Capturing the Art of Nature
Mamquam
The Mamquam valley has lots of interesting side roads to explore and I have seen only a few, so off we went to try a few new ones. Though we found a few, snow stopped us short of the best.
Category
Serendipitous Discoveries
2013
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It is still early in the season this year and the upper roads are well buried in snow but the lower ones along the various rivers should be free to travel or so I thought would be the case with the Mamquam. I really quite enjoyed the far end of the valley and I hoped to get back there today. Alas the upper reaches of the river do gain some serious elevation and we were high enough to be stopped by snow well before the area I wanted to see. So I will need to return in late May.
The drive up the initial road section was surprisingly busy on the road radio frequency. It seemed that there was a fair amount of activity and we immediately started to wonder what was going on. As the announced vehicles passed they were all pickups and we didn’t encounter any heavy logging equipment so we were even more curious as to what was going on. Just past the bridge we took across the Mamquam we found out. There is a new Run-of-the-River project being constructed on the tributary to the Mamquam River – the Skookum Creek Project. It was well underway and workers were busy today.
Our road continued past the works area to the project but here the road took a serious drop in traffic and it was no longer a clear and open road. The heavy growth alongside the road was still folded over across the road from the recently departed snows and we had to weave our way through the trees and even chop a few out of the way. By the time we reached the Crawford Creek FSR branch the snow had started to appear on the road and we were able to go only a short distance further. So we grudgingly turned around and slowly drove back through the maze of trees, stopping in a few places for some photos.
Just past the power project but before the bridge we came across another side road which we decided to follow. This one connected to the Ring Creek FSR which joins the Garibaldi road across the valley. As we reached the rise above the power station we learned that this was the chosen path for the power wires from the station and the road was muddy but clear and so we followed along the newly constructed power poles. After a few kilometers we reached the end of the road. The road was deliberately blocked and the next power pole was serviced from the far end! Most annoying. It was a nice outlook next to the last tower and Ethan thought it was a good spot to do some archery and so he set up his target while I relaxed and took a few photos.
Done shooting we back tracked to the first set of poles we had come by and which were looking down on the generating plant below. Here we had a great view of the Mamquam valley and so we decided to eat lunch here. Once done with eating, Ethan did bit more target practice before we started out. He had found a nice disk shape log piece that he shot into. Unfortunately for him his grouping was too good and the arrows caused the wood to squeeze tightly around the arrows making it very hard to extract them. He did manage to get them out, after that he shot at an old canvas bag which we found next to the tower.
A pair of motor bikes zipped past while we were eating and then as we started down the road to the bridge we met up with two cyclists coming up the road. We said hi and quickly made our way down and to the bridge. The bridge was unfortunately blocked by a truck picking up discarded bridge timber. They finished the piece they were lifting before moving their truck out of the way. We decided to head back to the Indian River side road to see how far we could get along there but snow blocked us at the 5km point and so I didn’t have a chance to see the river where they took out a bridge to restrict access, perhaps next time. It was still too early to head out so we drove back up the mainline to the next side road and started up this branch. We actually got to over 700m thanks’ to it south-western exposure before being stopped by snow. The road continued further up the flank of Mt. Mulligan and I think it may prove to be a decent hike come summer. Well it was starting to get a bit later in the afternoon so we decided to head back to the mainline and out to the highway. But I felt like coffee so we took a short detour to Squamish to pick up some caffeine before the long trek home.