HBC Trail Backpacking Trip Part III

August 30, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

This is the final saga of my experience on the HBC Heritage Trail. See Part I and Part II for the full story.

It was such a relief on Monday morning to look out the tent and see an overcast sky! I love the sun, but it was so hot on this trip and with the general fatigue from the previous 2 days, I was looking for a bit of relief.

Carolyn was anxious to get going early in hopes of getting home a bit earlier, so we were quick in having breakfast and packing down the tent. My foot was generally feeling better, but I was still getting arch pain when putting my full weight on my right foot – not as pronounced as the previous day, but I wasn’t sure what 22km of walking would do to it.

We were finished with the bulk of the trail, but arguably, we had some of the toughest sections ahead. We left the campsite at around 7:30am and started with almost 800m of elevation loss over 5km. It was pretty steep in parts, but I wasn’t feeling too bad and we were having good conversation, so we flew through the first section to Sowaqua River. Sowaqua River was our last river crossing of the trip and even though the trail was relatively flat for the next 7km between Sowaqua and Colville Camp, we knew we were going to encounter some blowdown.

Rivers are a central cause of problems in a flood, so we weren’t surprised to encounter a lot of blowdown immediately after the river. This was probably the most concentrated area of blowdown across the entire trail, but fortunately it wasn’t too long. The trail was tricky to follow in some parts, but after the first kilometre, it got a lot easier. Had I not been experiencing foot problems, I think this would have been an enjoyable trail walk, but the monotony of the flat sections turned out to be the most challenging on my foot.

When we finally got home I was able to diagnose the problem as plantar fasciitis, which was confirmed by an ER doctor and in my case was caused by putting too much stress on my foot. Plantar fasca is the connective tissue that runs along the length of your foot and I triggered the problem generally by pushing too far without proper training. So I definitely learned my lesson. But unfortunately, the longer I hiked on it, the more painful it got, and flat sections were the hardest because it was harder to distribute my weight to other parts of my foot and there was nothing else to distract from the pain. It also started to rain a little bit, but honestly it was a nice relief from the sun and it wasn’t enough to actually get wet, except for our feet, which had no hope with all the wet blowdown anyways.

So my pace definitely slowed down towards Colville Camp and I was relieved when we finally got there for lunch around noon. Colville Camp was a pretty cool forest campsite, but it had a lot of blowdown and pretty limited campsites, so it probably wouldn’t be one of my first picks for where to stay. We took a break for about an hour, which actually helped my foot a lot, before continuing on to the hardest part of the day.

We had a 3km climb up to the top of Manson’s Ridge, but it was also ~550m of elevation gain, so it was a bit of a slog. The first part of the climb isn’t too bad until you hit Fool’s Pass, which is a small relief in terms of elevation gain, but a mental slog! There were a few big trees down in the pass and there’s a few small declines you know you’ll have to ascend again, so it was pretty torturous at this point in the day. The last part of the climb up to Manson’s Ridge is really steep, but I honestly preferred it because it distracted from my foot pain. I was pretty slow, but eventually we made it to the top and it was all downhill from there. Unfortunately there’s no view unless you do an extra 400m to the summit, which normally I would do, but on this day I just didn’t have it in me.

The section between Manson’s Ridge and Manson’s Camp is only 2kms, but you undo all of the previous 500m of elevation gain and there were several huge trees down on the path, so it was also a slow descent. We knew the trail had been cleared by volunteers after Manson’s Camp, so our focus was solely on that reward.

We made it to Manson’s Camp shortly after 4pm. Manson’s Camp is really nice! It’s not very big – pretty much just a small plateau with enough space for a few tents – but it has a really nice view of the surrounding mountains. We will thrilled to sit down on the benches and planned a short stop before the last 6km. I was definitely hurting, but feeling in better spirits knowing we were approaching the end.

Unfortunately we still had a few roadblocks standing between us and the trailhead, we just didn’t know that yet. This was one section of trail where we should have done a bit more research, but in our defense, when I did the research after, it was still very difficult to access the right information.

