South Chilcotin Backpacking Trip – Lorna Pass

September 25, 2024December 18, 2024 / Maria / 5 Comments

Following up from my first post, Brandon and I entered South Chilcotin Provincial Park with only a very loose hiking plan. We had enough food for 7 days and decided to just make up the itinerary on the fly. This was a good choice because Brandon was fighting a cold and it quickly became evident that shorter distances would be better. I wanted to do a side trip up Lorna Pass and considered camping at Lorna Lake, but we decided to make Day 2 a shorter day to do Lorna Pass as a day trip.

There’s a bit of a gap in formal campsites between WD Campsite, Lorna Lake, and Trigger Lake, but there is a wilderness campsite called Siwash Meadows at the Branch to Lorna Pass. I really think BC Parks should make this a formal campsite with an outhouse and bear cache, because it’s already a pretty established campsite. It ended up being my favourite campsite on the trail as it has incredible views of the surrounding mountains.

It’s only 10km between WD Camp and Siwash Meadows, so we figured the shorter distance would allow us to get ahead with our schedule. We were pretty late getting to camp the previous night, which means you’re slower to go to bed and subsequently slower to rise. We wanted to get on an earlier schedule to do more morning hiking.

It rained overnight and it was still drizzling in the morning, but it cooled down the temperature and overall, we thought the rain would benefit us. The trail to Siwash Meadows is pretty straightforward. It’s similar to the previous day in that the trail mostly goes through the forest, with frequent breaks through the meadows. It continued to rain for a few hours, but eventually stopped and didn’t rain anymore during the entire trip.

The only real challenge on this section of the trail is that there are 4 water crossings in a row. Like I said, South Chilcotin is very remote and there’s limited infrastructure in the park. The rivers were low enough to cross, but there were definitely some sketchy sections where we had to be intentional about picking our line. We wore our sandals across and at times the water was about midway between my knee and thigh. The water is really cold and by the 4^th crossing, our feet were starting to go a bit numb.

We decided to stop for lunch after the last water crossing and encountered a group of 6 mountain bikers that were traveling from Spruce Lake to Bear Paw, which is the Tyax Camp located a few kilometres north of Siwash Meadows. They were the only people we saw for the next 3 days, but we did see them every day since we were on similar routes.

I’ve included a map of our route above so that you can visualize the route we took. On Day 1, the Tyaughton Creek Trail (red) took us into the park, and then our plan was to spend the rest of the trip doing a big loop in the central part of the park before exiting the same way. South Chilcotin is really only one part of this wilderness area and if you continue north, you’ll enter into Big Creek Provincial Park, where there’s a lot more wilderness to explore. I think I’d like to return in the future and get flown into Lorna Lake to explore Big Creek from there.

Siwash Meadows is located right at the junction of the Tyaughton Creek Trail, Deer Pass, and the Lorna Pass Trail (as well as a little trail to Lizard Creek). Siwash Meadows is huge and the campsite is located at the west side of the meadow by the creek. There’s a few rustic benches and tall tables and pretty much infinite room for tents. We set up in the meadow and did a bear hang. Chilcotin is so remote and empty of people that it’s probably the most bear aware I’ve ever been. We would never leave our bags unattended anywhere, not even to run over in the trees to use the bathroom. If one of us was at the tent or away from the cooking area, the other person was always with the food. Fortunately, we didn’t see any bears, but we did have a few deer visitors!

We enjoyed a nice meal and then went to bed early with the plan of hiking up to Lorna Pass and back the following day (shown in purple). I would have liked to make it all the way to Lorna Lake, but we didn’t want to have to hike up and down the pass twice in one day, so we settled on the top of the Pass as our goal destination.

It was really cloudy on Day 2, so we were thrilled to wake up to clear weather on Day 3. It was still pretty cool in the park and we didn’t have to carry our heavy packs, so it was nice to see some sun. We set off around 8:30am to climb the 8km up to the top of Lorna Pass. It’s 2km of forest hiking to get to Bear Paw camp, which is pretty swanky. It’s $400 a night, which I thought was pretty reasonable given how remote it is and that it’s completely catered. We only passed through and then continued up the trail towards Lorna Pass.

The Lorna Pass Trail was probably my favourite part of the entire trip. You walk through the forests and meadows for a while and there were a lot more wildflowers. I’ve become really interested in wildflowers over the past two years, so I had my little wildflower identification brochure with me and tried to identify as many flowers as possible. Eventually the trail becomes very steep as you ascend through the forest.

