Placer Lake/Placer Mtn/Ashnola Traverse/Nickel-Plate Lake Trip Report
Written by Glenn BJ74:
Well Bill and I agreed that a few days away during the July 1 ‘extended weekend ‘would be a welcomed relief from the routine at home. We decided to follow an old trip report to Placer Lake, as either one of us had not been there or even heard of it – so that in itself sounded appealing. I came over on the 7:00 am ferry and took Hwy 10 to meet Bill and Shikai at the Chilliwack Rickey’s at noon. Just before meeting Bill, I stopped at the Flying J, in anticipation of filling up my swing out fuel carrier for the first time. I manage to load 100 litres of diesel for $89.00. The extra fuel storage will allow me load up when and where its cheap as well as extend my range on wheelin trips to 1,100 km.
Bill, Shikai and I had lunch at Ricky’s and with full stomachs headed toward Hwy 3 to indulge in varmint viewing at the Manning Park Lodge. This apparently is a now mandatory part of a ‘wheelin trip’ passing through this way. We then headed past East Gate, Smilkameen Falls and turned at Copper Creek FSR and headed east past the Forest Service Rec site. The road climbed and squirmed its way up and over and around the hills and at the first of many junctions we kept right and kept right again, taking the Calcite Road down the valley. We were not entirely sure were we were going, but after crossing a bridge and encountering another junction labelled Placer Bobcat road (which we should of taken the left branch), we headed back to retrace our steps since this road (the right rd) was going too far to the west.
After backtracking to the Calcite Rd junction we took the other branch and followed it until we got to the Placer Mtn- Border Lake Motorized Recreation Regulated Area boundary. This boundary was denoted by a bridge which was intentional narrowed to allow only ATVs and snow machines to pass. We of course took the bypass through the creek and headed along the ATV trail. The ATV trail then connected to a good FSR (the one we should have taken), which took us to the Placer lake parking lot. The sign there invited us to proceed since it said that vehicle travel beyond this point was not recommended. We started the climb and encountered one minor obstacle, which we negotiated with little problem. We arrived at the Placer lake campsite (5,500‘) in brilliant sunshine and had the entire site to ourselves. We spend two nights there and during the day we played Tom Sawyer with a dilapidated and dissembling log raft, but to Shikai was sound and seaworthy as the Queen Elizabeth. Glenn practiced the "splits" when the 2 logs he was standing on separated!
Friday morning we headed out to do the Placer Ashnola traverse, which in theory was to get us to the Ashnola River, bordering Cathedral Provincial Park. This we did, but with the huge amount of recent logging and new road building activity we took a wrong turn. We eventually got to tree cover, which we now realize designates the motorized recreational area which looks like it is protected from the ‘rape and pillage’ clear cuts we had to drive through. We followed along a while under the broken sunlight the forest canopy offered and stopped by a little brook for lunch. After lunch we than came upon a magnificent camping spot overlooking the Durisseau Creek drainage. This is a great camping spot for some future club run. It was large, level, grassy and had a large plastic covered lean-to, I would guess for winter shelter for the snow-mobilers. From there we headed down the Placer Mtn road, and negotiated a number red-orange sharp shale rock switch backs with great views. The view kept us mildly distracted from precipitous drop-offs on our down slopes. Once in the Ashnola valley we picked a nice camping spot right beside the river by the ‘old corral’ and poked around the rest of the afternoon in the sun on a little sand bar. We spent a pleasant night there and in the morning decided to head to Keremeos to load up on cherries. The lower Ashnola valley is "Okanagan" climate and trees, whereas the upper Ashnola region becomes a more "Similkameen" forested zone. In Keremeos we had lunch at the Crow Bar and Inn, which is advertised as “downtown trendy and tasty”, but Bill said it was too expensive - $12.95 for a plate of nachos and $6.00 for 2 iced teas. The waitress was attractive, which helped!
After that we were looking for cherries, which had to be organic ($75 for 20 lbs). All of a sudden Simon (aka Gold Boy) burst upon the scene with that Landcruiser exuberance of finding fellow BJ74 owners in his own backyard. Simon kindly invited us back to Hedley for refreshments at his B&B which were an old assay office for the nearby gold mine. Simon then directed us to a lookout up the Hedley Nickel Plate Road, which dead-ended but offered incredible views of Hedley and the Similkameen Valley beyond. It was getting late in the day so we decide to continue up the road and spend the night at Nickel Plate lake, which we shared with others, but was enjoyable nonetheless.
Shortly after we set up camp, Simon arrived with an armful of barley beverages and we talked about knives, cruisers, mods and camping and other manly stuff that bores women to death. Simon is organizing a new Cruiser Group called the Okanagan-Similkameen Land Cruiser Club and they had their first meeting last Sunday. Good luck Simon, we hope you have a successful and rewarding club, and thanks for your generous hospitality.
We broke camp early Sunday morning and I headed for the ferry and I believe Bill and Shikai deviated back to Keremeos to load up on cherries before heading back to Vancouver.