I rely heavily on GaiaGPS when in the wilderness and my Gaia showed two options for finishing the trail: the “new route” and the “old route”. Pretty self explanatory, but we knew from the facebook group that the route had been cleared and we were confused when we could not find the entrance to the new route (where indicated on Gaia). Carolyn bushwacked through some trees and then found some flagging tape in the woods, but it was definitely not cleared and we were getting a funny feeling about it, so we returned to the campsite.

The “old route” is very obvious and leaves from the back of the campsite, so we decided to take our chances on that. To be honest, it didn’t really look cleared either because there was a lot of shrubbery growing into the trail, but there was no blowdown, so it could have been a lot worse. A couple hundred metres into the “old route” we came across a sign pointing down into the woods for the new trail “to be completed in 2022”. In my opinion, this is the biggest shortcoming on the entire trail. The “to be completed” was very foreboding to me and I can’t guess why anyone would install an official looking sign before actually finishing the trial. Our guess was that the trail never actually got finished because of the 2021 flood and we decided to stick with the “old route”. This was the right call and was exactly the case. The new trail was flooded before it was completed and they are still working to re-establish it, so please please please, someone take this sign down!

The old route continues through the woods for a while along a very gentle decline until you eventually pop out on a forestry road. The forestry road is now defunct because of washout from the 2021 flood, so it has a pretty unique feel of a place that’s been reclaimed by nature. The grass is growing up through the old road after 2 years of no use and it would have been a leisurely walk had my foot not been throbbing with every step.

It’s only 6km from Manson’s Camp to the end, but the road blocks continued. It’s easy walking until 3km before the end where there’s some flagging tape and a sign saying that the road is washed out and to follow the detour. We didn’t actually get to see the road washout, but I can assume it’s pretty bad because the detour takes you all the way up in the woods to navigate around the creek where the washout occurred. Fortunately this is the only detour, but it was already 6:30pm at this point and I was so done with walking. It was discouraging to have to walk way up into the forest and because we didn’t even know if we were on the correct trail (since we didn’t know the new route was still not complete), we were nervous there would be more road blocks or detours that would prevent us from finishing the trail.

There was a lot more washout after the detour, but you’re able to walk through it. It’s definitely creepy though. There’s a large uphill slope on the right side of the road and a steep embankment going down the left side. None of the banks looked particularly stable and the road is littered with giant boulder debris that was knocked down during the flood. After a very hot weekend, the sky was finally threatening rain and as the dark clouds moved in, we rushed through the landslide areas out of caution.

Within the last kilometre of trail, we tried calling a cab to come pick us up. We’d read that a lot of cars get broken into on the Hope side of the trail, so we had parked at the Hope Visitor Centre and decided to call a taxi. It took us a while to get a signal, but eventually we got through and they gave us a 30 minute wait time. It started to sprinkle as we were doing the last 500m of the trail and as we exited the trailhead, it started to absolutely pour! We were dreading having to wait in the pouring rain for 30 minutes and were ecstatic to see a shelter at the trailhead where we could stay dry while killing some time.

This was where we made our final error of the trip. We didn’t realize that the taxi’s don’t actually come all the way up to the trailhead. There’s a gravel road for ~2-3km from the highway to the trailhead that they don’t like to drive on (understandably). We were supposed to walk all the way to the road, which led to a very confused driver calling us to find out where we were. Fortunately he was a gem of a human being and drove his Prius all the way up to the end of the road to pick up 2 soaking wet, dirty, smelly hikers! We thanked him profusely and gave him a very generous tip – but please learn from our mistakes and just walk to the highway!

So overall it was almost 7:30pm when we finished the hike, resulting in another 11.5 hour day of hiking, with a total of 24.5km. All of which I suffered through with an injured foot. As I said, it turned out to be plantar fasciitis, and since then I have been out hiking again. It hurt to bear weight on it for a full week after the hike and after that I had to build up my hiking distance again. I went to physio as soon as possible and have been doing exercises twice a day ever since. It still gets tired and I’m weary not to stress it too much, but I have been able to work it up enough not to lose an entire season.

