Wells Grey winter snowshoe trip, March 26 to March 30, 2017
We all drove from the Vancouver / Victoria areas to Clearwater on Saturday March 25, 2017. Quite a pleasant day for driving although there were a few snow squalls on the Coquihalla, otherwise it got quite sunny at times and the thermometer in the car indicated 13 degrees, arrived in Clearwater at approximately 3:30, rested and went for dinner at the Gateway Grill around 6:30. Our guide Evan Sklarski joined us there and we were happy to treat him to dinner as this was a great way to get to know him in advance.
People from Burnaby Outdoor Club were David Cater and Elena Antipenkova, Jackie Gill, Paul Ng, and Won-Hee and myself. We needed a seventh person and through Wells Grey Adventures, Michael McIlvaney from Victoria joined us.
Sunday March 26, we all met for breakfast around 8am at a local restaurant and then drove to Yellowhead Helicopters just a few kilometers south of Clearwater on Highway 5. Evan was already there and we eventually met Ken, our helicopter pilot. He spent a certain amount of time getting the helicopter ready and approximately 10am he briefed us all as to flying and being around a helicopter. That included how to get in and out, always on the left side, like a horse, and a few emergency measures, the fact that we were never to walk behind the helicopter, especially when it’s operating always go around the front, you are safe to stand up when you are close to the helicopter, however you should crouch a bit when you are getting closer to rotor distance, although the rotor is usually well off the ground. Approximately 10:30 he took the first group which was Evan, our guide and the three women, Jackie, Elena and Won-Hee. The joke of course was that the women would go first and open up the cabin (which had been closed and unused since the fall) and have it ready and cleaned up for the men when they arrived.
The four men drove up in the three vehicles following Tay from Wells Grey Adventures to Wells Grey Ranch where we parked our cars, got our gear ready and waited about 10 to 15 minutes for the copter to arrive. In the meantime the helicopter had taken the women up to Fight Meadows cabin and came to meet us at Wells Grey Ranch. As I was organizer of the tour, I was the one who got to sit up front with the pilot. The helicopter is a Bell Long Ranger 206L. I asked the pilot as we were flying up and he told me that this helicopter, which looks absolutely new, was built in 1991 and it was rebuilt in 2011. He said you can still buy one these brand new for $2.5 million dollars. I didn’t ask him how much the original price was, I would suspect around a million.
Anyways, the flight was extremely smooth, we could barely tell we had lifted off the ground and we could barely tell we had moved. I had my GPS on and the maximum speed in our ten minute flight was 177 kilometers per hour and we flew up to about 2300 meters over the ridge and then we came into Fight Meadow. There was the cabin and there were the women who had already opened the cabin with the guide, Evan, and started to prepare it.
So the rest of us got all our equipment unloaded and into the cabin and the helicopter flew away. Once settled into the cabin, we got a bit of briefing from Evan as to what we can do and what we can’t. Let’s not forget there is no running water here. There are outhouses, etc. So it’s a question of how and where we get water, where we do things, etc.
We then had a bit of lunch, following which we walked down about 400 meters to the creek for the pure drinking water. The creek was down about three meters so we shoveled to make a sort of ramp down to the water. We filled two 35 liter jugs of drinking water, which lasted the 5 days. After that we went for a snowshoe towards 52 Ridge and Battle mountain which we are to ascend on Monday.
The elevation of the Fight Meadow’s cabin is 1,830 meters, and the summit of Battle Mountain is about 2300 meters. We walked a total of five and half kilometers today, just went to 52 Ridge and back, we walked north towards Battle mountain to prepare a trail for tomorrow. Let’s not forget nobody has been in this area all winter, so the cabin was closed before we arrived, we were the first ones to use it this year, and also there are no tracks out there that are obvious because everything is covered with fresh snow. Cypress, Grouse and Seymour they are not.
As we were walking, it started to snow, which got heavier as we went along. We walked a total of approximately 3 kilometers one way, we got to see a bit of the mountain. The clouds cleared somewhat, despite the fact that it was snowing, and we got to see where we were going on Monday. By now, between the snow and the wind, it was getting cold and visibility was decreasing so we decided to head back to the cabin where we arrived approximately 4:30 pm.
People had tea and coffee, Vincent had a nap and then Won-Hee and Vincent (mostly Won-Hee) prepared dinner, which was butter chicken with rice, with delicious chocolate something or other for dessert.
