Anita and I are heading up to the Lake Harrison area for an overnighter on Oct 16/17, possibly with Claus and his better half. The salmon will be spawning, and there's a great campsite on a river up there that's fantastic for big groups.

The terrain isn't particularly tough, so if there's anybody out there who hasn't gotten their trucks dirty yet, now's a great chance to see what your truck can do. You'll get about 50 kms of easy dirt road driving, with plenty of opportunities to go off the beaten path and try some bushwacking, hill climbing, and boulder crawling if you want to give it a shot.

If interest is high enough on Sunday we could try to find an alternate exit (instead of coming back down the same road we went up) by continuing North and East through the woods until we get to Boston Bar. I haven't gone that far yet, but the maps give me a pretty good idea we can get through.

Sleeping should be strictly in-truck, because of the salmon buffet lining the shores of the river, bears are likely.

If there's anybody interested in meeting some of the PNWX crew and wants a guided tour through the woods, come along!

Here's a rough map of where we're going:



The river and campsite looks like this:



Spawning salmon look like this!



edit: whoops, got the date wrong, meant Oct 16/17 not 15/16

I may just try to make that trip.........ill see, I have been looking to go to Canada for some time now....

Right on, this makes 4 trucks now. Saweeeet!

Claus and I went up this past weekend, there were no fish there, at all. Nada. Nothing.

I've never seen no fish there, at the very least there's some rainbow trout hanging around the pools.

In any case, Anita and I are still on for this coming weekend. We'll leave the overnight camping up to the weather, if it looks good we'll pack up our stuff, but if the forecast is monsoon rain we'll just make it a day trip.

MEETING PLACE AND TIME

PLACE: The gas station / A&W on the way into Harrison. I think this is Agassiz at that point. Take HWY 1 to the Harrison Hot Springs exit, follow that road and the signs for Harrison for about 5 minutes. Along the way, on the right hand side, is a gas station / convenience store / A&W restaurant / tire shop. In the middle of all of them is parking, we'll be waiting near the back. I'm the silver Xterra with the "IT Medic" logos on the windows, tall guy with a tall redhead chick.



Pretty much where the star is on that map.

TIME: 1 PM. We're leaving the parking lot at 1:15 PM sharp! So get there early if you need to fuel up, buy stuff, whatever.

This gives us plenty of time to get there, mess around, drive around to the hot springs or go trail hunting, etc.

STUFF:

- The roads are pretty mangled these days, looks like they haven't been taking care of them for the last little while. To make things a bit smoother over the bumps and washouts, we'll be airing our tires down once we hit dirt. I run at 35 PSI on the street and that's going to rattle my nuts off. I figure 22 or so will make things nice and smooth.

- Firewood: If we're camping overnight we'll need something to burn. If have energy to burn bring an axe or saw and make your own firewood, there's plenty of deadfall around we can burn.

- Food & Drink: BYOF, BYOB, BYOD.

- Sleep: Last weekend would have been fine for sleeping out in a tent; no fish = less likelyhood of bears. However, I can't predict what it'll look like next weekend, so plan ahead.

- First Aid: If you have a medical condition that could be a problem 50 Kms in the woods away from help, please let me know. This also means don't be a goof with the axe or fire and get yourself hurt, it ruins things for everybody.

- Fishing: If you plan on doing any fishing, have the right licenses. We'll be at Big Silver Creek, look it up in the book and see what you're allowed to do.

Um, that's about it! Please post here Friday night or Sat morning if you are or are not going to make it, so we know to look out for you.

Here are two maps of the area (linked for size, click for bigger):





The first image (zoomed in), shows the main forestry roads in green, and the side ones in yellow. The yellow ones are all pretty much deactivated, which means they dug culverts across every 100 yards or so. Makes driving around a real pain in the ass because you have to go slow over them. Picture big inverted speed bumps.

If you want to poke around some more on those maps, the BC gov has a great site for this.

http://maps.gov.bc.ca/apps/recst/html/recsites_base_map.htm

If the forecast calls for crappy weather and nobody's going to camp overnight, meeting time will be 10 AM instead so we can get more done on Saturday.