Siwash Creek Road

The area between the two highways has attracted my interest for some time but seemed to always elude my planning process. Well today we finally made it to the first of the roads which connect the two highways. My original goal was to enter the road from the Fraser Canyon and drive south-east to the Coquihalla but in planning the trip I discovered a few items of concern and so I decided to reverse the drive. It seems that the area at the north end of the road has had some environmental activism which may have closed off sections of the road. The south end als

 was listed as gated. So which end to chance first? As the Coquihalla side had more secondary areas to explore I chose it as being the area where we would have the best chance of getting into the hills quickly.
My secondary goal was to do another HF radio test and so I was looking for some spots hidden behind a few mountains. Spider Peak in the Siwash Valley caught my attention and soon it was my prime choice for the test. It was quite southerly along the road and seemed like a good goal when we were expecting to come from the north but once I switched directions I was concerned that we would be well past it before the scheduled test time. My fears were not borne out in the end.

Our drive started with a long delay at the Hope Subway. A large group had gotten in there just ahead of us and with the slow staff; we were stuck in there for over 30 minutes. Then it was to the gas station to fill up the tank. Eventually we were on the highway again heading for the turn-off. Once we found our exit we crossed back under the highway before heading up the FSR. I wasn’t able to reach the Hope repeater until we had gained some elevation but once up a bit I was able to contact Carolyn at home to let her know we were now in the hills. I had hoped the gate would be open on the road and when I called the logging company that was responsible their staff couldn’t even figure out where Siwash Road was! It seems it had been long enough that staff turn-over had lost this bit of history. 

Soon we saw the gate and noticed that it was propped open. Upon closer inspection we saw that the lock was still in place but that the gate had been nicely sliced open for us. That was very convenient and so we kept on going. Soon we arrived at the abandoned Carolin mine. The buildings showed some recent mining – they had been stripped of copper wire and were starting to decay. After exploring them we drove to one of the entrances to the mine shafts but it was partially collapsed and full of water. Scenes of the mine having played out; we now continued along the FSR passing a few more decaying relics of the mine. I was able to gather a few images of the valley as we gained some altitude but nothing was particularly screaming out to me.

Before long we came to a viewpoint looking far up the valley to the north-west. It was quite pretty and one could see sections of road far into the distance. Our new question was how to get to it. We had two forks ahead to pick through. We chose the one that looked most traveled but it seemed to be heading in the wrong direction, soon it wound around a small pond before heading up a steep slope. We followed up the slope into a short upper valley that had signs of excavation but soon the road ended and we had to turn back. Unfortunately, on the way in, we had chewed up the mud and it was now a bit slippery and we indeed did get stuck. Our winch made quick work of the situation and soon we were heading down the steep slope to the pond. There we found stacks of mine core samples which looked interesting. Then it was back to the view point where we decided to try the lower road. It soon came to a slide area where we had some boulders blocking our way.