Granite Falls Kayak Trip

October 16, 2024October 16, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

I feel like summer gets shorter every year that I live in Vancouver, but my bucket list of summer activities only gets longer. I love kayaking, but the alpine backpacking season is so short that I often forget to schedule in kayaking adventures. I always go kayaking with Seth, and we can’t take our dog with us, so it’s hard to find someone to look after her every time we want to go out. But we celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary in August, and I was determined to go on an overnight trip!

We’ve done lots of kayaking in Indian Arm, more recently known as Say Nuth Khaw Yum Provincial Park or Selilwet, which is located right in the middle of the lower mainland and easily accessible from both the North Shore and Belcarra. Our favourite day trip is to launch from Belcarra and paddle up to Jug Island and Ferrar Cove, but we’ve never spent an overnight in the Arm. There’s 3 campsites scattered along the route and I’ve wanted to paddle up to the end for many years. Twin Islands is located at the southern end and is the most popular site. There are 2 more BC Parks sites at the northern end: Berg’s Landing and Granite Falls. We’ve paddled to Twin Islands a few times, but I really wanted to get to Granite Falls at the far end of Selilwet.

The first thing to be aware of is that this is an extremely popular trip. We planned it for a Saturday night, so we knew it would be busy with both kayakers and pleasure boaters (anything with a motor). If you’re able to go on a weeknight, I think it would be a much nicer experience. You can rent kayaks from either Deep Cove Kayaks or Takaya Tours in Cates Park. Deep Cove Kayaks seems to be the most popular option as they have a huge fleet and it’s a shorter paddling distance, but Takaya is also a great option to avoid crowded Deep Cove and support an indigenous owned company.

I wish we could start our trip out of Belcarra, which is the same paddling distance as Deep Cove and much closer to our home, but unfortunately there’s no overnight parking from Belcarra or Barnet Marine, so Deep Cove or Cates Park are the only options. Deep Cove gets insanely busy in the summer, so we got up really early on Saturday morning to beat the traffic. I dropped off Seth and the kayaks at the loading zone and then found parking. The nearby parking is 3 hours maximum, so it’s a bit of a walk, but it was relatively easy for me to find parking at 7:30am. It was insanely crowded when we returned the following day in the mid-afternoon, so definitely go early.

We were on the water around 8:30am and Seth dropped a crab trap at the mouth of Deep Cove. Selilwet is a beautiful place to paddle, but the second perk of getting up early is that the conditions are much better for paddling in the morning. The Arm gets a notoriously strong southerly wind in the afternoon and it can get quite choppy. We had a really enjoyable paddle out of Deep Cove and ended up paddling ~7.5km to Thywates Landing before taking a break. There were lots of kayakers on the water, but most of them weren’t going further than Twin Islands.

Another option for paddling is to stop at Jug Island or the campsite at Twin Islands, but both options require an open water crossing, which I usually try and avoid having to do too many times, so it depends what route you prefer. The thing I don’t like about paddling in the Arm is that there aren’t a lot of public rest locations. When the tide is low there are some places you can stop, but a lot of the beaches seem to be attached to people’s properties. In most cases, you can’t own the beach (unless your property is really old and you’ve been grandfathered into old bylaws), so you can pretty much stop wherever you want, but I’m never really sure and try to stick to public spaces.

Thywates Landing is a really great option on the west side of Selilwet. It’s a small beach, but it’s owned by Metro Vancouver Regional Parks, so it’s primarily meant as a stopping place for paddlers. There’s a short walk (100m) up to a little waterfall and pool, which is really nice. The water was still really flat by the time we got to Thywates Landing, so we only took a short break to take advantage of the optimal paddling conditions. We started seeing a few more paddlers heading up the Arm and the pleasure boaters increased throughout the day, stirring up wake.

We paddled another 7.5km to Berg’s Landing, which is the second campground owned by BC Parks. Along the way we passed Silver Falls, which is a real highlight going up the Arm. There’s lots of space at Berg’s Landing and there was only one other tent there when we arrived. I’m sure the campsite got busier later, but Granite Falls definitely seems to be the more popular of the two sites. We stopped at Berg’s Landing for lunch at noon, right around when the wind started to pick up. It’s another ~2km to Granite Falls (for 17km in total from Deep Cove). It was choppy for the last 30 minutes of paddling, but at least we had a tailwind!

Granite Falls was already quite busy when we arrived at 1pm, but there is a lot of space for tents and we didn’t have trouble finding a site. As a kayaker, you’re never going to beat the people in motorboats, so leave early enough that you don’t have to fight the waves on the way up. There’s always going to be a bunch of novice paddlers that show up much later in the afternoon and evening, so just do your best.

