Crystal's Epic Adventures

We did not start out this trip trying to reach Watersprite Lake, instead we attempted to find the trailhead for Seed Peak. We got up early leaving the house at 6:45 am to meet up with Huong, a girlfriend of mine, before heading up the gorgeous Sea-to-Sky highway. Driving for about an hour and a bit with a quick pit stop at Galileo's , we turned off onto the Mamquam Forestry Service road, following the instructions in our 103 Hikes book. Early on in the bumpy drive, we came to a fork in the road that was not noted in the book. Taking a chance we went left for about 24 kms of bumpy, shock punishing logging road only to suspect we probably should have went right when we did not find the next turn off.  Rather than go back 24 kms to the fork in the road, then up another 24 kms to the intended turn off for Seed Peak, we decided just to go back to the turn off for Watersprite Lake we passed earlier, which Klaus has already been to a couple of times over the years. By the time we re...

As fall is speeding towards us, and hunting season is lurking around the corner, this will be one of the last hikes Klaus and I will get in with such great weather.  Klaus invited his friend Vince who hiked this trail with him back in 2009.   Guanaco and Vicuna Peaks stand at the head of the Upper Coldwater River Valley in the Coquihalla Summit Recreational area.  Access was a bit of an issue, being that the trailhead was 14 kms up a logging road just off Britton Creek-Coquihalla Lakes exit and rest area.  You follow the logging road up to Little Douglas Lake BC Rec site where the road deteriorates considerably after that.  You continue along another 6 kms through punishing potholes and severely overgrown shrubs. If you are concerned about the paint job of your vehicle we recommend parking near the BC rec site and hiking in the 6 kms.   As you can see, we pushed on and parked about a kilometre from the trailhead where we just could not push it an...

We planned before we left for Europe that we would be doing a backpack the September long weekend after we were home.  Honestly, it did not seem like such a great idea with how bad my jet lag was.  However, the laying around trying to get over jet lag wasn't doing us any good, so we pushed ahead and went on the hike anyways.   Planning for Valentine Lake we packed up our gear and headed out for three days and two nights.   Valentine Lake trailhead is a turnoff onto a logging road just past D'Arcy near Pemberton. After passing the turnoff once because of outdated map information, we finally found where the trailhead was 7kms up a dusty, bumpy logging road only to learn the trailhead access has been permanently closed by the logging company. Hmmph... So Plan B was to head to Rohr Lake about 40 minutes back towards Pemberton.   The search for the last trailhead, then the drive back to the Plan B trailhead put us behind much later than we wanted to be to sta...