Capturing the Art of Nature
Hope Mountain FSR
Travelling along The Hope-Princeton Hwy one sees numerous roads heading off into the hills. Today we explored the first of these roads.
Category
Serendipitous Discoveries
2009
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I have zipped along the Hope-Princeton highway for years, either heading to Manning Park for a week-end of camping or on through to Penticton for a visit. But in all these drives I never stopped to give the various logging roads a second thought never mind a visit. So it was well past-due for me to see what they offered. As I was planning to hike Hope Mountain in August, this trip would allow us to scout the area and find the trail head in advance of our hike.
So Geoff and I set out in the Pathfinder and after picking up a few food items in the town of Hope we made our way to the start of the FSR. The first half kilometer of the road is actually paved but then quickly deteriorates into a rough road that is actually quite steep. It wasn't very far along the first steep stretch that we started to see smoke trickle into the cabin again. The exhaust pipe was leaking again and overheating the floor beneath the driver's accelerator foot and burning the rug. Geoff stopped to check out the situation and decided to slit the melted rug section, as he did I yelled out saying I could see the road through the cut! We peeled the rug back and discovered to our dismay a 4 by 6 inch gap in the metal with a hot leaky exhaust pipe not an inch below it!
It was now very obvious why the rug burned as the RPM's went up! We were just starting our exploration and with this we couldn't safely continue driving. After a session of expletives from Geoff we stopped to figure out what we could do to drive home. We came upon the idea of using a flat rock to slide over the hole and hopefully provide some protection from the heat and exhaust pipe. As there was a lot of broken rock around it didn't take long to find a suitable rock. We slipped it over the hole and padded it with some heavy outdoor felt we found along the road that we kept soaked. It was working quite well so we decided to continue our exploration and see what we could discover.
The road wasn't too difficult to travel though there were a few very steep sections and tight switch-backs. The road lead up to a ridge line and then dipped over a short ways to where the road ended with a lovely view of Wells Peak. We decided to have our lunch there and after a quick bite Geoff did a bit of target practice with his rifle. We hadn't seen the trail head yet so we retraced our path to fork a third the way back down. The other spur was much more over-gown and didn't go too far but when we got out to explore on foot at the end of the spur we found some ribbons marking the trail. Feeling good we started our way back.
About two thirds the way back to the fork we came face-to-face with another truck. This guy was in a nice shiny truck and as the road was a single lane with tall growth on both sides , he just stopped there in our way. It became apparent that he wouldn't go around us lest he scratch his truck and he wouldn't back up even though he had only a short distance. So Geoff got out his chain saw and cut a few alders to make a widening we could hide in to let him pass. Some guys really are clueless in the back-country. We got to the main FSR and made our way back down stopping for a few photos along the way.
We arrived at home before long having cut the trip short due to the exhaust issue. On reviewing the makeshift floor we saw that the rock had split in the heat. We decided we could repair the hole with a sheet of metal and so we drove to Canadian Tire to get some components and soon we had riveted a solid piece of sheet metal over the hole. It is now likely stronger than the original. We packed on some fiberglass matting next and then put back the truck's rug. It was now quite usable again, though I wasn't so sure I was willing to trust the truck in the bush again.
The trip was shorter than planned but we did find the trailhead and explored a new region. So I felt we had accomplished the main point of the trip. Now I really need to consider what I must do to have a reliable truck for the hills.