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.