Participants: Julian Larsen (me), Duncan MacIntyre, Stefanija Rekasius, Xi Liang
After a long stretch of assignments and midterms I had one goal for reading break: absolutely forget about school. This necessitates a VOC trip or two, so I signed up for Burns and Turns followed by a trip to Sloquet Hot Springs with a summit of the nearby Mt. Glendinning. Burns and Turns was a blast, and as one of the few people who didn’t bring skis to Phelix, I felt quite smug passing the suffering skiers on the low coverage trail. If only I knew what would befall me later that week…
Unfortunately, when I got back from Phelix, I still hadn’t got a car spot for the second trip, and rainy weather meant climbing would be limited. Luckily, just as I started to despair, Duncan MacIntyre contacted me letting me know a car spot had opened up for Sloquet. After my experience at Phelix I thought we would surely be going for the summit with only spikes and maybe some snowshoes and crampons. Why would I think this? Maybe because the trail for Glendinning starts at only 300 metres elevation. Maybe because it isn’t actually a trail but just bushwhacking up a slope in a remote valley. Maybe because Stefanija Rekasius (who was the third summiteer of this trip) had been on Burns and Turns with me and realized how bad the snowpack was as well. As it turns out, these were not good enough reasons to leave the skis at home, because Duncan and Stefanija insisted on bring them. Thus, the seed of suffering had been planted.
Besides Duncan, Stefanija and I, our only other companion was Xi Liang, who promised good company at the Hot Springs and during our long travels, but was quite content with not joining for the Glendinning part of the trip. The four of us packed into Duncan’s SUV on Thursday morning and started the long drive to Sloquet Hot Springs. This consisted of driving to Pemberton, and then driving south almost the same distance but on logging roads which cut deep into rainforest until our destination just shy of Harrison Lake. When we got to the camp site, we checked in with a local named Mark. When he saw the skis in our vehicle, we told him our plan and he was very much not convinced. In fact, he started to talk to us like we had never been camping before because I think he concluded we are stupid. Perhaps he is right, but perhaps stupidity makes for a good story and some solid Type II fun. That night we enjoyed a good soak in the hot springs and prepared for the 4:00 am wake up the next morning. Our discussion about potential risks and evacuation plans made Xi a little anxious he might not see us again.
4:00AM never really feels amazing, especially when you sleep in a tent, but there’s definitely an excitement from the sense that something big is about to happen. So, on Friday morning we shivered around the table at camp eating oatmeal and feeling this excitement together. Xi, despite not needing to wake up early, decided to join us on the first couple kilometers of logging road before we began the bushwhack. And whack bushes we did, mostly with our skis which constantly got stuck on branches, rocks, moss and dirt, suddenly halting our steps at any moment and throwing us off balance. The slopes got steeper, and we started moving slowly as cliffs appeared above, blocking our path and leading us to scramble-like sections and no-fall zones in the forest. This culminated in the crux of our route, a steep gully which ended in a near vertical step up a horrible tangle of branches. I went up this section first, struggling to get my skis through a tight space under a log with a maze of branches to get caught on. Loose dirt meant the footing was useless and I pulled myself up by grabbing branches. This burly maneuver somehow reminded me of caving as I “birthed” out from under the log and branches.
After about five and a half hours of carrying skis, we finally caught our first glimpse of snow. Success? Not exactly. The snow was only in small patches where there was no forest, and under the trees there was nothing. To make matters worse, we had not come very far. As a matter of fact, bushwhacking up a steep slope with skis was rather slow and we had only gotten to about 800 metres elevation. Since the bottom is at 300 metres, and the peak is at 2053 metres, that means that we had… (checks math) absolutely no chance of summiting. Spirits were low and talks of bailing were proposed, but I had one goal and one goal only: prove Mark wrong. Who was the campground manager to question our abilities? I would get at least one turn, and it wouldn’t be on some measly patch of slush.
