Whistler to Hedley : Dirt roads,Landslides and Forest Fires

Here is the old Guichon Ranch 'Home Ranch', most of the buildings are behind the trees. Last time I was here with my Dad everything was pretty much as he remembered it from the 1950's. The bunkhouse where they slept, the harness makers shed, the horse barn, the root cellar. From his stories of the years he spent here, it was a great life for a young guy, lots of adventure, hard work, comraderie. Riding, roping, branding - all the old school cowboy stuff. I'll post a couple of old pictures from this era.





We rode towards the Douglas Lake Ranch, the largest working cattle ranch in Canada. The largest used to be the Gang Ranch, but I seem to remember that it changed hands a few times, and maybe was split up?
From our backroads of BC map book, we had chosen a route through the open range, heading for Penask Lake, which had a couple Forest Service campsites marked near it.



It's such great country here, big skies, rolling grasslands, no houses or people. Just birds and cows, and the grass waving in the wind. I still don't know why its such fun to ride on dirt roads, maybe it reminds me of growing up, and when my cousin Greg and I would ride along the dirt roads from our farms, sometimes venturing as far as the highway if we were feeling bold. We would look at the blacktop, watch the cars flash by, do a couple wobbly circles on the asphalt, then head back to the safety of the quiet country roads, maybe a bit freaked out by the grown-up world of highways.

Wow just seen a lot of familiar places, just came back from a trip from merrit - lytton- to lillooet via the ferry - Towards Goldbridge cross the mission mountain dam and into seton portage, - D'arcy - Pemberton duffey lake road into lillooet again and to lytton on the normal side and then back home. It was a great trip my favorites were the from lillooet to D'arcy and the duffey lake road. awesome scenery.

This section of your ride looks so much like eastern Oregon, where I grew up, it's giving me goosebumps. I haven't been back there in 2 years, and haven't spent more than a day or two there in a decade. Every time I visit, most of it looks just like it did 20 years ago, right down to the trucks parked in front of paint-chipped barns.

Keep the pictures coming!

My Dad and My Uncle sometime in the 1950's working at the Guichon Ranch...tryin' to look cool.






This is what I was thinking about as we rode our bikes through the open range.....



Apparently Dad spent two whole summers living in this cabin with this old coot. They remained friends for years, the old guy died on the ranch, a lifelong employee, and apparently loved every minute. I wanted to try and find this cabin, too see if its still standing, but need to go over a map with my dad first, to figure out where the hell it is.

Doesn't this piece of road just sum it all up? It's so much fun to ride these dirt roads with no other vehicles around, no houses, no people...sweet! I could pitch a tent right here and just ride back and forth on this stretch of road for a few days.




OK. There WAS a traffic jam at one point.








This was our turn off, nicely sign posted. We stopped and had lunch here.

So after lunch, we wound our way towards Penask Lake, kind of assuming it would be an easy afternoon, probably arrive early and go for a swim, make some food, have a beer or two. It was hot and dusty, so that idea really sounded appealing.
The nice swoopy range roads turned into not so nice logging roads that didn't seem to jive with either our GPS maps, or the Backroads Mapbook. We overshot, we backtracked we turned around, we re-traced.



We ended up somewhere on the north side of Penask Lake, the shadows getting longer, and us getting hungrier. Kind of sucked, but we kept slogging. And hey, we were riding motorcycles! How could that not be fun?




hey, bear tracks...cool.



There was a sign telling us we were in the general vicinity of Penask Lake, but offered no hints as to how we actually might find it. We still hadn't actually seen even a glimpse of the lake, just jackpines and logging roads of varying crappyness. Looks like someone else rated the less then helpful government attempt at directional signage as a three blast effort.





Craig gave this gate and sign the full ADV salute.

We eventually found our way out of the maze, something about a road to Marsh Lake, which didn't seem to be on either of our maps...anyway, we bounced along some more logging roads, finally got dumped out on a more main forest service road heading towards Hatheume Lake. There were FS campsites listed there, so that's where we headed, with light fading fast.





Looks like the same sign critic gave this one a FAIL as well....




Finally. Home for the night!



This whole trip, all of BC was under a campfire ban, which took some of the fun out of camping. This was still a great site though.




Lots of Loons on this lake, and saw some massive trout jumping! Seriously, they sounded like seals flopping around out there. We are definitely bringing fishing gear the next time round. The coyotes yipped and howled all night, competing with the loons. Great sleep.




Sunrise through Craigs tent......




Beautiful morning....time to get packed up.




But need coffee first!

Thanks! Much appreciated.

We rode for what seemed like a long way this morning, past a few little lakes, lots of cut blocks, saw a cow moose and calf. We were headed towards Lake Okanagan, aiming to come out on the westside road across from Kelowna.