The cabin does have a gas stove, it has gas lighting which is not used very much, because they have installed LED lighting and there were some solar panels, such that most of the lighting is LED. There is a small fridge, but this being winter we could also store things outside, especially things that had to be kept frozen.
The set up for meals, as there was going to be four dinners and four breakfasts, was that the people who prepared dinner one evening, prepared breakfast the following one, and like that for the four days. So Won-Hee and I had picked the first night for dinner and the first morning for breakfast, which would be breakfast on Monday morning. Otherwise people take care of their own lunches.
Statistics today: a total of about 250 meters elevation gain, gross of course, and a total of about 7 kilometers traveled including the trips down to the creek for water.
Monday March 27, 2017: the ascent of Battle Mountain
Based on the schedule, breakfast is prepared by Won-Hee and Vincent (mostly Won-Hee) and it’s scrambled eggs with back bacon, toast and fruit juice. Some people have their own fruit such as oranges and apples. This is the day that we are going to ascend Battle Mountain, if the weather permits. If it doesn’t, we will, at the final point before we start our ascent of Battle Mountain, keep going, do a loop and eventually make our way back to the cabin.
Before we head out, because we are going to be heading into some fairly steep terrain, Evan teaches us how to use the avalanche beacons, the probes and of course how to shovel the person out. We all follow this with considerable interest because if an avalanche should happen, we all need to know what to do. However, the circumstances, in particular the terrain, are such that we are not likely to have an avalanche today and fortunately, there was none.
Regardless we set out on the same trail walked on Sunday afternoon and as we approached Battle Mountain, some parts of the sky around it opened up. We still have at least half a km to go before we have to make our decision. That is when we descend into Bull Valley at the bottom of the mountain. It is about 1900 meters elevation and the summit of Battle Mountain is 2300 meters and as we arrive there, fortunately things have cleared up considerably. There is lots of blue sky and the clouds are moving along. So we decide to start our ascent of the mountain.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the sky has opened up, it is very sunny, but that means that is very warm to head up. I checked the thermometer on my watch and it’s risen to 13 degrees, so that it turns out to be quite a long and arduous 400 m ascent, due to the heat. Part way up, we do get a bit of light cloud cover which helps, cools things down. At about 125 meters below the summit, we have a bite to eat. We have been walking for over two hours, we started at 10:15 and it’s now 12:30, so we are hungry. At this point Jackie decides that she has had enough for the day, and stays there while the other seven head up for the ascent of Battle Mountain. It is not all that steep going up, we do have 125 meters to rise but it’s on a fairly long slope. Evan’s main concern is that we go too close to the cornices, because cornices hang out over empty space and if we walk on that and add too much weight and it breaks, we have a very long fall going down. So, as we head up, he makes sure we keep away from the cornices.
The last bit before we summit is a little tricky but with help from Evan and everybody we all make it. Once on the summit it is quite flat and quite large, and there is an old fire lookout cabin. Unfortunately the cabin is so snowbound that we cannot get inside it for what we were hoping to be our main lunch. However we can see the main peak of Battle Mountain which is probably about 500 meters away, north of us. It is quite spectacular but there is no way we are going to get there today on snowshoes. It requires probably mountaineering equipment. However, it is very spectacular and we are happy to see it.
Needless to say, the trip back down is much, much faster than the trip up. We start heading down from the summit at 2:35 and Won-Hee, Paul and I walk into the cabin at 4:35, exactly two hours from the summit we have left behind us.
The other part of the group wanted to eat more, so they stopped somewhere coming down. Paul, Won-Hee and I had gone ahead a little bit and we weren’t particularly hungry, having eaten more earlier, so we kept going. However, we got into a snowstorm with some wind so we walked a good part of this last 3 km or so through this snowstorm.
Within the last 20 or so minutes before getting back to the cabin, the sky cleared up and it actually became quite sunny and actually very beautiful.
When the 3 of us got back to the cabin, we were able to boil enough water for Won-Hee and I to shower. The rest of the group arrived at 5:15.
Statistics for the day are six hours and 20 minutes for Paul, Won-Hee and me, close to seven hours for the rest of the group. We’ve traveled 12 kilometers, we’ve risen a net of 450 meters but our total ascent was 750 meters if you include all the downhills and the uphills we’ve done and our highest point was 2311 meters.
Dinner is prepared by David and Elena. A different chicken dinner.