Berg’s Landing is mostly a big field with some campsites around the edges and a big beach. Granite Falls is more popular because it has a bunch of campsites along the coast and it has a large freshwater source in the form of the waterfall cascading down from the mountain. I have visited Granite Falls once before by zodiac in June and there is a big difference in the water flow in the Spring and late Summer. When I visited in June, the Falls were a violent, rushing cascade of water, versus in mid-August when it’s much more of a trickle. There’s a nice pool at the bottom that you can swim in and there were a lot of yachters visiting for the day. There used to be a public wharf, but it’s gone now, so it’s a bit trickier for the pleasure cruisers to access.

Granite Falls has 2 new outhouses and a bear cache. Unfortunately neither are really appropriate for this type of site. While Granite Falls attracts all kinds of campers, it’s a backcountry site that gets treated like a frontcountry site. By which I mean, it gets a lot of inexperienced campers and it’s not treated with the respect it deserves. I wanted to love the site – it’s very beautiful – but the other campers left me feeling frustrated. It’s a wilderness campsite that could easily be frequented by bears, but because it’s easy to access by motorized boat, it attracts a lot of party people and it gets treated like an urban picnic site. People bring in large coolers of food and beer and don’t bother to secure anything. I could easily see the public losing access to this campground in the future from misuse.

For this reason, I didn’t think the facilities were appropriate. There are only 4 small bear bins and there were easily 50 people staying at the site on Saturday night. So even if people practiced bear safety, there still wouldn’t be enough space for everyone. Several groups were hauling in coolers of beer, which they left unattended all night. Hard shell coolers are not bear proof, so either leave them on your yacht or at home. We overheard another camper say to their friend, “We’re not worried about bears are we? There’s so many of us.” Please, it’s not about being worried about bears. Bear safety is about avoiding opportunities for bears to become food habituated, which almost always results in the death of the bear and sometimes, the closure of the site.

The outhouses were actually really nice. They’re the urine diverting outhouses with the conveyor belt pump. Unfortunately, no one seemed to have any idea how to use them and people were not pumping the belt after using it, so they quickly became clogged. Bless Seth, he tried for the better part of 20 minutes to unclog the toilet using a stick, but had no success. I think they just need a bit more educational info in the stalls. But this technology might be too advanced for the party people. To be fair – a lot of the people at the site were very respectful, but a few large groups can really ruin it.

So I did leave this trip feeling a bit annoyed, but overall, I enjoyed the experience. Because of the paddling conditions, we arrived at the site early in the day and had lots of time to relax. We spent some time exploring the waterfall and we went for a swim in the ocean, which is really warm at this time of year. Seth took a nap in the shade and I read my book. It’s easier to bring fresh food when kayaking, so we had tahini yam and halloumi tacos for supper, which I had made the evening before. We went for a short evening paddle before sunrise, which is always a highlight for me. It was super warm since we were at sea level, and we went to bed early to prepare for an early rise.

We had bad luck in that we got a surprise rain shower right when we were getting up at 6am. It didn’t rain a lot, but enough to make all our equipment wet while we were packing it up. We were on the water by 7:30am. It’s tiring to get up so early, but I do love having an early start!

We paddled on the west side of the Arm on the way in, so we decided to stick to the east side going back. There’s definitely more places to take a break on the west side, but the water was flat, so we were pretty fast and didn’t need a lot of breaks. We paddled 8km to Buntzen Bay and pulled out on a small rocky beach for a break. It’s not a public area, but the mountain gets really steep after that, so it was the last opportunity to pull out. You get to pass by two hydroelectric facilities, which are a neat feature of the Arm. The northern facility is still in use and draws water from Buntzen Lake via a large penstock. The southern facility is decommissioned, but is an interesting piece of architecture. It was 4.5km from Buntzen Bay to Twin Islands, where we stopped on the South Island for lunch.

https://flic.kr/p/2qbwxxV

The wind did start to pick up again after noon, but it was very manageable. We paddled to Raccoon Island and then crossed back to the west side to kayak into Deep Cove. I drank a lot of iced tea at lunch and it caught up with me at this point, so I had to do a hurried paddle into Deep Cove to use the washroom while Seth checked his crab trap. He got 6 crabs, but only 1 that he was able to keep. We’ve only caught dungeness crab in the past, so this was our first time catching rock crab. It was smaller, but still yummy! We paired it with some Newfoundland cod tongues at home, along with local corn and beets.

We arrived in Deep Cove at 1pm. There were people everywhere and it was chaotic landing on the beach and moving our kayaks to the loading area. I had 3 cars fighting over my parking spot when I left and we had to load the kayaks really quickly (while also getting stopped every 3 minutes by people trying to take our spot, not realizing it was 15min parking). Overall, it was a fun trip and Selilwet is really beautiful, but I don’t think I’ll be in a rush to do it again. It’s one of the most accessible sea kayaking trips from Vancouver, but it’s a very different experience than, say, Desolation Sound or the Gulf Islands. Worth doing, but maybe only once.