The road had recently been graded, which made picking a lane a bit of a head scratcher. The little ungraded band down the center varied in width, and got pretty narrow at times....






Came across the grader, who stopped and turned off his machine.




He was really chatty, wanted to know where we had come from, where we were going and was particularly interested in which logging roads we had taken. He said it would be difficult seeing any signage coming from Douglas Lake, as the those roads were made to be travelled from the Kelowna end. I wonder if logging companies don't put up any real signage to discourage people from using these roads? Grader operator must be a a bit boring at times, he seemed glad to have someone to talk to.




We cruised along towards Okanagan Lake, the roads got wider, flatter, dustier. We started to see logging trucks, one after another, filling the warm air with chalky dust. We were descending, losing elevation, the air getting hotter as we dropped....finally coming out across the lake from Kelowna. You can see the floating bridge that crosses from Kelowna to Westbank in the distance.

We took the highway through crazy busy Westbank, so much traffic. Our first stop was Cafe Artigiano, for some great coffee and breakfast. We were JUST taking off our helmets in front of the cafe, and this dude walks past the bikes, he's wearing a wife beater and zebra striped cowboy hat, and says "what did ya get those bikes from a couple of little girls?" . Moron.



After breakfast we gassed up, checked tires, got groceries....and tried our best to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.



We were headed for Hedley, and looking forward to seeing the Nickel Plate Road that so many ADV Riders have talked about. We got off the highway at Peachland and looped through some really nice roads.

Some of this days riding was straightforward, some of it was damn confusing!



"ummm...that route will get us killed"




Lets ask a friendly local...damn, nearly couldn't see him on his camo atv....

Yes please!







Twisties make us hungry ... lunch at the creatively named, 'Fish Creek'.




Floppy pannini sandwiches, which in fact were really good, despite floppyness, complete with tasty little morsels of pasta salad....thanks hot girl at Cafe Artigiano!




As we neared Summerland, things seemed to go somewhat pear-shaped, as my English friend would say. Maps and signage seemed either to be temporarily beyond our pay grade, or that in fact it was another case of actual poor signage. Not even teen age girls on horses could help.

We had gone a fair ways up what we thought was the right logging road, but it really seemed to be heading the wrong direction. Craigs GPS was sometimes helpful, and sometimes not so much. On this road I believe it was telling us our location was 'vegetation'. It was also a really busy active haul road, with logging trucks creating huge clouds of dust as they barreled past us. We turned around and headed back down towards Summerland, and on a particularly dusty corner, on a pretty steep downhill grade, Craig's front wheel plowed into a thick windrow of floury dust, pushed into a long heap by countless logging truck wheels. You couldn't really tell it was there, and luckily we were going pretty slow. Craig had to do a slow motion step off the bike kinda thing, the bike briefly taking a little dirt nap. Not a big deal, and he sort of superman-like, picked the bike up before any more logging trucks careened around the corner. Some minor scrapes on the body work and pannier, broken clutch lever tip...no worries.



We ended up on Green Mountain road, eventually, and rode up to Apex Ski Resort.

I forget where exactly this was, but there was some sort of cow jam happening.

Beautiful country!



They all do that.

WarLlama "They all do that"

All Vstroms?! Yeh, what Craig really needs is an F800GS. Come to think of it, that's exactly what I need too.

We rode past the Apex ski resort, and headed for a FS Campsite just a few Km's past the resort. The weather was really weird, and the temperature had dropped severely because of the elevation we were at. After a bit of humming and hawing, we decided to press on. Nice alpine flowers though....




The sky had been turning stormy, and now a huge black cloud seemd to be taking over most of the sky to the North. That was fine, cause we were heading south....

The Nickel Plate Mine....



First glimpse of the valley below, which we hoped would make for warmer camping.

The green fields and orchards line the banks of the Similkameen River, still far below us. The big black cloud of the north was spitting rain at us by this time....



First look at the crazy twisted piece of road that will take us to the valley floor.



Wow!!!

This is what the Nickel Plate descent looks like on the GPS.....





We camped beside the Similkameen River, the weather had cleared, and we had come to the end of our trip. From here, I'd head east back to Nelson, Craig would brave the traffic of the lower mainland and catch a ferry back to Vancouver island. What a great trip we had.









Its amazing how dried noodles, some bread and a cold beer taste like something Mario Batali just whipped up, when its August and you are sitting beside some dirty motorcycles on the banks of a river in the sunshine.

Great pics. Will you be posting a gpx file or map of the route you took, with highlights? Would love to get some firsthand knowledge like this for a future trip. Thanks for bringing us along. More....