Western Harrison – Midway

It had been some time since our last visit to the west Harrison area, so we planned to visit the region in early October but weather got in our way. Then I was off to Ontario for a couple of weeks. So here we are in November and finally able to get back out into the hills.  I have explored the southern area many times and even driven the length of the lake on several occasions but very few of the side roads around 20 mile bay and north have been explored by me. So those roads were our goal for the day.

Geoff arrived at my house as planned and we finished loading up the truck and then went to start it. But the battery was dead! Not at all a good start to the drive. It seems that the battery is no longer holding a decent charge and we needed to jump it from an old battery Geoff had on my charger, that worked fine and off we went. We kept the truck running when we stopped for coffee but then when we filled it up we didn’t have a choice, but it should have charged enough by then. It hadn’t! We jumped in our second battery and cranked it, but even that battery barely made it! While driving we decided to just keep the engine running for the day.

We made good time to the start of the roads and then up to the first viewpoint overlooking Harrison Lake. Here we stopped and I gathered a few images. While stopped there we were passed by one of the few vehicles we met during the day.  After a few more minutes we continued up the mainline. From the Mystery Creek area we didn’t encounter any more people on the roads until we were well on our way back home. The area seemed completely deserted which suited us quite well. The one thing we did decide was to not push the driving so far that we would need a winch to get us out.  With weak batteries winching may not have been possible.

As we started our way north, we drove past the gated entrance to the Woods Lake campsite, here we spotted a jeep that was bottomed out trying to get up and over a steep berm next to the gate. He was stuck teeter-tottering but he had his own winch and was busy getting it set up to pull himself over the barrier, so we just had a good chuckle and kept driving. I’m not sure why he was so determined as there really isn’t much to see through there. We made good time up through the Mystery Creek branch and then started looking for a side road to drive. It didn’t take long before we came by one on our left – the upside of the slope.

This short spur gathered a bit of elevation and took us through some cleared areas. The views and colours were not all that impressive but we d id spot some interesting fungus growing on the road and then some constructed wood objects discarded along the shoulder. Towards the end of the spur the view looking down on 20 mile bay was actually quite amazing and I gathered a number of shots. We returned to the main line and continued north. We came by a major side road and turned up it but soon we were blocked by a beaver pond that had formed across the road. The culvert had gotten blocked and the water backed up to overflowing across the road. Meanwhile a beaver had added a number of branches to build the level up even higher. We possibly could have crossed but we weren’t sure how deep it got so we decided to pull out some of the debris and see if the level would drop. It started to drain but it was going to take quite some time so we decided to continue up the mainline.