Capturing the Art of Nature
Chilliwack Lake in Winter
I hadn’t been out to the lake for some time, so I took the opportunity to explore the area in winter and see how things looked with some snow.
Category
Serendipitous Discoveries
2007
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Ethan and I left for the lake under cloudy conditions. It was not the best of days but we had planned to go and short of heavy rain or snow we thought we could find a few things of interest. The long Chilliwack River road suffered from the heavy wind storm we had the day earlier. I counted three places where the trees had taken out the power lines. On our way down the tree was still hanging out over the road and we had to get on the shoulder to pass – by our return it had been cut back.
When we got to the lake, we immediately started on the logging road but only got a few hundred feet before we stopped as the snow was too deep to keep going. So we backed up to the road and put on chains and tried again. Not far along the road dipped into a valley and the snow was very deep – I thought we would have to turn around after only a half kilometer. It didn’t help that the rut we were caught in almost dumped us off the road! But we just made it through and once up the other side we were able to travel almost to the end of the lake.
The views were quite nice despite the dull overcast clouds. Our first stop was at a rock face with sheets of icicles. The variety of the icicles was quite amazing. As we reached the end of the lake the snow had gotten enough deeper that we were losing traction so I decided to not push it further as Ethan was driving and his snow experience was limited. Just as we were turning around and group of snow mobiles came over the rise to gawk at us, I’m sure they were wondering why we were there taking a chance with a 4x4!
On the way back we also came upon a pair of quads doing their best to navigate the deep ruts. They were having fun kicking up snow everywhere but I must say the sleds were definitely the best tool for the conditions but for one thing. I was much warmer in the cabin!
It was a fun trip, I sure was concerned about getting stuck though and we almost did on a few occasions. When we got back to the main road we came across quite a number of groups with sleds and quads who had come to tackle the road. None of them were taking their trucks down the road however!