We decided 1:00PM would be our turnaround time, so we pushed on as fast as possible hoping we would at least make it to the alpine. Eventually we made it high enough for consistent snow, but it was melting out and hollow underneath, so our feet often punched through. Stefanija in particular fell into a couple sub-snow creeks, drenching her shoes. Unfortunately, 1:00PM arrived and we had only made it to about 1300 metres. There was no alpine bowl or powder slopes, but a somewhat covered boulder field and an alder lined creek bed.
After transitioning into skis, I made the first turns of our trip: three or four shaky turns down a boulder field on wet concrete snow, before I had to dismount to cross a creek. Stefanija followed, and then Duncan started on his tele skis. On his third turn, the bindings on one of his skis broke apart. He also noticed that his VOC rental boots were cracked, which couldn’t be very good either. That was all the skiing Duncan got to do. Perhaps it’s a good thing we didn’t get better conditions since his skis probably would’ve broken anyways… Alas Duncan put his hiking boots back on and began walking back down, while Stefanija and I took our skis on and off trying to get a few turns here and there in the alders. We got a dozen or so more, meaning the trip was ‘cough’ obviously worth it.
The way down was basically up but worse. On the way up the A-frame of our packs acted like a ships bow, parting the waves of branches (it got stuck a lot, but I like the simile). On the way down, the skis make a V shape the acts like a net, catching every branch, log and ticket that gets in the way. This meant that we weren’t faster on the descent, and we made it back to the crux of the route just as it was starting to get dark. The crux became even more difficult on the way down due to the aforementioned orientation of the skis, and all three of us struggled heavily on this section. One boulder got knocked down the gully and nearly removed Stefanija from our party. Suffice to say there was much suffering in the dark forest as we continued our bushwhack, and when we met the logging road again, we rejoiced and took a bit of a break.
Plodding along the logging road, we finally got close to camp, when we saw a light approaching. Xi ran towards us yelling that we were actually alive. Xi had seen a helicopter fly low over the logging road in our direction earlier in the afternoon, and now at 8:30 pm he was understandably worried. Luckily, we were fine though, and after some late dinner, we went to the hot springs again for a relaxing soak. At midnight we left the hot springs and ended our 20+ hour day.
The final day we did more hot springs, and then headed out. We got to the exit, but nobody was there. I would not let my moment of triumph go unrecognized, so I waved down Mark, and showed him a video of Stefanija skiing. His reaction was subdued, which was disappointing because I had dreamed up a much more grand and satisfying moment in my imagination. We decided to attempt the road south by Harrison Lake on the way back which went well and meant that we had effectively driven a big circle around five different provincial parks.
This trip was one of absurdities, but that pretty much fits with this absurd winter. We hadn’t achieved our goal, but I wasn’t disappointed anyways. At least we took our skis for a walk to see the mountains.
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Hot springs on the last morning
Nice story Julian, glad to hear you guys got back out of there in one piece.
How was the drive out along Harrison Lake? What kind of vehicle were you in?
We were in a low-medium clearance AWD SUV, and it was decent. Drive was about 2.5 hours on the FSR, bad section is near the north end of Harrison lake (10km long and 10km from the north end). The bad section still wasn’t terrible, some rocks/boulders in the middle of the road to avoid, a few steepish sections, a few small creeks going across the road, but no major or deep water bars.
Low-medium clearance AWD SUV you say… Honda CRV?
Mazda CX5.
In my opinion, the road was easier than the road to the summer lot at Phelix. My biggest concern would be logging trucks. There was no activity on a Saturday when we were there, but on a weekday it looked like there could be a lot of logging trucks. It would be good to have a radio.
Copy that.
I was thinking about taking my recently-acquired ’99 CRV out that way… the road being clear via Harrison makes it sounds a lot more promising! Thanks for the beta Duncan.
This trip report gave me mild PTSD from A-framing down that same bushwhack in the dark a couple of years ago. I guess I had it easy, though, since we were *only* out for 15 hours that day instead of 20. Great read!
Hope you had a little more skiing than us! I’ll have to go back for a second attempt sometime…