Today, our journey begins outside of Fernie BC, a small mountain town known for its local ski hill and micro brewery. During the winter months, these mountains can see up to 700 cms (23 feet) of snow! However, we won’t be seeing any of that snow today, as it is the beginning of July with a steady temperature of 28 degrees celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit). We turn off the highway and are greeted by a warm, friendly looking dirt road. If you’ve ever seen a dark creepy looking dirt road you’ll know what I mean by “warm and friendly”. Tire pressures are set to a reasonable 20 psi and 4WD is engaged.

Our goal today is to find a secluded lake in the high alpine terrain sitting at around 1900 meters, as well as trying to complete a loop around the mountain range. We wind our way through the remote BC forest service roads in search of the beginning of the trail. About 10 miles in, we reach our intended trail head destination which, is only the start of our journey. The trail head is not marked and you will need exact coordinates and or proper directions to find it.

It’s not long before things start to get a little wild. Being by ourselves really drives home the fact that you have to be careful when it comes to attempting certain obstacles. A wrong move or bad decision could leave us stranded. Ruts and deep water consume the entirety of the trail and I am thankful that Sherman (our 4Runner) is equipped with good tires, a winch and differential breathers.

Thick, green foliage lines the track on both sides. Having never been to this area before, we’re not quite sure what to expect, but that’s half the fun, right? As we come around the next bend, the road takes a steep up-hill change. I was under the impression that the trail would follow the base of this mountain range and be relatively flat, but it looks like once again I am wrong! I am fairly confident in my driving abilities, but one thing that stresses me out more than anything while off the pavement is driving up hill for an extended period of time. Put simply, Sherman is 22 years old and is quickly approaching the 350,000 kilometre mark (217,0000 miles). Even though a lot of maintenance has been done to get him where he’s at today, things are bound to go wrong at some point when you put the vehicle under copious amounts of stress. Add all the extra weight such as a bumper, winch, big tires, drawer system, spare tire, camping equipment, tools and two adults, you have yourself an ancient, underpowered, heavy vehicle that we are asking to drive up a mountain. The stress of a steep bumpy off road climb is not our friend!

Dead fall surrounds us as we climb higher and higher. Fallen trees across the trail every hundred meters really make you pay attention. Luckily for us, someone had been here before to clear the trail. Hundreds of chopped up trees line the track. We’re making good time up this hill when all of a sudden, we see a gigantic root ball of a fallen tree directly ahead of us on the trail. It looks almost impassible but maybe there’s just enough room to squeak by! I lean out the drivers window to line my tire up with the edge of the trail. Alison makes sure I’m not scraping up against the root ball as I pull ahead. Success! Multiple false peaks make the climb feel longer than it should have. Every time we thought this is it, we’re coming to the top, we are faced with another climb that seems to be steeper than the last. Even though the stress was high, the views didn’t disappoint. Every once and a while there would be a break in the trees where we could see just how high up we were, until finally we made it to the top! The trail splits into a 3 way T intersection, the way we came from, the way down and a third option that we believe will take us to a secluded lake. Beautiful views surround us through the trees and the air feels a little thinner. One of the main objectives of this trail is to find this lake so we veer right instead of getting directly on the trail down. The map tells us that the trail to the lake is out and back so we’ll end up right back at this T intersection on the way out.

A couple of kilometres pass, and it’s not until we are several hundred feet in front of the lake that it finally appears and instantly proves that it was worth the climb! Straight ahead of us is a small lake at the base of a valley, just below a peak of the mountain. Surrounded by fresh pine trees and shale, the lake is a clear blue. So clear, that you can see the bottom of the lake in detail, even tho it is quite deep. After getting out of the vehicle to meet the lakes’ beauty, we can’t help but also feel nervous about what type of wildlife you would encounter while camping up there! Big signs at while entering from the highway reminded us that this was in fact “bear country”.

Further proving to us that we were at quite a hight elevation was the change in temperature. The temperature must have dropped about 10 degrees Celsius from while we were at the base of the mountain, where it was a scorching 28 degrees celsius just hours ago. None the less, Alison, Sherman and I are all a little grateful for a cool down, we stop for a quick lunch and enjoy the beauty we have found in front of us.

Shortly after lunch, we decided it was time to continue our journey. We were not quite halfway through our planned trail, around the mountain range and we knew there would be even more incredible sights to see as we continued. Despite that, someone else had a different agenda than we did… As we get back into our car seats, Alison noticed a bee perching on my transfer case shifter! He definitely wanted to join us for some fun, but this was not a passenger we were willing to have tag along with us. After some gentle encouragement, the bee safely buzzed off, phew! (save the bees!) We steadily head back the couple of kilometres from the lake to the main trail, and continue our journey downwards.

When it Hits The Fan, Duck

Huge mountain vistas grace our presence as we make our way down the steep rocky terrain. We felt like we were on top of the world! Nothing could touch us! Until, it did. We come around a sharp curve and are met face to face with a huge fallen tree directly across the track. The 4Runner is too tall to squeeze under the massive log and we are ill-equipped with a chain saw. We stop and cut the engine. This is one of the biggest fallen trees on a trail that I have personally ever seen. I quickly estimate the diameter of the dead tree to be about 3 feet and about 50 Feet tall! One end is perched on the side of the mountain and the other is hanging off the side of the trail which happens to be a several hundred foot drop off.

Our first of many plans to attack this tree was to try cutting through the end of it to shorten the length and get rid of the excess hanging off the trail. Then maybe we could get a winch line on the side closest to the mountain side and pull it off the trail. This proved to be very difficult without the help of a chain saw. I begin chopping away at the tree using the axe we had, but quickly realized that we would be here all night if I were to keep chipping away at this rate.

Onto the next plan courtesy of Alison. Why don’t we dig out a small hole under the tree, big enough to fit the 4Runner under? Brilliant! I grabbed the shovel and started digging but was brought to an abrupt halt as I realized just what I was digging in to… straight rock. The shovel was doing almost no damage without excessive amounts of force.

Plan C. Instead of digging with the shovel, lets bust up the rock with the pick end of the axe! this seemed to work much faster and before we knew it, we had a trench dug under the tree about 8 inches deep.

Not enough room yet. Dig more. We dug and chopped away at this trail for over an hour as well as letting almost all of the pressure out of the tires and taking everything off the roof to lessen the height of the 4runner. Still not enough room. By this time, we were almost out of water and didn’t have any more food. Heat stroke could become a real danger doing this labour in the direct sun for a prolonged time. Despite our best efforts, we decided to fill in the hole we dug, call it quits and turn around before either of us became injured or ill. Plus, the possibility of more fallen un cleared trees beyond this point was a greater possibility now that we had reached a point where the track hadn’t been cleared. Chances are that the rest would not be clear either. Make no mistake, we will be back one day to finish the route!

want to explore this area for yourself? Drop us a line johannesasteudel@gmail.com and we’ll provide you with more info!