I was upset to have to cancel on my girl guides though. I was supposed to go on a 4 day trip to Garibaldi with my girl guide unit 2 weeks later that I had to bail on (though they were still able to go without me). I did a few nature walks and day hikes in early August, but I didn’t attempt any more backpacking for a month. I just went on my first backpacking trip since the injury in late August – it was only a 1 night and I hiked ~12km each day. I took precautions to take care of my foot and stopped every hour to roll it on a ball and that seemed to work, so I am going to attempt a 4 day trip very soon (with much more moderate distances than this trip).

So as usual, I learned a lot from this trip. No matter how many trips I go on, there always seems to be some kind of challenge that arises. You’d think that would be a deterrent, but I think it’s a part of what makes the trips so addicting. There’s always a large sense of accomplishment that comes with completing a particularly difficult trail. I felt a little bit invincible after solo-hiking the Sunshine Coast Trail last year, so it was a good reminder to always be re-assessing your abilities and boundaries. I think it’s important to tell yourself you can do something and build confidence, but be realistic about your abilities as not all injuries can be healed with a few days of rest.

If you’re thinking of doing this trail, I’d definitely encourage you to go for it, but be aware that the trail is in rough shape and there is a lot of uphill and downhill with relatively few views. I love forest hiking, so it was still a winner for me, but I know not everyone does and it’s a long trail for ~4km of truly scenic alpine hiking. Thrilled to finally have completed this small piece of BC’s history!

HBC Trail Backpacking Trip Part II

August 23, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

If you’ve been following along, Part I of this trip was riddled with warnings about how much this trail would challenge me. Prior to doing the HBC Trail, the North Coast Trail sticks out in my mind as one of the most challenging trails I’ve ever done. Realistically, the NCT is still a more challenging trail, but we set a very aggressive pace for the HBC, which is what made it so hard for me. This was compounded by the fact that I got injured on the trail, which has never happened to me before.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. By the end of Day 1, I was extremely tired, but happy with myself for what I’d accomplished. It was hard, but I made it through the day. The more you do it, the easier it is to push through on these types of hikes because I’ve always been confident in my recovery afterwards. This was the first time that was really tested for me and a good reminder to always respect your boundaries and set aside enough time to re-build your skills at the start of each new season. There’s a confidence that comes from having done something before, but you still need to re-new your skills.

I slept like a log on Saturday night. Carolyn was tossing and turning while clutching her bear spray over the noises of the night, but I was blissfully passed out. We got up at 6:30am to try and make an early start before the sun got too hot. We made our exit from Blackeye’s and continued into a section of trail known as the defiles, which is a beautiful valley carved out between the mountains, with lots of little streams flowing through. It’s a steady hike down the valley for 6km until you come to the historic Horseguard Camp. This camp is located on the Tulameen River, which is one of the best water sources on the trail. It was also just deep enough for a swim in one section, so we stopped on the beach for a quick dip. We were blessedly alone, so we took the opportunity to enjoy the water in our birthday suits.

There’s always something that will arise to plague you on every hike and at this section, it was chafing. I was surprised to get chafing on my thighs because I wore the same shorts all last season and it’s never happened before, but I guess I also never backpacked 30km in very hot weather before, so it could be expected. I made a bit of a poor choice and decided to tape over the chafing with sports tape. It wasn’t the most comfortable because some of the tape started to pull off while we continued hiking, but eventually that tape appeared to merge with my body and I ended up having to soak it off in the tub post hike!

It was a weird day for distances because after the 6km hike to Horseguard, it was another 12km to the next campsite at Jacobson Lake. 18km before lunch is more than I like to do, but we knew it would be super scenic after Jacobson Lake, so we had a few snacks and decided to push forward. This was an interesting section because it was a slow uphill the whole way, but so gradual that it was relatively flat. It wasn’t a hard section of trail, but the energy just wasn’t there for me. It was a hot trip and I felt quite tired for most of it. I think I started off dehydrated because I drank 5L of water on Day 1 and was chugging 3 cups of electrolytes a day. Sometimes you have a good day, sometimes you don’t. It was my first big trip of the season, so I was admittedly struggling. That said, I think I was a bit hard on myself as it still only took us about 3.5 hours to do the 12km, which is quite reasonable.