We believe we found some good trails and a stunning campsite and we should consider going in the area again if we are looking for an area close to the Lower Mainland. Another little adventure would be to go from Placer Lake and follow a rough ATV trial to Flat Top Mtn, which looks like it connects to an FSR into the upper Ashnola Valley. This offers an alternative to the switch backs and could be combined into a loop bringing us out back out to the Copper Creek. The road into the Ashnola from Keremeos is a gravel freeway, probably maintained by parks allow Civics to get to the Cathedral Park-Wall Creek trailhead for the backpackers
Glenn Bridges
Written by Glenn BJ74:
Well Bill and I agreed that a few days away during the July 1 ‘extended weekend ‘would be a welcomed relief from the routine at home. We decided to follow an old trip report to Placer Lake, as either one of us had not been there or even heard of it – so that in itself sounded appealing. I came over on the 7:00 am ferry and took Hwy 10 to meet Bill and Shikai at the Chilliwack Rickey’s at noon. Just before meeting Bill, I stopped at the Flying J, in anticipation of filling up my swing out fuel carrier for the first time. I manage to load 100 litres of diesel for $89.00. The extra fuel storage will allow me load up when and where its cheap as well as extend my range on wheelin trips to 1,100 km.
Bill, Shikai and I had lunch at Ricky’s and with full stomachs headed toward Hwy 3 to indulge in varmint viewing at the Manning Park Lodge. This apparently is a now mandatory part of a ‘wheelin trip’ passing through this way. We then headed past East Gate, Smilkameen Falls and turned at Copper Creek FSR and headed east past the Forest Service Rec site. The road climbed and squirmed its way up and over and around the hills and at the first of many junctions we kept right and kept right again, taking the Calcite Road down the valley. We were not entirely sure were we were going, but after crossing a bridge and encountering another junction labelled Placer Bobcat road (which we should of taken the left branch), we headed back to retrace our steps since this road (the right rd) was going too far to the west.
After backtracking to the Calcite Rd junction we took the other branch and followed it until we got to the Placer Mtn- Border Lake Motorized Recreation Regulated Area boundary. This boundary was denoted by a bridge which was intentional narrowed to allow only ATVs and snow machines to pass. We of course took the bypass through the creek and headed along the ATV trail. The ATV trail then connected to a good FSR (the one we should have taken), which took us to the Placer lake parking lot. The sign there invited us to proceed since it said that vehicle travel beyond this point was not recommended. We started the climb and encountered one minor obstacle, which we negotiated with little problem. We arrived at the Placer lake campsite (5,500‘) in brilliant sunshine and had the entire site to ourselves. We spend two nights there and during the day we played Tom Sawyer with a dilapidated and dissembling log raft, but to Shikai was sound and seaworthy as the Queen Elizabeth. Glenn practiced the "splits" when the 2 logs he was standing on separated!
Friday morning we headed out to do the Placer Ashnola traverse, which in theory was to get us to the Ashnola River, bordering Cathedral Provincial Park. This we did, but with the huge amount of recent logging and new road building activity we took a wrong turn. We eventually got to tree cover, which we now realize designates the motorized recreational area which looks like it is protected from the ‘rape and pillage’ clear cuts we had to drive through. We followed along a while under the broken sunlight the forest canopy offered and stopped by a little brook for lunch. After lunch we than came upon a magnificent camping spot overlooking the Durisseau Creek drainage. This is a great camping spot for some future club run. It was large, level, grassy and had a large plastic covered lean-to, I would guess for winter shelter for the snow-mobilers. From there we headed down the Placer Mtn road, and negotiated a number red-orange sharp shale rock switch backs with great views. The view kept us mildly distracted from precipitous drop-offs on our down slopes. Once in the Ashnola valley we picked a nice camping spot right beside the river by the ‘old corral’ and poked around the rest of the afternoon in the sun on a little sand bar. We spent a pleasant night there and in the morning decided to head to Keremeos to load up on cherries. The lower Ashnola valley is "Okanagan" climate and trees, whereas the upper Ashnola region becomes a more "Similkameen" forested zone. In Keremeos we had lunch at the Crow Bar and Inn, which is advertised as “downtown trendy and tasty”, but Bill said it was too expensive - $12.95 for a plate of nachos and $6.00 for 2 iced teas. The waitress was attractive, which helped!
After that we were looking for cherries, which had to be organic ($75 for 20 lbs). All of a sudden Simon (aka Gold Boy) burst upon the scene with that Landcruiser exuberance of finding fellow BJ74 owners in his own backyard. Simon kindly invited us back to Hedley for refreshments at his B&B which were an old assay office for the nearby gold mine. Simon then directed us to a lookout up the Hedley Nickel Plate Road, which dead-ended but offered incredible views of Hedley and the Similkameen Valley beyond. It was getting late in the day so we decide to continue up the road and spend the night at Nickel Plate lake, which we shared with others, but was enjoyable nonetheless.
Shortly after we set up camp, Simon arrived with an armful of barley beverages and we talked about knives, cruisers, mods and camping and other manly stuff that bores women to death. Simon is organizing a new Cruiser Group called the Okanagan-Similkameen Land Cruiser Club and they had their first meeting last Sunday. Good luck Simon, we hope you have a successful and rewarding club, and thanks for your generous hospitality.
We broke camp early Sunday morning and I headed for the ferry and I believe Bill and Shikai deviated back to Keremeos to load up on cherries before heading back to Vancouver.
We believe we found some good trails and a stunning campsite and we should consider going in the area again if we are looking for an area close to the Lower Mainland. Another little adventure would be to go from Placer Lake and follow a rough ATV trial to Flat Top Mtn, which looks like it connects to an FSR into the upper Ashnola Valley. This offers an alternative to the switch backs and could be combined into a loop bringing us out back out to the Copper Creek. The road into the Ashnola from Keremeos is a gravel freeway, probably maintained by parks allow Civics to get to the Cathedral Park-Wall Creek trailhead for the backpackers
Glenn Bridges
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