| Route |
Bowron Lake Circuit (6 days) |
| Distance |
~116 km (10.8 km portages) |
| Comments | Another trip around the circuit, although, this
time it was just 2 of us instead of the armada that went around last
year with me. My partner on this trip was Jonas. The trip this time was in early May, before the park opened, since Jonas was flying back to Belgium later in May. Aside from two park employees, we didn't see anybody on the circuit. The trip pretty much had it all. Sun, rain, wind, frost, bears, moose, loons, etc. A detail description of the trip is in the trip log below. |
| References |
The park website
has a decent description of each section of the trail. The maps provided by the park staff is sufficient |
| Day 1 |
The original plan was to drive up to Bowron Lake
early in the morning (5 am), but I couldn't sleep so we left at 2 am
instead. We arrived at the park at 1 pm, and were on the portage at
1:30 pm. We managed to get to our site at the very end of Indianpoint
lake by about 6 pm. |
| Day 2 | I woke up at 6:30 am and carried the canoe 3/4
of the way across the portage, and returned to wake up Jonas. We packed
up and began to carry the rest over, when I spotted a black bear on the
portage trail about 30 m in front of me. I waited until Jonas caught
up,
snapped a few bad pictures and then scared the bear off. We continued
along the trail and discovered that the bear had torn one of our
kneeling pads to shreds, and that he had nibbled on Jonas's life jacket
which was attached to the canoe. After the portage we paddled the whole of Isaac lake, camping at end of the lake before the river |
| Day 3 |
A very short day. After completing the portages,
we arrived at McLeary lake. Considering the rain, and the nice cabin,
we decided to call to stay at the cabin there. We were hoping that the
bad weather would move on before we paddled the Cariboo river. |
| Day 4 |
The weather was still crappy, so we decided to
move on, and paddled to Sandy lake. By the end of the day the clouds
were lifting, so we got ambitious and did a hike on the other side of
the Sandy lake after setting up camp. Unfortunately it got windy, which
made it difficult for us to return across the lake, even though I had
the "Muscles from Brussels" in the bow. There were some really cool bear tracks on the beach, and also some cougar tracks, or so we think. |
| Day 5 |
The morning was brilliant, and we set off early.
We paddled to Unna lake and did the short hike to the falls. After, we
paddled to our campsite mid way up Spectacle lakes. We got there a bit
early, so we entertained ourselves with some hacky sack and some hacky
soccer. The evening was clear, so we decided to sleep under the stars
without the tent. |
| Day 6 |
The morning was frigid, with frost on our
sleeping bags. I dragged Jonas out of bed at 6 am so that we could
paddle to Bowron marsh in order to get a good chance at seeing moose. We managed to get to the marsh around 8 am, and in the short 1 hour paddle through the marsh we managed to spot 3 moose, 2 of them were close encounters. We finished our trip around 11:00 am, quickly packed the car, and headed to Barkerville. There we wandered about the old town for a couple of hours before heading back to Vancouver. Instead of driving all of the way we stopped in a motel in Clinton, where Jonas was thrilled to watch Britney Spears videos and sleep on a waterbed. |
| Day 7 |
Drove back to Vancouver along the Sea to Sky
highway. |