Silver River

Time goes by far too quickly, I looked back on my back-country trips and saw that it was late September when I was last out with Geoff. I did one hike in early October with a friend and then my Ontario drives in mid-October, but since then nothing. I was well past the cold-turkey stage but the need to be out there was still strong and only got more pronounced as the morning prep took place and we were finally starting to roll on out. It didn’t take long to settle into the old routine and get a coffee and gas and then the highway. We decided to visit the East Harrison area and see what might be found. Geoff had been going back here near the mouth of the Big Silver for some hunting expeditions earlier this year and he wanted to show me the sites. So that became our first target for the morning.

The drive up the first section of the FSR was in fresh snow but it soon cleared off as we drove north. By the time we reached the Big Silver the ground was clear though we could see the snow on the trees part way up the slope. We zipped up the old landing strip and took a turn at the Pine side branch. This was our first trip since the Forest Service switched the radio frequencies of the road to the new channelized system. The main line was channel RR-19 and the pine was RR-28. It is easier to use than the old frequency based method and fortunately I had programmed my radio some time ago with the new system. But being Christmas week-end we heard no activity on the radio.

We drove in on the Pine branch and followed the newly improved road south towards the lake. It was really quite nice and improved courtesy of the power project as they needed to build a road to the lake and along it north to where they will be anchoring a submerged power line across the lake. We drove the road to where there was a security trailer warning to stay out, but it being Christmas there were no workers or contractors so we just carried on and drove through to the end of the road. It still has a few Kilometers more to go but it was a fun adventure already. I will want to revisit it once completed and it reaches the lake shore in an area not previously reachable.

We back-tracked along this route carefully avoiding a big hole in the road that almost swallowed us whole on the way up. For the most part the road is quite good but there were a few challenges. Done with that road we drove a couple more older spurs and stopped to eat lunch with a view of the lake to the south. It was quite cold out so having a hot lunch was definitely a nice benefit of driving rather than hiking. It felt like old times being out here enjoying nature first hand.

Done with lunch I thought that it would be a good day to go visit the power project as it was unlikely that there would be anyone more than a security type up there. So we headed north and soon arrived at the site of the work camp and generation station. I was right we didn’t see a single person in the camp area and so we continued on through and soon were driving the road which was now on top of the buried penstock of the new power house. We stopped on the high bridge that crosses the river and gathered a few photos, the placed looked like before except that the road was in better shape and a bit wider below the bridge.

We continued a short way further up to where there had been a river crossing years ago but was now a spot with a very scenic bit of the river. Well the crossing was back with a solid bridge and on the far side a huge concrete dam structure for the new power project. I had thought it was to be built a bit further up the river not right on top of the most scenic bit of river! Parts of the old section were still there but a new channel had been blasted through the rock and the bulk of the river was flowing through it rather than over the old route. It was quite a shock to see especially in light of the fact that the brochures of the power project depicted the beauty of the river with this same section of river. It is a bit ironic that they then go a damage it. Generally I am in favour of the river run power projects so I guess I will just wait to see how it pans out once the project is in operation. I did get a chance to walk across to the dam and look over its various structures. It is a lot bigger than other sites I have visited.