South Chilcotin Backpacking Trip – The Lakes

October 9, 2024December 18, 2024 / Maria / 5 Comments

Continuing on from Part I, Part II, and Part III. After arriving at Trigger Lake on Day 4, we were firmly in the second part of our trip. We planned to hit Spruce Lake for the next evening, which was 14km away. The hiking was pretty easy on Day 5, and we left Trigger Lake, hoping the next lake would be better for swimming. After a few kilometres, we arrived at Hummingbird Lake. The edge of the lake is located on a rock slide, so you have to cross several boulder fields as you walk along the length of the lake. The campsite is located on the east end of the lake, which is where we were heading, but I could tell it looked pretty shallow on that end. So we stopped before the campsite, on the edge of the boulder field, to go for a swim.

It was an excellent choice. We found a big rock to hang out on and Brandon had a snack while I went for a swim. It was cold, but refreshing and I had a good bath, it was the first time I actually felt clean on the trip. The rocks were still pretty muddy and every one you touched would knock off an inch of mud into the water, but at least you don’t sink down into it! A product of the remoteness I guess, and lack of visitors.

Most of the hiking for the day was in the forest. There’s not a lot of landmarks, so it was hard to decide where to stop for lunch. Eventually we found a nice meadow and took a break for lunch before climbing up towards Spruce Lake. There’s another small campsite called Cowboy Camp along the way, but it doesn’t have any amenities and seemed a bit buggy.

Spruce Lake is interesting because only the east side of the lake is actually located in the Park. There’s a small cutout on the west side of the lake where people own lakefront properties, and we saw some people out on the water in boats. There’s two BC Parks campsites on the lake, but the south site is currently closed. I think there’s a bunch of dead trees in the area that are a fall hazard, so you can’t stay there.

The walk around Spruce Lake to the North campsite is pretty disappointing because you can’t actually see the lake from the trail, so it felt like a long walk. The Spruce Lake campground is by far the largest and most widely used campsite in the park. In was a Thursday, so we were the only ones there when we arrived, but the solo hiker we ran into on our first day told us there had been 11 tents there when she stayed on a Saturday Night.

It’s a large campsite, with lots of space for tents. It has 2 outhouses, a bear cache, and a ton of picnic tables. We claimed the campsite closest to the lake and took over the picnic table. There’s a large wharf, which is used for the float plane operation, and the Tyax lodge is located 10-minute walk away. I went for another swim, but Spruce Lake is also very mucky. I jumped in off the end of the wharf, but it’s not very deep and I could still feel the vegetation tickling my toes. There’s no ladder, so I had to brute strength my way back onto the dock.

Eventually some other mountain bikers passed through and went for a swim on their way to the lodge. A bike packer showed up around sunset and camped for the night, but otherwise no one else arrived. It was a warm evening and the sky was clear, so I decided to do a bit of star photography from the dock. Once it got dark, I lay out to take some photos of the milky way. I was still hoping for a glimpse of the northern lights, but no luck! I had to lie super still so as not to rock the wharf and ruin the photos, but I had fun! I also had a good laugh when I realized I could hear Brandon’s snores from the tent echoing across the water!

We’d planned to stay another full day in the park, but we decided to head out one day early. We were going to do another day hike and then re-locate to WD Camp, but it was a Friday heading into the long weekend and we decided we were ready for a real bed. The float plane was running back and forth all morning with a steady stream of long weekend visitors. One couple stopped at Spruce Lake while we were packing up, dropped a pile of giant Rubbermaid containers at the site, and then took off in the plane again, telling us they had a party of 12 on the way in.

To get ahead of the crowds, we decided to do a big day and hike the full 22km back to the car. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty brutal, but I don’t regret it. The first 6km back to WD Camp were pretty good, but re-doing the Tyaughton Creek Trail sucked. There’s a huge climb through some really exposed meadows, which we hit around noon. It was getting really hot and we crawled up it, before stopping for lunch near a stream. The black flies were also pretty relentless, so it was hard to take any good breaks. We passed several groups of hikers and bikers later in the day, who were entering the park for the weekend, which was probably the most people we’d seen all week!

We were a sweaty mess and covered in dirt by the time we reached the car, but so happy to be done! We took a river bath at Tyaughton Creek Rec Site on the way out, and then drove straight to the lodge for supper. It was a lot busier than when we’d entered the park, but they made room for us on the patio, which was nice. There’s not many things more rewarding than a cold beer after a long hike!

Friburg Rec Site was totally full with all the long weekend visitors, so we drove to Mowson Pond Rec Site instead. We easily found a site and Mowson Pond is so much nicer than Friburg! I definitely recommend it as the preferred option if you ever visit. It’s still really close, but it has actual campsites, rather than just a parking lot. There’s also the Gun Creek Rec Site, which is a bit further, but we checked it out on our way back, and it’s also really nice.

