I went on a lot of backpacking trips this summer. Some went according to plan, some didn’t. My trip to Illal Meadows did not go according to the plan. 

Illal Meadows is a hike near the Coquihalla Summit Rec Area, but instead of accessing it from the Coquihalla highway, it’s accessed from the forestry roads between Hope and Tulameen. It’s not a commonly visited area, but I was somewhat familiar with it from my multi-day trip on the HBC Heritage Trail last year (there’s another trip that really didn’t go according to the plan). I’ve been wanting to visit this area for awhile and planned for a 2 night trip in late September.

We had a large group of people for this trip. It was a lot of fun, but arguably 7 people is too many to coordinate in the backcountry. We were a bit late leaving the city and started the hike in mid-afternoon. The trailhead is located off the Tulameen FSR, which you can access from the Coquihalla Highway exit by Coquihalla Lakes Lodge. I believe parts of this road were damaged in the 2021 floods, but it’s easy to access this trailhead without issue. It’s a gravel road, but you don’t need high clearance or 4WD. 

Our plan was to hike up on Saturday to camp at the tarn at the base of Jim Kelly Peak and then spend Sunday exploring some variation of Jim Kelly Peak, Illal Mountain, or Coquihalla Mountain. There’s an established trail to the base of each peak, but it’s a scramble to the top. Our plan was to check out some of the peaks and climb up as far as we felt comfortable, but not necessarily summit. 

There’s an old FSR that we thought we might be able to access using Brandon’s 4runner, but it was totally overgrown, so we had to hike 3km on the old road, plus 5km up to the alpine. The FSR was an easy walk. It’s mostly in the bushes, but at the end it opens up to a beautiful view of the mountains at the parking lot of the old trailhead. From there, the hike gets much steeper. It’s a pretty steady slog up through the forest, but eventually you hit the sub-alpine. There’s still more climbing, but it’s beautiful, especially in the Fall! The trees were turning orange and yellow and the shrubs were red, so it made for a very scenic hike.

The problem was that it was quite cold and windy once we hit the alpine. We were all hiking at different paces, but we had to rush through the last few kilometres because we cold and fighting the loss of the daylight from our late start. All together, it was under 4 hours of hiking, so a very reasonable day if we had started earlier. There were several other campers already set up at the tarn. On a nice day, you could set up your tent by the water, but it was super windy and exposed, so we found some clearings in the trees to pitch our tents. 

There was a really nice sunset, but we mostly missed it while setting up camp and by the time we were done, it was pretty dark. We headed down to the water and sheltered in the trees along the edge to cook our dinner. Carolyn went in search of firewood and because we were on crown land and there was no fire ban, we were able to have a fire! This definitely helped with overall enjoyment as it was a cool evening. We spent the rest of the night chatting and singing around the fire before heading to bed.

It was not an easy night for sleeping. Me and Seth brought our 3 person tent because we took our dog, Sadie on the hike and like having the extra room. But it was extremely cold and windy, so the extra space in the tent maybe wasn’t the best. It was hard to sleep with the wind rocking the tent and I was worried about Sadie. She has her own sleeping pad and we had her wrapped up in Seth’s puffy jacket, but I was worried about her being cold. She seemed fine most of the night, but towards morning she started shivering because she kept sleeping off the pad and wouldn’t share my sleeping bag. We’ve since purchased a cute little puffy jacket for her for next time. 

It had been a beautiful cloudless night, but when I got up to pee at 5am it was completely clouded in. Then, when I got up at 8am, there was about 10cm of snow on the ground! There hadn’t been any precipitation in the weather forecast, so it was definitely a surprise to see a consistent blanket of snow over everything. We hadn’t brought winter boots, spikes, or any real snow equipment, so it was a very quick decision to abort the trip a day early.  

Everyone immediately agreed with the plan. Adriana had been really cold overnight and there wasn’t a lot to do all day in the blustery snow if we couldn’t do any summits. Carolyn cooked us all yummy breakfast sandwiches for a tent breakfast while Sadie and Jasper (Carolyn’s dog) played energetically in the snow. The snow continued to fall steadily and by the time we started our hike out, quite a bit had accumulated! All the other tents decided to head out early as well.

What surprised me was how low the snowline was. It was late September, so I wasn’t surprised to see a little bit of snow in the alpine, but there was snow almost the entire way back to the car! Eventually the snow thinned out when we got back to the trees and it was a muddy, rainy walk back to the cars. It was a little disappointing that we didn’t get to do any of the summits, but I think that cutting the trip short was definitely a wise choice. Sometimes things work out as planned, and other times you have to adjust to the circumstances. I’m definitely keen to return to this area in the future. I don’t think we went too late in the season, it was just bad luck with the weather. Either way, I still had a really good time with my friends!