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
This is the day we hike up to Fight Mountain
We start out with breakfast, compliments of David and Elena. Elena called it Christmas Morning Wife Saver breakfast. Not quite sure why but that’s the name.
After breakfast we head out, southwest across the western edge of Fight Meadow, which takes us about an hour to cross. We are on snowshoes, it’s fresh snow, so the blazing is a little slow. When we get to the far end of Fight Meadow we start to rise, usually through the forest but with some openings here and there. At one point I notice Evan who is leading and breaking trail, knock a big snow mushroom off the top of a tree and so I ask him how he’s done that and he says “It’s easy, you just stick your pole into the snow mushroom, you start rocking the tree and sooner or later the whole thing will topple”. After that, we all take turns knocking snow mushrooms off the tops of trees.
Eventually we make it up to the top of Fight Mountain. It’s a bit cold, snowing a bit on the top but we decide to have lunch there. The summit is 2055 meters which is only 225 meters higher than the cabin and Fight Meadow, however we are happy we have made it to the top. That’s where we have a discussion about politics including neo-liberals and libertarians and other people of that nature. It even got into religion up to a certain point, was a good discussion. Everybody seemed to be on the same wavelength as far as politics and religion went, ie we didn’t tolerate much of the nonsense of either of them.
At this point one of the snowshoers wants to go return the same way we came up. Evan is very reluctant to let her go alone and two other of the male snowshoers decide to go with her. The rest of us, David, Elena, Won-Hee, Evan and me are taken by Evan down the north slope of Fight Mountain where there is lots of snow and at some points quite steep downhill and it’s great because the snow is so fresh and fluffy. We are basically sliding down in the snow. We eventually get down to the bottom level which is Branta Lake, which Evan had pointed out to us from above. We cross Branta Lake and make it onto some other meadows that lead north and heading generally towards the cabin. We eventually get back to Fight Meadow and find the trail we had walked on in the morning, following that back to the cabin.
My real eye opener for the day was the fact that Evan had never been up on Fight Mountain, and although he had observed it at points, he’s just using a compass and his limited knowledge of the mountain, leads us right up to the very top of the mountain and back around the north ridge of the mountain, a different route, coming back. To me, it’s like he’s got a GPS built into his head and he just follows it. I find it quite amazing. Dinner today is compliments of Paul and Michael. More chicken, a different recipe. Yummy!!!
Our statistics for the day is, those of us who went around and came down the north ridge of the mountain, did 10 kilometers. Our total ascent was only 345 meters and we were out for about six hours. Our top point was 2055 meters.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Woke up this morning to quite a bit of snow. Although the temperature was bearable, minus 3.
Breakfast of scrambled eggs, boiled eggs and porridge, prepared by Michael and Paul.
As it was snowing fairly heavily we lazed around the cabin for quite a while and set out at approximately 11 am.
Because of the weather, we decide to make our outing fairly short and go back towards Branta Lake, the lake we crossed the previous day coming down from Fight Mountain.
On this trip Evan offered to Vincent to teach him how to use a compass, rather than a GPS. As a result of this, the oriental and blonde princesses in the group eventually got bored, annoyed and impatient. Vincent had to give up the lesson. Anyways, we made it all to way to Branta Lake and came back, originally by a slightly different route, eventually reconnecting to the Fight Meadow main trail that we created over two days. We got back to the cabin around 2 pm, hoping to go out again later. However after some lunch and some people taking naps, by 4 pm nobody seemed to be very interested in going out, so we simply continued to chat, read, etc.
Today is Jackie’s day to prepare dinner and it was pasta alfredo with salmon with some chicken left over from the previous evening, kale salad and apple crumble, and plum sauce for dessert.
After dinner, while the dishes were being washed by David and Elena, Jackie and Michael got into some serious Scrabble while others either chatted or read. We also had a chat on what we were doing Thursday morning because we have to have breakfast and clean the cabin before we head out. We set a goal of 9am as we were looking at about seven hours to get down to the cars. Most people went to bed by 10 pm.
Statistics for the day: we snowshoed approximately 7 ¼ kilometers. Our total elevation for the whole day was only 125 meters, most of it was quite flat, we were out for about three hours.
Thursday, March 30, 2017.
This was our last day and obviously the walk out from Fight cabin all the way back to Wells Grey Ranch. This turned out to be our longest and most gruelling day. Despite the fact that most of our distance was downhill, in fact we had a total net descent of 1,150 meters, over the last 10 kms only. The Fight cabin is at approximately 1830 meters in altitude. We rose slightly to 1170 and eventually, by the time we got to Well Grey Ranch, 19 ½ kilometers later, we had dropped to about 715 meters.
