Our Slim Creek Loop trip was “Plan B” for us. Fortunately, all of us who were on the trip think that it was probably better than our “Plan A”.
Plan A was to do a seven day off-trail loop hike in the southwest corner of the South Chilcotin Mountains. Our start/end point was to be the end of the Bridge River Forestry Service Road (FSR). We wondered about the condition of the road because this was not a popular road and we were going to travel up it for 55 km which is a long way for a backcountry road. After much investigation we decided to give it a try but we also had a Plan B in our proverbial back pockets.
After driving about five hours from home we were travelling on the Bridge River FSR. All was well until we came to a major creek running across the road at about 25 km. Darn! (Actually, we used more colourful language that won’t be repeated here.) A work crew came by and said this was a recent culvert washout and would be fixed the next day. We decided not to wait and to execute Plan B instead.
Plan B involved another hour of driving to the nearby Slim Creek FSR. We parked close to the end of that road and headed straight up the steep hillside to access the alpine meadows at tree line. From there we did a two day easy mountaineering traverse with steep snow slopes and rock scrambles ending at Leckie Lake. Then it was mostly a meadow walk as we covered much of the Plan A route. The trip ended with a descent of the Slim Creek valley and rough trail.
It’s fair to say that Plan B was better than Plan A because of the two day mountaineering traverse. It very scenic and enjoyable.
Trip participants were Dan and Marilyn who had the initial idea for the trip along with friend Margaret and me (Manrico). Two others were supposed to come as well but they had car issues on the way there. Unfortunately Liz couldn’t come on this trip.
Following is a Google Earth fly-over tour of our route. The quality of this video is sub-standard because historical Google Earth imagery had to be used. Current imagery (in 2021) is for winter and our trip was in summer. The photos follow the video.
Now the photos. If you expand the photo viewer to full page the “Adventures” menu will stop working. This is because of technical issues with the website software. Refresh the web page. The “Adventures” menu will then work properly.