Date:         Tue, 4 Jul 1995 09:55:21 -0700 (PDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "Tobin T. Copley" <tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca>
Subject:      Weekend off-road trip report (BC)

This is kinda long
   KEYWORDS: Off-road; Hot Springs; SW B.C. Canada; Westy loaf 

Hello all!

Normally a 3 day jaunt into the mountains around Vancouver wouldn't 
warrant a trip report, but the route was so beautiful and we had 
several rather wierd things happen along the way, so what the heck!

The plan was to make a big loop over the Canada Day long weekend, driving 
from Vancouver to Harrison to Pemberton/Whistler and back to Vancouver.  
This is not a conventional route: the road from the south end of Harrison 
Lake to the north end of Lillooet Lake (a road distance of around 100 
miles) is unpaved logging access road calling for slow careful driving.  
The relative remoteness of this route worked in our favour, however, as 
we did not have any problem finding places to camp on the long weekend.

For the record, we did this trip in the Bearbox, our mango-coloured '76 
westy with 171,000 miles and a veteran of the 15,000 mile 
circum-continental trip we did earlier this year.

I picked Christa up from where she works in Downtown Vancouver at 3:00 
Saturday afternoon with the camper already loaded up for the trip.  We 
cruise out of town headed east on Hwy 1 through Burnaby with Christa 
making some sandwiches in the back.  As we rounded the gradual right curve 
following the Cariboo Road interchange, I watched a car drive at high 
speed onto the shoulder, down a grass embankment, and disappear into the 
bushes ahead of me.  My interest was piqued. 

The car just sailed through the air, boucing along, trees and bushes and 
dust flying everywhere, and it just kept going and going.  (One of these 
new EverReady-powered electric cars?)  No brake lights, no attempt to 
steer back onto the road, just a dive off the highway and into the bushes 
and the ravine below.  Oops.  I yelled at Christa to hold on, 
popped the hazard lights on, and skidded to a stop on the shoulder.

A semi-truck pulled over about the same time, and grabbing our fire 
extinguisher, I ran out of the car down the embankment.  We couldn't see 
the car, but we knew there was a small river down there somewhere.  Uh 
oh.  We spread out, and scrambled down through the blackberry brambles 
and poison ivy ( and me wearing shorts and sandals!) to the river.  Once 
down, I looked up and could see the wrecked car above me.  I shouted I 
had found it, and started scrambling up the side of the ravine to the 
smoking car.

I really didn't want to see what was inside the car.  As I got close, I 
could see there was someone inside.  Moving, looking at me.  Alive--this 
is good.  The car was lying on its side about 60 feet down from the 
roadway and was totalled trashed.  The engine was almost under the 
passenger compartment, and as I lifted the passenger door open (the 
driver's side was driven at least a foot underground) the acrid smell of 
an electrical fire poured out.  There was only one person in the car, and 
he claimed to be ok, showed me he could move all his limbs, said he 
didn't really hurt, so I reached in and pulled him up and out of the 
car.  Not a scratch on him!  The paramedics arrived shortly, and took him 
in for a check-over at the hospital, but he seemed ok.  

I, on the other hand, was cut to pieces by the brambles.  Oh well.  Gave 
a statement to the police, etc, etc, and we were on our way again.

Stopped at my sister's place in Mission to shower and get de-thorned.  
>From there we headed to the south end of Harrison Lake, and headed up the 
road to the Hemlock ski area.  A few km after crossing the Chehalis River 
we turned off east onto the Harrison Forest Service Road, which turned to 
dirt a couple of Km later.  We bounced along at 30 - 40 km/h until we 
reached our destiation at 20 Mile Bay on the west shore of Harrison 
Lake.  The site is about half-way up the Lake, and very nice.  Access is 
good, and someone even managed to get a 35' motorhome up to the site, but 
I'd only do that if I rented it.  ;)  We got to 20 Mile Bay about 9:00, 
settled in, had dinner, and slept like logs.

The next morning, I gave the Bearbox a once over, fired it up, and we 
continued heading north along the logging road.  The road conditions 
deteriorated rather quickly north of 20 Mile Bay.  The surface became 
very loose and dry, loaded with softball-sized cobbles, deep pot holes, 
small boulders that had fallen on to the road from the cliffs above, very 
steep grades, and some pretty substantial creeks flowing strong across 
the road.  For those of you with front air-dams on your vanagons, be 
forewarned: drive this road and you air-dams will be removed!