We did ~300m of elevation gain in the forest before popping out in the alpine. Once you leave the trees, it’s just wide open meadow stretching across bare mountain and it is absolutely gorgeous! There’s another ~200m of gain through the alpine to the top of the pass, but you don’t feel it at all because it’s so scenic! We took a break in the shade at the edge of the alpine and we were both in really high spirits as we climbed up the pass.

We planned to go as far as the Pass, but when I got there, I couldn’t stop myself from continuing to climb. There’s a nice view from the pass, but you can’t see around the edge of the surrounding peaks, so we impulsively did a scramble up to the top of the nearest peak. There’s an unnamed peak on either side of the pass, the one on the north side is much shorter and has a huge plateau on the top, so we climbed up that one. It adds another ~150m of gain, but it’s totally worth it! I’m not a frequent scrambler, but it’s not a steep peak and I felt very safe the whole time.

It’s only from the top of the peak that you can get a view of Lorna Lake, plus the view of all the other mountains is stunning! I would have been happy to keep exploring further, but I didn’t want to kill poor Brandon. It was quite windy at the top, so we settled behind some rocks to enjoy our lunch and take a break. I don’t regret not going down to Lorna Lake as I think the view from the peak was more rewarding. I’ll save Lorna Lake for a future trip!

We had a nice hike back down through the alpine and went off trail for a bit to explore a tarn. We were hoping to go for a swim in it, but it was only about ankle deep and very mucky, so we decided to skip it and hiked back to the trail. It’s a steep trail on the way down and we took a break in some meadows along the way.

By the time we got back to the Siwash Meadows, we were pretty tired and sweaty, so we took turns bathing in the river. In total, we’d hiked 18 kilometres. To lighten our packs, we’d obviously left our tent and sleeping gear set up in the meadow, and we’d hung our food while we were away and everything was untouched when we returned. It was pretty cold overnight, but there was a completely clear and I snuck out of bed for a little while in the middle of the night to enjoy the stars. I have so many photos from this section of trail, so here’s a few more. Continue to Part III.

South Chilcotin Backpacking Trip – Tyaughton Creek

September 18, 2024December 18, 2024 / Maria / 7 Comments

South Chilcotin Mountains Provincial Park has been on my bucket list for a long time. I’m not really sure why, because no one else really seems to know about it, but it’s been recommended to me several times by various Guiders and I’ve been trying to find the time to visit for years. I think the challenge with this park is that it’s not close enough to Vancouver to visit on a long weekend, and the trails are so remote that you need a longer time period for your trip. Other trips have always seemed to take priority.

I’m so glad I finally got the opportunity to visit, because I really loved this park! I wasn’t supposed to go this year at all, I had actually planned to do a 5-day hike in the Kootenays called the Earl Grey Trail (also very unknown). But as you might be able to guess, I had to cancel that trip because of the raging forest fires all over the province. The western trailhead caught fire before my trip and even though I could have done a modified trip, I was weary of the smoke and evacuation notices. Jasper burned down a few days before I was supposed to go, so I ended up canceling the whole trip the day before I was set to leave.

The good thing about Chilcotin being on my bucket list for so long was that I already had several trip itineraries in mind. So after we cancelled the trip to the Kootenays, I was able to pivot pretty easily to this trip. The air quality was still relatively good near Vancouver and there weren’t many fires burning along the coast, so we committed to South Chilcotin and packed the car literally an hour later.

The trip ended up being just me and Brandon. We were supposed to meet another friend from Calgary, but understandably, she didn’t want to drive across BC. Instead, me and Brandon packed up his car and took off towards Squamish around noon. There’s a few ways to get to Chilcotin – you can go via Lillooet (either through Pemberton or Highway 1), or you can go directly on the Hurley Forest Service Road. It’s ~6 hours through Lillooet and there were several fires burning in that area, so we opted for the Hurley.

Since the Hurley is a forestry road rather than a highway, it has a bit of a reputation. It’s a joke/point of pride to be able to say “I survived the Hurley”. I would have been too nervous to do it in my Hyundai Tucson, but Brandon was thrilled to drive in his 4Runner, and it did save us an hour of driving. The Hurley is accessed by driving Pemberton Meadows Road across the river and then branching off. There’s a sign at the start of the road that indicates it’s a 4×4 road, but in reality, most cars can handle this road.

It’s a little rough as you climb up the mountainside, but you can travel on it in pretty much any car if you go slow enough. I definitely would have been fine in my Tucson and we even saw Tesla’s and sports cars up there. The Semaphore Lakes trailhead is located at the top of the mountain. It’s a really popular hike, so a lot of people use the road to access that trail. Once you get to the top, the road is pretty flat and maintained all the way to Gold Bridge. So it was a much less scary experience than I anticipated!