So we exited the trail on Friday night and returned home on Saturday. We took the Hurley Forest Road again and discovered an awesome little famers stall in Pemberton Meadows on the way home. It’s basically a little produce stand with a couple of refrigerators. The local farmers stock it and it’s just run on the honour system. Take what you want and put your cash in the money box. I got carrots and beets, and they were the juiciest vegetables I’ve ever had! So good!

So overall, I would definitely consider this trip a success. I’m thrilled that the trip finally made it off my bucket list, but I’ve now added 3 other trails in the park to my list, so it’s really been a net gain. Either way, I’m happy we did it and I would absolutely return again in the future!

South Chilcotin Backpacking Trip – Deer Pass

October 2, 2024December 18, 2024 / Maria / 5 Comments

Continuing on from Part I and Part II, on Day 4, we had a big hike up and over Deer Pass to access the southern part of the park. It has been relatively cool in previous days, but the weather was starting to get hotter. We got up early to say goodbye to Siwash Meadows. Fortunately, we didn’t see any bears while we were staying in the meadow, but I did see 2 deer. On the first morning, I saw a doe staring at me while I made breakfast, and on the second morning, I saw a buck prancing through the meadow! Brandon wasn’t lucky enough to see either, but being at the base of Deer Pass did live up to its name.

The day started with a river crossing. Once you cross over from the meadow, you start a pretty steep climb up through the trees. We ran into our mountain biker friends again when they passed us on the trail (the first rider got spooked by Brandon and thought he was a bear), otherwise, we didn’t see anyone on the trail again that day.

I didn’t mind the hike up through the woods. There’s shade and I didn’t find it too painful. Eventually you pop out in the sub-alpine and continuing climbing until you get into the real alpine. We stopped for a break to take advantage of the shade, since the rest of the pass is extremely exposed. Deer Pass is much more rugged than Lorna Pass. Lorna Pass was a gentle uphill over established trail, while Deer Pass had a lot more switchbacks and exposure to steep run-out zones. There was one part of the trail that was a little confusing because there seems to be have been a small slide that covered the trail and we had to navigate across it.

We were much slower hiking up Deer Pass. In some ways, it’s more scenic. The summit is much more rugged and there’s a gorgeous meadow down in the valley, but you also feel much more exposed. We had to layer up because it started to get really windy and we crawled up some of the steeper sections. But I still really enjoyed it! I think I liked Lorna Pass a little better than Deer Pass, but both are really striking sections of the trail. I love being in the alpine and it felt really rewarding after a lot of forest walking!

Eventually we reached the top of the pass and it’s an incredible feeling crossing over to the other side. The Chilcotin mountains are quite barren and eroded, but when you summit the pass, you can see a whole new mountain range in the distance. They are more characteristic of the rest of the mountains in southwest BC, in that they are less eroded and have glaciers and snow-capped peaks year round.

There’s a little tarn at the top of the summit, which supposedly can be used as a campsite, but it’s extremely windy and exposed up there, so I wouldn’t recommend it. We sheltered behind some bushes to eat lunch, but it was pretty chilly and we put extra layers on for the descent. The descent is a lot more like Lorna Pass, it’s a gradual downhill through the meadows, with a gorgeous creek flowing through it. I’m sure the mountain bikers bombed down a lot faster than we did, but we definitely enjoyed the scenery more!

You stay in the alpine for a few kilometres before returning to the trees. The hike gets really steep again and we climbed down through the trees for what felt like forever, but was in reality, only a few kilometres. Once you reach return to the valley, it’s a short walk to the first of several lakes. All of the lakes have established campsites, and we planned to stop at the first one, Trigger Lake, for the evening. In total, we only hiked 12km, but it took us most of the day.

Trigger Lake is really beautiful and a deep blue colour. Unfortunately, it’s located right in the middle of a river delta. We were the only people at the campsite again, but at least this one had an outhouse, bear cache, and picnic table. We decided to take turns bathing in the lake. There’s no beach and the ground looked pretty muddy, but I found a small rocky section that I thought looked okay.

I knew it would be cold, so I decided to enter the lake at a run, which was a mistake. It turns out, the rocks almost immediately transitions to mud and before I could stop, I was knee deep in it! I more or less collapsed into the water to get my feet out of the mud, but it was hard to bathe while treading water. I eventually went back to shore and almost got stuck in the mud again while walking in. It was so gross; I can still feel the phantom plant life clinging to my toes!

So I would NOT recommend Trigger Lake for swimming. I got an inreach message from Seth, letting me know that the Northern Lights might be visible over the next two nights. I had a look for them when I got up to pee overnight, but I was so exhausted, I didn’t really look too hard. Like with my last post, I have so many photos from this section of the trail, so here’s a few more of my favourites! Continue on for Part IV.