Of the many hikes we’ve done around the world, this one in the Bella Coola area of the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia deserves our Four-Boots rating, enters our Top Ten list, and is one we’ll never forget—for reasons you’re about to discover.
Starting with the road in.
Driving Rove-Inn eighteen kilometres up the Clayton Falls Forest Service Road to the top of the switchbacks took us an hour and fifteen minutes. Our average speed: four km/hr!
The road is narrow, rough, pocked with potholes, ridden with sharp rocks. And purposely cross ditched with numerous water bars—for enhancing water runoff in a remote area where installing culverts would be too expensive.
Originally, we planned to drive the full twenty kilometres to Blue Jay Lake. By the time we reached the summit, we’d had enough.
There was only a Sprinter/Winnebago and a pick-up truck at the top of the pass. An unmarked trail veered off to the left, but we had seen the sign for M Gurr Lake at kilometre seventeen where a handful of vehicles were parked. “Let’s put our hiking boots on up here,” Magellan suggested, reaching into our boot bag behind the driver’s seat. He probably wanted a longer reprieve from getting behind the wheel again, even if it was only a steep kilometre down!
Had we only hiked the one-kilometre trail through the stunted sub-alpine forest to the lake, we’d give this hike a single boot up the you-know-where. Slippery tree roots. Boggy bits. Overgrown vegetation nipping at our bare arms and legs. (“Mr. Oregon”, owner of the Sprinter/Winnebago, whom we talked to at End of the Road Coffee shop the next morning, has excellent advice that he got from locals that you won’t find in any trail info: take the unmarked trail at the summit for a more direct and shorter hike to the ridge top viewpoint.)
M Gurr Lake, though, is an alpine gem. And from here on, there are unnamed emerald lakes and mountain ponds in every hollow. The trail, although rated moderately challenging (about 300 metres of elevation gain over 1.7 km—Magellan admitted to considering laying down and not completing the last 50-metres to the top!), opens up to 360° vistas of Coast Mountain peaks rimming North and South Bentinck Arms, Burke channel and the upper Clayton Falls Valley. Wilderness, silence, and beauty, all around us.
AllTrails brief description of M Gurr Viewpoint says “…it’s unlikely you’ll encounter many other people while exploring.”
Our Rip Rap campsite neighbours went only as far as the M Gurr Lake. Ditto for a Brit we’d met earlier in the day. On our way down, five Aussies were at the lake, but given they passed us on the drive out, we don’t think they hiked all the way to the ridge, either.
“Did you make it to the top?” Magellan asked a kid coming down with three adults. In four hours on the trail, we saw that nine-year old and only thirteen other hikers.
It was 5:30 when we reached Rove-Inn, the only vehicle at the trailhead. I could hardly wait to get out of my boots and into my sandals.
“I don’t see the boot bag,” Magellan said, rooting around in the car. “Did you put it in the front?”
I couldn’t recall whether it had ever been out of the car. But clearly, one of us had taken it out. And left it at the summit.
Up we drove on the steepest grind on the entire road, for the second time that day.
No one was there.
Neither was our boot bag.
“Maybe whoever found it left it at the trailhead sign,” Magellan speculated, ever the optimist.
It wasn’t there, either.
Nor was it at the beginning of the Clayton Falls FSR, which he thought might be another possibility.
Our last hope was the RCMP office in Bella Coola. The door was locked, and no one picked up my call from the after-hours phone on the side of the building.
Without our camp slippers, it was going to be cold climbing the ladder to our rooftop bed in bare feet. Without my sneakers or Tivas, it was going to be heavy-footed driving in hiking boots. Magellan had tossed his sandals in the back seat, so he wasn’t so badly off, although his Lems were in the missing bag. But hey, the hike was outstanding, Rove-Inn’s undercarriage survived the FSR, and our dinner of lemon pasta with tuna was the best thing we ate all day. And even with my bunioned feet, I could probably buy a new pair of sandals in Bella Coola for the drive home.
It was after we’d devoured blueberry pancakes and bacon the next morning when Magellan’s cell phone rang. It was the RCMP—some kind soul had dropped off our boot bag!
“Our officers were exhausted yesterday,” the woman at the desk told us, “some of them had been on duty for twenty hours. When we got the call, Dustin came back in to take the bag.”
“Do you know who found it?” I asked. She didn’t, and Dustin had just left.
Magellan had a name card on the bag, but only with our home telephone number, not his cell. “I guess the RCMP has ways of getting that info,” he said.
What can we say?
Don’t we live in a great country?
Navigation
Magellan and Spice Hiking Rating:
Varied scenery (Moving) water
Some challenge
Summit payoff
Wildlife Solitude
Surprise/unexpected delight
AllTrails review of the hike.
To see our hike, including the drive down the single-lane Forestry Service Road, cxlick the Play Button in this really neat 3D Interactive Map
And below is the conventional 2D version:
8 Responses
Spectacular views!
You could spend a lifetime exploring the natural beauty of this province.
Great country to hike and travel, best parts is not too many people to crowd the area. Some very excellant fishing on the highway 20 side of your trip, scenery is second to none as your pictures can attest.
Glad your boot bag was found👍👍👍👍
Cheers,
Yes, we caught Brook Trout at Anahim Lake; three of them pan-fried with has browns made a fine breakfast.
Oh my! What an adventure. Glad you got your boot bag back. And glad Rove-Inn survived.
We were thrilled to get it back. Rove-Inn has developed a new ache (in her springs Magellan thinks), possibly from that adventure.
Looks amazing..Heather
And now we know it could be a loop trail, or a ridge viewpoint trail without a trip to the lake.