Since this was a last minute trip, we didn’t have any bookings and planned to make use of one of the free BC Rec Sites for our first night. There’s a site right on Tyaughton Lake called Friburg Rec Site. It’s not very nice. It’s basically just a parking lot with room for a few tents, but it was fine for a night. I think it used to be nicer, but the nearby residents complained and they changed the campsite to day use only, leaving only the parking lot for camping now.

There’s a vibrant mountain biking and ski community in Chilcotin that I think is worth explaining in order to really understand the park. Like I said, the park is super remote and difficult to access. If you want to hike into it, you need quite a bit of time. However, hikers aren’t the primary park users and we encountered very few of them during our six days in the park (we only passed 2 solo female hikers and 1 couple). Mountain biking is the most popular sport in the park during the summer and a lot of them take advantage of an outdoor adventure company called Tyax to execute their trip.

Tyax runs a float plane operation out of Tyaughton Lake and flies to 3 different locations in the park (Spruce, Warner, and Lorna Lake). They have a huge lodge located at Tyaughton Lake, as well as 3 luxury wilderness campsites throughout the park. We still didn’t encounter many mountain bikers in the park, but most of the people we met were staying at the Tyax camps. It makes for a much easier trip because then you don’t have to carry a tent, sleeping bag, or pad. Plus, Tyax caters all of your meals, so you pretty much can just travel with a day pack!

In contrast, BC Parks has 7 formal campsites in the park, some of which have outhouses and bear caches, and some of which have nothing. Two of the sites are currently closed, but wilderness camping is allowed in the park. No permits are required to camp in the park and since we also stayed at free campsites, this was essentially a cost-free holiday, aside from the gas to drive there.

We decided to have dinner at Tyax Lodge instead of our campsite. It was a great choice. The lodge is located right on the lake and the restaurant has a huge patio. The food is fantastic, so we were happy to treat ourselves before 6 days of dehydrated food. It was a little hazy from smoke in the area, but there was some rain in the forecast, which we hoped would clear out all the smoke.

The following day we got up early to start our hike into the park. Hikers and mountain bikers can use the float planes to more easily access the core area of the park, but if you want to hike in, there are several entrances. You can enter through Gunn Creek, Taylor Creek, or Tyaughton Creek. Gunn Creek is currently closed from a forest fire a few years ago. Taylor Creek is accessible in any vehicle and Tyaughton Creek is advertised as 4×4 access, but similar to the Hurley, the road is in pretty good condition and I would do it in my Tucson.

We chose Tyaughton Creek because it’s a shorter distance to enter the park from there, but I think Taylor Creek is the more scenic route. There’s a shorter loop you can do from Taylor Creek, so I opted to save that for a future trip with Seth. Our goal on this trip was to get to the core area of the park as quickly as possible, so we chose Tyaughton.

It’s 16km from the Tyaughton Creek Trailhead to the first campsite (WD Camp). The hike starts with 200m of elevation gain, but after that, the net elevation gain is pretty minimal. We thought it would be a pretty easy hike to the campsite, but it’s actually a tiring trail. It’s not technical, but it climbs up and down from creek to creek over and over again, so we still ended up doing 650m of elevation gain over the entire day.

To make matters worse, Brandon seemed to be coming down with a cold and he struggled all day. Fortunately, I was feeling really good, so we pushed through. The trail is mostly in the forest, but it would frequently pop out into meadows where you could get a glimpse of the mountains. There were still some wildflowers in the meadows, but overall they were looking pretty dry.

We started the hike around 11am and got to the campsite shortly after 6pm. We only encountered one person on the trail, a hiker heading back to her car. The campsite was completely empty, but was a really nice site. It has a brand new outhouse and bear cache and a great water source. The site was pretty overgrown and you can tell it doesn’t get used much, but there’s room for several tents throughout the meadow. A family of 3 showed up on mountain bikes just before sunset. It was calling for rain overnight, so we got the tent set up and went to bed early. Continue to Part II.

A Week in the Azores: Sao Miguel East

September 11, 2024September 13, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

After two relatively nice days in the Azores (Part I), we got to experience the other side of their Atlantic climate. It was calling for rain on Day 3, and boy did it ever rain! It poured all night and we had a slow start to the morning, waiting for the rain to subside. Eventually we couldn’t wait any longer and we started the drive towards Furnas to try and enjoy the geothermal highlights of the island.

Furnas is in the middle of the island, so it’s not too far a drive from our B&B. We tried for a few viewpoints along the way, but everything was socked in by clouds. As we entered town, the rain became absolutely torrential. Emily had to stop into the pharmacy and even though she was outside for a total of maybe 15 seconds, she got drenched.