We were all up by approximately 7 am at breakfast but then we had to clean the cabin and get everything else ready for our departure.
It was approximately 9:35 by the time we finally left, despite our goal of 9 am. There was light snow, not too much wind but very limited visibility, maybe 400 meters or so. The GPS readings indicated 9.15 kilometers in straight line from the cabin to Wells Grey Ranch, our destination. Unfortunately, we could not go in a direct line and in fact instead of going west we went south for approximately 9 kilometers. What this meant was by the time we had walked 9 kilometers southward, we had dropped less than 100 m. and gotten only one kilometer closer to the vehicles. I personally found this to be quite disappointing and started to even question whether our guide knew which way we were going.
When we finally arrived at the Phillip Lake campground, like I said, we were still 8 kilometers from the cars (in straight line), despite having traveled 9 kilometers, and we were still at the same rough elevation of approximately 1800 meters. However, this is where we started to go downhill and generally westward such that things started to improve. At this point were on the same trail were on last summer when we descended from Discovery Meadows down to the Phillip Creek parking lot. Last August our van was waiting for us there but unfortunately at this time of year there is no way for the vans to get up there because none of these roads are cleared during the winter. For approximately three kilometers, it is very considerable descent and a lot of it was switchbacks. When we finally got down to the Phillip Creek parking lot, we were down to approximately 1100 meters but we still had seven kilometers to go to the cars.
Whereas the snow in the meadows was deep, at approximately 30 centimeters (1 foot) it was dry and fluffy. It was somewhat hard going because we had to trailblaze but it was otherwise quite bearable.
Once we started heading downhill from the Phillip Lake campground, the snow got considerably heavier and sticky although much shallower, and we didn’t sink in very much.
From the Phillips Creek parking lot, things got more difficult because there appeared to be at least a meter of quite soft « mash potato » snow on the road and at times it would collapse under our feet by as much as 30 cms or so, causing us to fall on occasion. In fact I fell three times from Phillip Lake to the upper parking lot and then I fell another two times on the road down to the bottom. Others fell too. soft landings, with only our pride hurt.
In addition this part of the road was not very picturesque and turned into a very long seven kilometer slog down to the highway. We did, however, from time to time, see natural matters such as bear scats, moose, elk or large deer droppings, quite a few large tracks that Evan felt were probably some large mule deer in the area, although some of us thought they were elk or moose.
Due to the weight of my packsack, I started to suffer a lot in my lower back on the route down and the seven kilometers on the snow covered road were absolutely gruelling to me. Everybody else was very tired. The whole trip took eight hours, as we got to the cars at approximately 5:35 pm.
We all agreed that it would be very difficult to make dinner at 6:30 so on the way back to the motel, we stopped at the Gateway Grill and told them we would be late and we showed up for dinner between 7:30 and 7:45.
Evan joined us again. Of course we filled an envelope with cash for him as a tip and had a wonderful evening. By approximately 9:45 we were all back in our motel rooms, quite exhausted and happy to hit the sack.
Our statistics for the day were 19.5 kilometers, total elevation gain being about 95 meters, net elevation loss of 1,150 meters and this took us eight hours, including about 6 ½ hours moving time and 1 ½ hours of stop time for lunches and breaks.
Friday, March 31, 2017
Breakfast at the Gateway Inn at 8:30 for Michael, Paul, Jackie and Won-Hee and me. As this was Elena’s birthday, David and Elena slept in and we didn’t see them on Friday morning.
Total snowshoeing for the week was 56 kilometers.
Total ascent on foot was 1500 meters.
And total descent on Thursday was 1150 meters.
On Monday, when we climbed Battle Mountain we had net ascent of 450, gross ascent of 750. On Tuesday, when we climbed Fight Mountain our net ascent was about 300 meters and the gross was 325 meters
A great week in the mountains and snow of central British Columbia. Temperatures were generally -3 to -5 overnight, usually -2 to -3 in the morning when we got up and between -2 and 5 during the day, depending on weather conditions.
However, on Monday March 26, in the afternoon, as we ascended Battle Mountain, it was very warm and the thermometer on my watch gave a reading of 13 degrees.
Vincent Pigeon,
March 31, 2017