We picked our way along the road, averaging maybe 10 mph.  The front end 
of the bus frequently made contact with the road, butin many places I had 
to keep some speed to avoid bogging down.  A few hours into the drive, we 
came across a 4x4 at the side of the road, and were flagged down by the 
driver.  "Do you have a lug wrench?" she asked.  Oh.  One of the tires on 
her truck had been thouroughly slashed by the sharp rocks on the road.  
So we pulled over, broke out the tool chest, and used my wrench and 
cheater pipe to loosen the lug nuts.  She also didn't have a wrench to 
get her spare out from under the truck.  I tried my big crescent wrench 
on it, and it just spun.  Had to get a pair of my vise-grips on the head 
of the bolt to keep it from spinning.  Oh, and she'd stopped to change to 
tire on a section of the road that HAD to be pushing 25% grade.  Even 
though we blocked all the tires with real big rocks, the truck still 
nearly toppled off the (undersized) jack.  At least her spare had air in 
it.  I couldn't imagine driving up there, miles and miles from even a 
graded gravel road without even a lug wrench.  Some people!

A good thing to come out of this was that another 4x4 came along while we 
were (no, actually, while _I_ was) changing her tire.  We asked this 
fellow if we could tag along with him to a deep steep stream crossing 
that was about 2 miles up the road.  He said this was not a problem, and 
I was glad to have someone with 4WD and a big winch nearby in case we got 
bogged down our hung up fording the stream.  He went through ahead of us, 
and as he crossed the stream I watched for indications of water depth.  
The track up the opposite bank was quite steep and very loose from other 
folks spinning their wheels climbing up the other side.  The 4x4 fellow 
waited on the other side for us.  I backed up a bit, chose my line, and 
ran first gear up to about 17-18 mph.  We dropped into the stream bed, 
sunk into the bed a bit, rode up on our bumper and front end as we hit 
the opposite bank, and started to climb out.  The rear wheels lost 
traction, so I backed off the throttle a bit, we grabbed again, and 
powered up to flatter ground.  Suddenly we couldn't see where we were going.

Steam was flying out of the dashboard vents, fogging the windshield.  
Hmmm...  Maybe I should plug those gaping holes in the heater boxes some 
day...  Very funny effect, actually.

We thanked Mr. 4x4-Guy, and continued along.  We went ahead of him 
because he drove slower than us.  Really.  Also, we needed to keep some 
speed on climbing the really steep stuff, 'cause if we stalled out we'd 
have a looong way to back down on some sections.

Once we got the the ogging camp at the north end of Harrison lake the 
road improved a lot.  About an hour later alnog a beautiful road that 
follows the Lillooet River, we pulled over for a dip in a natural 
hotspring.  Ahhh!

Most of the people at the spring could not believe he had come through 
the harrison route in our little VW camper.  A couple of guys had gotten 
stuck in their trucks on that road the day before.  Off-roadnugen!  

Skookumchuck Hotspring is about 1/2 way between Lillooet and harrison 
lakes on the Lilloet River East road.  Beautiful clear odourless water 
precolates out of the ground at 129 degrees F.  Some hotspring 
enthusiasts have set up big tubs with two pipes running into the tubs: 
one hot, direct from the spring, one cold from a run-off stream.  By 
adding a bit of cold to the hot the temp can be controlled.  Nothing 
better than sitting outside in a gorgeous hot spring with the camper 
pulled up next to a rushing river in the mountains.  Except with you've 
got a nice red wine and a plate of linguine and pesto sauce in front of 
you as well.  The only down side was that I forgot the Bring Something 
For Bob.  :(  By dark, we were badly pruned, light headed, and went back 
to the camper and slept the sleep of the dead.

Oh, I forgot to mention that when we pulled up to a nice flat spot by the 
river, we saw a smoldering fire left by some bozo who had been there the 
night before.  We dug up the coals, dumped water on it, and went 
soaking.  A few hours later when we went back to the bus for a bit, we 
saw it was smoldering again, and had several new hot spots nearby.  Oh 
oh.  So we got out the folding shovel and axe, and tore into it, dumping 
water on it again.  Turned it into a big mud puddle.  There.  I while 
later, someone knocked on our van and told us we had a fire outside.  
Sh*t!  We called about a dozen people over and started a bucket brigade, 
dumping sevral hundred gallons into the ground.  We dug up a good portion 
of the site down to about a foot down, checking for hot spots with our 
hands.  We licked it that time.  Turns out the idiot who had lit the fire 
hadn't checked to see if it was on mineral soil!  Just put rocks in a 
ring and let 'er rip!  And this when there were forest fires blazing 
just over a ridge on the other side of the river!

The trip home the next morning was uneventful, and we made it back to 
Vancouver in 4 hours by way of Pemberton, Whistler, and Squamish.  The 
Bearbox's muffler is REAL loud now (might have torn a hole/cracked it 
somewhere along Harrison Lake), and the ball joints are squeaking again 
(but grease will quiet those down).  Other than that, another flawless 
performance by our much-loved camper!

Tobin

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tobin T. Copley                  Currently               =============
(604) 689-2660                    Occupationally        /_| |__||__| :| putta
tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca      Challenged!         O|             | putta
                                                        '-()-------()-'
Circum-continental USA, Mexico, Canada 15,000 miles... '76 VW Camper! (Mango)