Siwash Creek & Anderson River FSR's

In August we drove the valley from the south end but we didn’t get very far up the FSR as it was far too over-grown for our truck to follow the road. So we were inspired to try the road again but this time from the north end to see how close we would be able to get to the furthest point we made in August. Our day started off well and we made good time to Hope but there we were stalled by the slow filling of the gas tank. It has been a problem for a couple of months but today it was really slow and we ended up restarting the process twice as we just couldn’t tell how close we were to being full. Once that was complete we headed up the Fraser Canyon to Spuzzum and the start of the FSR.

Two things I noticed upon entry were that the name of the road was Anderson River FSR not Catermole as the book shows and second that it was gated at 13km. So we proceeded with uncertain expectations. The road parallels the Fraser for a few kilometers offering a few viewpoints, but soon heads east through an extremely narrow valley, shared with a moderately flowing creek. Once through the narrowest section we arrived at a fork. Both choices seemed well used but the southern one had an open gate on it. The gate looked like it hadn’t been closed for quite some time so we felt fairly comfortable heading on in.

Soon after we started down the road we came to the first of many branches. The area seems well covered by roads leading to all areas of the valley and we were trying hard to select the branch that seemed most likely to reach the far end of the valley. We came upon some interesting features as we drove; the most noticeable was that autumn was indeed starting. Many of the maples had started to turn colour and offered us some lovely reds and oranges. It should be really nice in a couple of weeks. About mid valley we chose a road leading to the left and after making our way along it for a while we came upon a chap gathering branches along the side of the road. We continued past him but soon came to the end of the road. On our return we stopped to ask him what he was doing. He was gathering small branches for Christmas decorations – they are shipped to eastern Canada. He says he can fill his truck in about four half days of work netting him around 3 grand! Not bad for a pleasant romp in the back country.

We returned to the fork and took the right branch and after trying one other short spur we continued south until the road was once again too over-grown to continue. At this spot we were only about 2km from the place we stopped at coming north. We back tracked a few hundred meters to a wider cleared area and there we set up the HF radio for our 1:30 communication test. While we were setting up a group a dirt bikes and 2 atv’s came out of the narrow road having just passed through the section we couldn’t. They said that they had spent an hour building a small bridge for their atv to be able to cross a stream! I guess that would have stopped us even if the road didn’t. They eventually had to return back through the over-grown section despite the strong reluctance of the chap on the atv! Meanwhile I was trying to reach home on the HF radio but was unable to make contact. I did hear chaps in San Diego and one in Germany who were both working a contest. After 15 minutes of trying we packed up the gear and started back up the road.