Jacobson Lake is another rec site, similar to Lodestone, but was completely empty when we passed through. I heard there was a pretty big washout on the road to the lake, so we’re not sure if the lack of crowds was due to the fact that there was a washout or that it was 3pm on a Sunday and everyone was gone home. Lodestone Lake is pretty shallow and a bit mucky for swimming, but Jacobson Lake was completely unattractive. It was only about a foot deep around the edge and neither of us were willing to swim in it, nor was it a nice water source.

We had 6km left to go to our campsite for the night at Deer Camp, but planned two breaks before arriving. Our first milestone was a 3km climb up to Conglomerate Flats, which we’d heard was a highlight of the trail. It was later in the day and cooling off, so overall I was feeling better as we started the climb up. Unfortunately, this is where calamity struck.

All of a sudden I started to feel some pain in the arch of my foot. I thought I’d just stepped on a root weird (which maybe I did), but there was a pinching pain with every step that didn’t go away. It happened just before Conglomerate Flats, so when we got there, I took my shoe off to check for anything in it and gave myself a little foot massage. Unfortunately it didn’t help and I wondered if I’d pinched a nerve. My feet always ache on a long hike, but this was more of a shooting pain then a dull ache and it was much more concerning to me then any of my previous grievances.

Conglomerate Flats is absolutely beautiful. It’s a wide open meadow at the base of Mount Davis with gorgeous little streams running through it. I really wanted to stay at Conglomerate, especially with my aching foot, but we wanted to push 3km further to save us a bit of time the following day. We had 1 more kilometre of uphill to Palmer’s Pond, which we’d heard was another highlight of the trail (well I’d heard, Carolyn doesn’t pay any attention to these things and had no idea about it).

My foot problem was in the arch, so the final climb up the side of Mount Davis wasn’t too bad, because I was putting most of my weight on the front of my foot, but it was still a struggle. A struggle that was worth it though because Palmer’s Pond is absolutely gorgeous! It’s a little hanging lake nestled next to Mount Davis with a sheer drop off the side of it. The sun was setting over the mountain, so we hurried down to the lake for the most divine swim of the weekend! The water was clear and pristine and warm and perfect for swimming. It was also great for our aching muscles and we enjoyed a nice little break.

The trail is all downhill from Palmer’s Pond, so we stumbled down 2kms of trail to Deer Camp, arriving around 7pm, making for a slightly shorter day than Saturday, but still 25.5km and 11 hours of hiking overall. Deer Camp is a lovely campsite too – not as nice as Conglomerate, but still highly recommended. But I was really worried about my foot. I had no idea what was causing the pain – I hoped it was the kind of thing that would be healed overnight, but I had a nagging suspicion that it was a greater kind of injury and wondered if maybe I’d gotten a stress fracture from pushing too far.

Unfortunately, I had limited options, so we made it an early night in hopes of resting up as much as possible for the following day! Stay tuned for the final day in Part III.

HBC Trail Backpacking Trip Part I

August 16, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / 6 Comments

This is a cautionary tale.

Let’s get that little bit of foreshadowing out of the way and talk about the Hudson’s Bay Company Heritage Trail. It’s a little known trail that traverses through the rugged wilderness north of Manning Park, between Hope and Tulameen. The trail is a remnant from the fur-trading era and was used by both First Nations and settlers alike. The trail is 74km long and traverses mostly through mountain forest, with a few passes through the sub-alpine.

I make it a bit of a hobby to spend lots of time studying maps, which means I have a long list of trails that I want to complete, including the HBC Trail. While I’m hyper organized about my trail selection, Carolyn has a more chaotic energy and appears to just stumble upon trails and become fixated on it until she completes it. I’m not sure where she heard about the HBC Trail (quite possibly it was from me), but she decided she really wanted to do it this year. This got me hyped up to do it as well and I made a few bad choices in my excitement.

I did a lot of kayaking this Spring and then I went home to Newfoundland for 2 weeks at the end of June, so all of a sudden I found myself in the middle of July and I had yet to do a single backpacking trip. In contrast, Carolyn solo hiked the West Coast Trail and the Juan de Fuca Trail back to back in late June (along with several other trips throughout the month), so she was in peak condition. We only had 3 days in which to do the trail, so I was on the fence about whether or not it was a good idea. 74km in 3 days is a lot of kms per day, and while I did hike that much when I did the Sunshine Coast Trail last year, that was at the end of my backpacking season as opposed to the start. In any case, I figured I’d just suffer through a few long days and then move on to other trails. Poor judgement on my part, but here we are.

