The Great Summer Adventure Trip #6 - Bridge River Valley

[asutherland]

My family and a close knit group of friends have done a yearly BC road trip for the last 6 years, each year somewhere different. We've been camping in places like Rock Creek, Nahmint Lake up island, gone to the Valley of the Ghosts deep in the west Kootenays, and more. This year we decided to check out Bridge River Valley - the high elevations, remote towns, abandoned mines and ghost towns, wheeling and exploring... very intriguing.

We started our trip late July on a Friday, leaving from the lower mainland and meeting up with our bud Greg in Langley. Cruiser packed full and loaded on the new Kreaton-Works roof rack, we headed up the Sea to Sky highway and into Pemberton for lunch.

We then headed up through Pemberton Meadows to the Hurley FSR. We aired down a bit to make the ride over the high mountain pass more comfortable.

A lot shorter time than we thought, soon we were up and on top of the Hurley pass, looking up at the mountains and the altitude on the GPS with excitement. Our camp site at the Kingdom lake Forest Service Site was going to be at 1,400 meters elevation!

We soon rolled in to Bralorne. Even before we hit town, there were cool foundations to check out.

 

[asutherland]

We set up base-camp at Kingdom lake, made dinner, enjoyed the lake and relaxed.

The next morning Mak learned how to use a shovel and pale, and got more comfortable with "dirt". She started leaving little piles everywhere in camp. It was very cute :laugh:

 

[asutherland]

 

[asutherland]

The next morning we set out to explore the area between Kingdom Lake and Bralorne.

More to come tomorrow night!

 

[GTSSportCoupe]

That is so cool man! Awesome photographs, and an awesome trip. Thanks for sharing here.

You are creating good memories for your family. I grew up doing that sort of stuff with my parents and they are some of the best memories I have.

I want to do the same with my wife and kids, but have to wait just a bit longer, as we just had our second kid a month ago. Gotta wait till she's a bit older. In the mean time I'm working on rebuilding my land cruiser into a reliable machine.

Outta curiosity, what camera/lens are you shooting with? You are a good photographer.

 

[asutherland]

That is so cool man! Awesome photographs, and an awesome trip. Thanks for sharing here.

You are creating good memories for your family. I grew up doing that sort of stuff with my parents and they are some of the best memories I have.

I want to do the same with my wife and kids, but have to wait just a bit longer, as we just had our second kid a month ago. Gotta wait till she's a bit older. In the mean time I'm working on rebuilding my land cruiser into a reliable machine.

Outta curiosity, what camera/lens are you shooting with? You are a good photographer.

Thanks dude! I'm not nearly done posting either, this was only the beginning of our trip!

It was definitely challenging having the little one with us for this trip, but she learned quite a bit even just while we were gone for the week. She was pretty darn good for most of the trip, even with a lot of time spent in the truck. After the first couple days there, I would stop the truck and say "Are you ready to get out and explore?" and she would reply "YEEEEEEEEAHHHHH!!!!!" Curious, have you made it out to one of the VI Cruiser meetings yet? If not, you should come out! Can bring the and children too, since we always have it somewhere with no age restriction. I often bring mine to them.

Thanks for the compliment... I have no official training, just what I've learned from others. This summer I bought my new camera, a Canon T2i (500d equiv), and all the photos from our trip were taken either with my (favourite, and very affordable) Canon 28-105 USM, or the wider shots with my Tokina 12-24 F4.

 

[GTSSportCoupe]

Thanks dude! I'm not nearly done posting either, this was only the beginning of our trip!

It was definitely challenging having the little one with us for this trip, but she learned quite a bit even just while we were gone for the week. She was pretty darn good for most of the trip, even with a lot of time spent in the truck. After the first couple days there, I would stop the truck and say "Are you ready to get out and explore?" and she would reply "YEEEEEEEEAHHHHH!!!!!" Curious, have you made it out to one of the VI Cruiser meetings yet? If not, you should come out! Can bring the and children too, since we always have it somewhere with no age restriction. I often bring mine to them.

Thanks for the compliment... I have no official training, just what I've learned from others. This summer I bought my new camera, a Canon T2i (500d equiv), and all the photos from our trip were taken either with my (favourite, and very affordable) Canon 28-105 USM, or the wider shots with my Tokina 12-24 F4.

Great! Definitely looking forward to more pics!

My son is 4 years old now, and I think would be pretty decent on a trip like that now. When he was younger he had a pretty tough time with long trips. My daughter is 5 weeks old, so actually is good on trips as she sleeps all the time, haha. Still a bit young for the camping though. Your daughter must be around 2 or 3?

