drive to the Jumbo Pass trail head and we were on the trail before 8:00am. It rained and hailed near the beginning of the hike, but then the weather became less threatening. Once we reached the pass itself, we chugged along northward to the quaint Jumbo Pass cabin. I walked up the ridge a ways to about 2500m. The views were special. We descended and drove back to Duncan Lake,  and camped at the Glacier Creek Regional Park. There were about half a dozen other campers in the spacious campground. 

The weather was forecast to deteriorate on Tuesday. We drove into Kaslo, had lunch at the cafe and booked an AirBnB for the night. The old washing machines at the town laundry didn't do a very good job. We drove a little ways south to Fletcher Creek and had a wander to see the falls. We then checked ourselves in to our accommodation. It hardly rained, but the temperatures dropped.

We woke up to drizzle but by the time we were driving west on 31A, the roads were starting to dry. We drove on the gravel road past Sandon to the head of the valley and walked up to Cumberland Pass. I had read that it would be colourful in autumn, which it was. We had some rain and hail on the way up. There were too many clouds to get a good look at Kokanee Glacier to the south from the pass at 2300m. I poked around an old mine site and we returned to the car. 

We camped at the ghost town of Sandon for the night. Once upon a time,  the settlement had 30 hotels and 28 bars, but by the time we got there, the silver boom had passed. It was a chilly night but we had plenty of sleeping bags to keep us warm.

On Thursday, we drove a little ways back up #31A and then up another forestry road to the Whitewater Canyon trail head. The old trail was on the east side of Whitewater Creek, but it has been re-routed to the west side to avoid grizzly bears (we didn't see any). However, the new trail is more rugged than the old trail because it crosses a number of talus slopes. We reached a basic campsite in the upper valley. Sheila had enough of boulders and opted to head down, while I continued up to the next level. I went through a boulder field and returned by the recommended route that skirted the boulders for the most part. 

We drove down the #31A and made a stop at Valhalla in New Denver, drove the main drag of Nakusp before heading to McDonald Creek Provincial Park campground for hot showers and a pleasant evening.

We drove along the eastern shore of Arrow Lake on Highway #6 and caught the ferry from Fauqier. The light west-bound traffic on #6 went in waves with the ferry movements. We pulled off at the Creighton Valley Road, going through farm and ranches to reach Echo Lake. The commercial campground at the lake was fully booked that Saturday night. We walked up to a viewpoint that overlooked Echo Lake (the 400m ascent had a low reward to effort ratio) and then we returned to #6 and the quiet Gold Panner Campground. There are some trails below the campground but we didn't try our hand at gold panning.

The following day, we continued along #6, dropped in at the Lunby Sunday market, then continued to Vernon. We walked along the "Gray Canal" hiking trail for views over the Vernon Valley and then drove up to Predator Ridge for a two night visit with Andy & Laura. The weather deteriorated for our drive back to the coast (poor driving conditions on the 97C Connector) and this time we made our reservation for the ferry to the island.  We didn't have a lot of extra time along the way, but we did stop at the Asian Ingre Market in Chilliwack and I scored a huge bag of dried Thai kaffir lime leaves.