So we decided to go for it! But we couldn’t have done it without the help of my generous husband. After work on a Friday in July, we drove my car and Carolyn’s car out to Hope. We left Carolyn’s car in Hope and then Seth proceeded to drive me and Carolyn (and our 2 dogs) all the way to Tulameen for the night. We all camped at Otter Lake and then Seth dropped us off at the trailhead in Tulameen at 7am on Saturday morning. So he basically drove us 4 hours out to Tulameen, just to drive all the way back alone with 2 dogs. He’s a keeper!

There’s a few more things you should know about the HBC Trail before I continue. Like I said, it’s a relatively unknown trail. It does have its own trail group on facebook, but it’s not a very popular trail. Most of the trail is in the woods with peek-a-boo views, with the exception of ~5km of trail around Palmer Pond. It’s 74km if you’re thru-hiking it, but there are several 4×4 access roads that are used for hikers doing day hikes or those that just want to do a 1 night backpack. Because of the extensive network of 4×4 trails, there are several rec sites that have pull in frontcountry campsites.

The most noteworthy thing about the trail right now is that it’s not in great condition. The flooding in 2021 did a lot of damage and because of the erosion, there’s a lot of trees knocked down along the trail. Volunteers have been out clearing the trails, so we knew some of the middle sections would be clear, but we knew there were other sections where we would have to contend with a lot of blowdown. Here’s my assessment of the trail sections as of July 24, 2023.

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Day 1 was our most ambitious day because we were aiming to go from Tulameen all the way to Blackeye’s Plateau, which is just over 28km and ended up tracking as 30km on my GPS. The trail starts with a river crossing. There are 3 crossings on the trail and the hardest one is Tulameen River. Fortunately for us, it’s been a very dry summer, so we got wet up to our knees, but it was a relatively easy crossing.

Right off the bat we learned that we were going to need to be vigilant with wayfinding on the trail. There’s a big sign showing where to start once you cross the river, but then it’s immediately not obvious where to go. We mostly found the trail by locating the log book, so look for that. As the slower hiker, we opted to have me hike first for most of the trail and be responsible for route finding (looking for signs and markers), while Carolyn would be keeping a close eye on the GPS to keep us on track.

Tulameen to Olivine is particularly confusing because there’s a lot of 4×4 roads running across the trail. You start on the road and we missed the first (and maybe second) turn offs to the trail because we just followed the road without thinking too much. There’s no issue with this if you would like a simpler hike – you won’t have to contend with blowdown and the incline will be more gradual, but be prepared to walk additional distance if you do. When we finally found the trail, we mistakenly went in the wrong direction and ended up back at the road where we’d just been, so we had to undo that mistake and after that we were much more diligent in checking the map.

We both use GaiaGPS for tracking, which served us pretty well, but some of the 4×4 roads are missing from Gaia, so there was definitely an advantage to also carrying a paper map. I had the HBC map, which you can get from the Hope Visitor Centre, and we used it a lot to check on some of the road crossings and water sources, so I definitely recommend getting a copy.

It’s a steady uphill climb to the first campsite at Olivine. I quickly learned that I had not done enough training for this hike and I really struggled on the uphill in the hot sun. It took us about 4 hours to go 9km to Olivine, so that gives you an idea about my pace and after only a few hours I was already severely doubting my ability to do the trail. I toyed with the idea of just doing part of the trail and then hiking back, but Carolyn astutely pointed out that our only vehicle was now in Hope, so I’d better get walking.

Olivine Camp is lovely. It’s located at the start of the sub-alpine along the ridge and it gave me really strong Manning Park vibes. There were tons of wildflowers in bloom just past the camp and it has a gorgeous view looking out over the ridgeline. In another life I’d love to stay at this campsite. But all we had time for was a visit to the water source to eat our lunch.