I haven't been to a meet with you guys yet, although I would definitely like to hook up. I just bought my landcruiser this spring. (Prior to that my projects have been Toyota sports cars of all types over the last 15 years). Are you guys meeting at Paul's Motor Inn still this weekend on the 18th? If it's for supper, I should be able to make it with my family.

That is a nice camera and lens setup you have there! Keep the pics coming!

 

[asutherland]

I'm going to try to be there with the family!

Yep, my daughter will be 2 in Oct.

Andrew

 

[asutherland]

The following day we headed up towards Gold Bridge, stopping and exploring as we went.

We stopped in Gold Bridge at the (only) corner store, which turned out to be much larger than it looked from the outside and VERY well stocked... everything from fresh produce to tools and booze.

As it was after noon and everyone was getting hungry, including the maker of all our decisions (Mak), we stopped and had lunch at the (only) restaurant in town. Had a good conversation with the waitress, who turned out to also be the cook, the person that made up and cleaned the rooms in the hotel, and an on-call paramedic for the ambulance service. Wow!

 

[asutherland]

After a good lunch, we took a drive through Gold Bridge. We came across the only gas station in the area, which as promised was very much CLOSED (we knew this ahead of time and therefore brought lots of extra fuel)

The damn between Downton Lake and Carpenter Lake was impressive. As was the view of the two lakes at different elevations from the top of a nearby FS road.

Most of the roads in the Bridge River Valley area are sketchy at best, on a good day. It's easy to see how an isolated place like this can get cut off in bad weather.

 

[asutherland]

The following day Ray wanted to "drive up to a glacier". I wasn't sure exactly how he intended to do this, but it turned out it WAS possible. We headed back into Gold Bridge, along the south side of Carpenter Lake, and up the Truax Creek FSR, a steep, decommissioned FSR full of tight switchbacks. In 14KM we had gone up to 1,700 meters!

The FSR followed the valley between the Mt Truax range and Mt Williams range. The VALLEY was at 1,700 meters. At the end of the road, you were literally at sheer rock and snow. There were patches of snow along the way. Amazing.

We spotted what looked to be an abandoned shack, or collection of shacks, down through an old cut block. After searching the area for a road (and finding none) we armed ourselves with FRS walkie talkies, water, snacks, sun screen, bug spray and bear spray and hiked down to the cabins through the cut block.

 

[asutherland]

We found all sorts of cool stuff, including old claim markers and a Hudsons Bay Company bottle of moonshine that still had some moonshine in it.

Unfortunately, near the end of the road, there was a large avalanche and about 3km of road was completely blocked by full sized trees, ripped out roots and all, strewn across the road making it completely impassible. We had lunch on the side of the hill and then headed back. A very good day indeed!

 

[Toshi38]

Anyone brave enough to try the moonshine?

 

[asutherland]

Anyone brave enough to try the moonshine?

Ray gave it a good sniff, but no... we wanted to live

 

[asutherland]

Our next day trip involved a visit to the nearby town of Bralorne. The Bralorne Mine operated from March 1932 until 1971. In that time 3 million ounces of gold were refined from its adits. From this wealth, came a complete town, with schools, churches, post office, houses, recreation halls and hunting lodges. The mines themselves needed support buildings of power houses, boiler houses, blacksmith shops, machine shops, concentrator buildings and so on.

 

[asutherland]

Miners heading up to the active Bralorne Mine:

The Bralorne baseball field, actively used for competitions:

 

[asutherland]

These next few were taken outside the Bralorne Museum, which was closed.

 

[asutherland]

Further up the road from Bralorne is a small completely abandoned community called Bradian. Bradian was one of many towns built in the Bridge River Valley during its gold mining heyday.

Built to service the mines at Bralorne and Pioneer, Bradian's first homes were built in the mid 1930's and grew to approx. 60 houses before being abandoned in 1971 when the mines closed. The richest single ton of ore ever mined in Canada came from the ground below these mines (2000 oz/ton).

With the sun dropping into the west, the highlights on the buildings were dramatic. It was very quiet there. We all headed up the dirt road together, with Makenna on my back in her carrier, and explored the small nearly identical houses.

 

[asutherland]

 

[asutherland]

There was a really neat old car sitting in the weeds. It had branches from a nearby tree that were slowly scratching across the top of the roof like spider legs. I could easily imagine the slow scratching noises they would make in the dead of the night during a windstorm - with no one around to hear them.

More story and pics to come tomorrow... !