One of the big attractions in Furnas is cozido, which is a local dish that’s cooked in a big pot in the hot springs. It’s a combination of meats, vegetables, and greens that are all stewed together and then separated out again and served to you on a plate. In my opinion, it’s basically Azorean Jiggs Dinner (a Newfoundland dish where you boil all your vegetables with salt meat). I really wanted to try it, so we decided to just have lunch right away since it was raining so hard. The only problem… finding somewhere to eat.

If you’re visiting the Azores, I’d definitely recommend making your lunch or dinner reservations in advance as much as possible. This wasn’t really an option for us because we never bought a local sim card and couldn’t make any calls. So even though we purposefully went for lunch at 11:45am (15 minutes before the restaurants open), we couldn’t get in anywhere because they were full from reservations. It was too wet out to spend forever walking around, so we ended up eating in a nearby cafe, which was pretty disappointing.

The rain finally slowed down after lunch and we walked to Jardim de Courela, which is located right in town and has a bunch of natural geothermal attractions. It’s cool to see, but it definitely smells like sulfur! We drove over to the Caldeiras das Furnas to see some more geothermal attractions, which is where the locals actually cook the cozido, so you can see the pots bubbling in the ground. There’s a short hike there to a waterfall, but it was either 10 or 15 euros per person (I can’t remember), and we were too cheap to pay for it. Instead we backtracked and visited some of the viewpoints we missed on the way in, particularly, Pico do Fero, which has a nice view of Lagoa das Furnas.

We improvised for the rest of the day and ended up driving towards the east end of the island to visit Parque Natural da Ribeira dos Caldeiroes. I feel like it would be easy to skip this park, but it was absolutely worth the drive! It’s a gorgeous park that follows the river down the valley with cascading terraces and an old water mill. The trail appears to end at the water mill, but there is a track through the forest that continues if you want to go further. My Gaia app told me there was a waterfall down there, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The trail was very muddy from all the rain and the waterfall is mostly just the river. It was an adventurous walk, but we could have skipped it.

To end the day, we stopped at Cha Gorreana, which is a tea factory near our B&B. It’s surprisingly popular, although it seemed most people were just doing a self guided tour and then hitting up the tasting room. They offer educational tours for free, so we did that and I really enjoyed it. I drink a lot of tea, so it was cool to see how the leaves get manufactured.

Finding somewhere to eat dinner that night proved more of a challenge. May 30, 2024 was Corpus Christi Day, which is a feast day to honour the body of Christ and is a holiday in the Azores. We’d had challenges earlier in the day trying to find a pharmacy and a post office that were open, and it proved almost impossible to find a restaurant at dinner time. All the restaurants in Furnas had been open – I guess because Cozido is so popular – but we had to drive around for ages to find somewhere to eat in the evening. It’s a moving holiday, so definitely pay attention to it if you’re visiting around that time.

Day 4 was our last full day on the island. It rained on and off throughout the day, but our timing was really good and we were always either driving or inside whenever it happened to rain. I wanted to do a hike, so we drove to the southeast part of the island to do the Salto do Preggo waterfall hike in Faial da Terra. The hike is mostly uphill on the way there, but it’s only ~4km round trip, so it’s a nice little hike and only took us 2 hours, including a long break at the waterfall for lunch. The trail is mostly in the forest and the waterfall is quite beautiful, though the water is absolutely freezing!

We had to drive through Furnas again on our way back after the hike, so we decided to make another attempt at cozido and managed to find a restaurant to serve us since it was later in the day (2pm). At first, they told us they didn’t have room for walk-ins, but the restaurant was half empty, so I said we’d wait and they ended up seating us within 5 minutes. I honestly don’t know why they tried to turn us away because it never got any busier. The cozido is an absolutely massive serving, we shared 1 serving and still didn’t finish it, but it was delicious! I’m glad we were able to sample it while on the island since it’s really unique.

We finished the day by reviving some of the trip highlights. We went back to Praia dos Moinhos for another few hours and enjoyed briefly swimming in the rain at one point. We’d debated going to another beach, but figured, why mess with a good thing. Then we finished the trip with another visit to Mare Cheia for more seafood. The waiter was downright insulted when a group came in just before closing and asked him for a tuna steak (“tuna is not fresh! If any restaurant is serving you tuna, they’re feeding you frozen food!”). We commiserated with him and he poured us some shots of the local liqueur before returning to the B&B.

We hung out on the balcony as the sun set and into the night, chatting about whatever and reflecting on what a nice visit it had been to a pretty unique island. Even though the Azores was Emily’s pick for the trip, it was my favourite part too. I’d love to return some day and check out the rest of the islands. I definitely recommend it if you want to try something a bit different!