To give you an idea of how hot it was, I drank my entire 2L of water in the first section. Unfortunately, the water source at Olivine is 300m off the trail and it was down to the barest of trickles when we arrived. I think it must be a natural spring though, because it was actually a very clean and cold water source, it just took a while to fill our bladders. We enjoyed an hour long break to have lunch before continuing on towards Lodestone Lake.

I knew that the trail to Olivine had some of the worst blowdown along the entire trail, and it definitely slowed our pace on the way up. There were a lot of awkward sized trees at awkward heights that we had to crawl under or hop over. I was expecting more of the same going to Lodestone, but fortunately the trail was a lot flatter and there was a lot less blowdown, so we made much better time. In fact, aside from a very bad section around Sowaqua River, the section of trail between Tulameen and Olivine had probably the worst blowdown of the entire trip.

We almost lost the trail again along a logging road, but Carolyn’s funny feelings kept us on course and we were able to do some light bushwhacking to get back on track. The trail is relatively well marked, but it’s really easy to get off it and we relied a lot more on wayfinding with map and GPS than expected. The trail meanders up and down for a while before it starts a descent to the Tulameen FSR. After the FSR, you climb back up to Lodestone Lake, our second milestone for the day.

We had another setback after reaching the road. I was leading when Carolyn remarked “ewww, look at this!” It was a giant, runny pile of poo in the middle of the trail that I had walked through without realizing and now had shit all over my boots. I was trying to wipe it off on some leaves when I looked up to see a truly massive black bear about 5m away in the bushes, staring at me.

We backed up as safely as possible along the trail to the FSR where we made a lot of noise while gripping our bear spray. It was a really big bear – it didn’t seem interested in us, but it also didn’t seem like it was going to move any time soon, so Carolyn studied the map and remarked that there was an easy bypass along the road for that section of trail. So we continued up the road making lots of noise. Just as we rounded the bend to circle back, we saw the bear coming out of the bushes onto the road. Now this made me nervous because it meant the bear had followed our voices, so it was obviously interested in us. Carolyn gripped my arm tightly and started pushing us back down the road as I gripped my bear spray. The beast climbed out of the bushes, drawing itself up to full height…and…

IT WAS A COW.

Our big scary bear was a cow the whole time. I walked through cow dung and then it followed my singing through the woods. As soon as the Bear-Cow came up on the road, it was joined by about 10-15 more of its friends and they all stared at us while we started to laugh. Eventually they lost interest and returned to the woods, so I guess some farmers just let their cows roam wild in the wilderness. It was a bit jarring, but generally we were relieved it was a cow and not a bear.

It was a very slow and hot ascent up to Lodestone Lake Rec Site, but overall our pace increased (even with the bear-cow incident). It took us about 3 hours to do the 9.5km between Olivine and Lodestone and we decided to go for a quick swim in the lake before having supper. Lodestone Lake is accessible by 4×4, so it was an extremely busy campsite and it was the only place on the entire trail where we saw other people. We were the only hikers though, as everyone else had driven there. The lake looks nice, but it’s pretty shallow and muddy, so not our favourite swim on the trail, but very refreshing nonetheless.

We still had 10km more to go before we were done for the day though, so we tried to be quick leaving Lodestone. I think the only thing that kept me going was that I knew Lodestone to Blackeye’s Plateau was one of the easiest sections of the entire trail. The trail continues along the 4×4 road for 7.5km and it’s entirely flat. So it’s pretty easy walking, but it was also very boring. We passed a lot of off-roaders but didn’t really talk to anyone. Eventually you exit the road and it’s 2.5km of easy walking through meadows to Blackeye’s. By this point I was very much done and ready to crawl into bed.

The last section look us ~2.5 hours and we arrived at 7:30pm, meaning that we’d been hiking for almost 12 hours. My feet were tired and I was getting a little bit of chafing on my thighs, but overall I was relieved to have the hardest day behind me. We were very quick putting up the tent and because of the flies, quick going to bed. We hiked 30km, which is the longest I’ve ever hiked in a single day, and I did it on a backpacking trip (my previous record was 29km on a day hike). I was exhausted, but proud of myself. Sadly I didn’t know what trauma was yet to come.

Is the suspense killing you? Come back next week for Part II!