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14 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2011 : 11:05 AM
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Just to let everybody know. The Clayoquot Valley witness trail had its northern half re-cleared and flagged in 2009. This was done by the western Canada Wilderness Committee and volunteers over 2 summers in an effort to help the creation of the Hauukmin Tribal Park and protection of the prisitine Valley and its legendary forest. This includes trailhead near Spire lake (or Landslide Lake) up to past Norgar Lake (15km).
Making the full traverse may be very dificult as the Southern part is in the low land rainforest and the trail is pretty much gone. The Western Canada wilderness Committee may still have the original maps, I am not sure if it is online.
Certainly hiking int Norgar lake is a fantastic 3 or 4 day hike and then back out the same way. The area is very beautiful. |
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vancouver, bc
Canada
987 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2011 : 11:47 AM
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Where can I find more information? I'm in Ucluelet/Tofino early June and would obviously be passing by this area. What could feasibly be done as a full day trip? And would the creek crossings be too much to overcome during spring melt? Any thoughts?
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14 Posts |
Posted - 03/30/2011 : 8:00 PM
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There is a map produced by the wilderness committee that was for sale at Mec as recently as late March. It is several years old, though, and the trail through south of norgar Lake does not really exist anymore.
Also, I beleive that the access road on the north end is now closed right to the highway. until last year it went half way from the road to the trailhead.
I am not to sure if it is a day trip destination, though you can try contacting Andy Miller at the Wilderness Committee for more details. |
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 Trail running, bike hucking, fast packing, beer drinking collector of pine cones on a day pass
AKA
Dances with Trees
Forest Gnome Cabin
Canada
13040 Posts |
Posted - 03/30/2011 : 9:39 PM
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| Sounds intersting, Ira, are you planning to hike it this year or were you involved in the trail work? |
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14 Posts |
Posted - 04/11/2011 : 12:14 AM
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I worked on the trail for 2 weeks in 2009 from the northern end to Norgar Lake. It was somewhat frustrating not having time to complete the southern portion so yes I am wanting to do it this summer.
Not too sure when yet but perhaps as early as May. |
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Whistler, BC
Canada
42 Posts |
Posted - 06/05/2011 : 9:02 PM
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I'm on the island right now and I discovered this trail on a backroads map book yesterday (June 4, 2011). A quick bit of online research and a grocery stop and my wife and I were at the logging road access point two hours later.
Off highway 4, any car can drive a couple hundred meters in the logging road to a clearing where a few logging roads diverge. This is were most people will want to park. There are actually two logging roads off of Hwy 4 (a main one and a smaller one) and they both meet in this clearing and then just the main road continues from here. I tried to drive my car (small Honda Fit) further but I only made it about 0.2 kms before mild/moderate washouts prevented me from driving further. My wife and I returned the clearing and set up for the night since it was getting close to dark.
The next morning my wife and I set out on foot up the logging road. There are quite a few branches off this main logging road but sticking to the obvious main road will get you there. The main washout a few kms up the road was roaring pretty good since it's been a cold spring until now and this week was really the first week of hot sun. We couldn't hop across this washout on rocks, so we had to remove our shoes and cautiously cross the raging knee deep water. I imagine a bit later in the season this washout could be easily crossed by hopping across on rocks. In total, the distance from where we parked to the trailhead is 7.5kms. The road is in pretty good condition aside from the frequent washouts. There were two more spots after the bridge across Kennedy river where we again needed to wade across. There was also 2-3 more spots where we were barely able to rock hop across. In another month or so you probably wouldn't even notice this spot when the water levels are down. The hike up the logging road was a bit longer and slower than expected, but it wasn't terrible.
Just around the corner from the third stream wading we arrived at the trail head. Total time was about 4 hours to the trail head due to all the time we spent wading streams and trying to scout ways around them or building rock hops across. We decided to hike another 1km to the camp at Spires Lake and stay there. The trail was in reasonable shape. It's a fairly rough trail, but it was easy to follow. It's amazing how much work was put into the old boardwalk that now lies tossed off the trail. I'm not sure why the decision was made to built so much boardwalk because most of it was unnecessary. The trail is fairly well drained without the boardwalks. One neat thing was that the original trail builders carved the names of the people who donated to build the trail into some of the rungs of the boardwalks. Most of this stuff is gone, but one section remains with about 8 names on it and right on the middle rung is the name Ken Melamed.....yup the mayor of Whistler. I knew he used to be the head of whistlers enviromental group (AWARE) and apparently he donated to this project a few decades ago.
We made it to Spires Lake and the going was pretty good. Spires lake is a bit creepy IMO with all those logs poking up. We travelled around the lake for a while and I imagine we were really close to the camping area when we came across an raging stream that was un-passable. The old bridge was gone and the water levels were too high and fast to cross. There was a thin log over the water that I 'skooched' (bum slid) across but it was sketchy and my wife wasn't having any part of that. The stream was a raging waterfall for a long ways up the valley wall and on the downstream side was the lake and we didn't feel like a swim in the ice cold water, so we opted to turn back. Once the water level drops a bit though I think this stream will be fairly easy to cross. There is a decent looking option to cross but the water was just too fast and too deep at this time. I think in another month it will be no big deal to cross this stream.
So in summary, give it a few weeks or a month for all the abundant snow in the alpine to melt and then the going will be a lot easier. There is SO MUCH snow on the island right now. At times, we had to hike on snow on the logging road at only 280 meters elevation in JUNE...pretty nuts for the island. Even if the water levels weren't a problem, I doubt we would have made it much further than Spires Lake due to all the snow. Hopefully we can come back sometime and give this neat trail another shot. |
Edited by - dandurston on 06/05/2011 9:05 PM |
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Clayoquot Valley Witness trail restored... almost
