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.