Thurs./Fri. 5/6 August:Mt. Daer Obstacle Course (“The Bad”)
Another trio of fire lookout mountains conquered over two days in British Columbia. I was thinking of calling them “the good, the bad and the ugly”, but that might be a bit unfair on the ugly one, and understating the bad one!
I left town in the late Thursday afternoon rush hour, which in the summer months is not too bad at all.
It’s not very often that I drive west into the mountains at this time of day. The light and the shadows were awesome. The line of mountains west of Canmore was bathed in vertical shafts of sunlight, and Mount Rundle, above Banff, stood out in strong relief under blue skies.
At Castle Junction, I turned off the Trans-Canada Highway onto the Radium Hot Springs road. It’s a hundred kilometer drive through spectacular mountain valleys, through the Kootenay National Park, to Radium. Unlike the Trans-Canada Highway it’s a much quieter road – but not free from speeding Calgarians trying to break the sound barrier on the way to their summer cottages.
This valley has suffered badly from huge forest fires over recent years. Whole mountainsides are filled with dead trees. Through this long stretch of wilderness there are only two camping areas. McLeod Meadows campsite lies hidden in the trees by the Kootenay River, about 30 km short of Radium Hot Springs. It’s quite large, and today was mostly empty. I chose a nice site, pitched my tent, and went exploring down by the river, as the evening light was fading. The trail to my first lookout starts right here in the middle of the campsite.
Complete silence descended early in the valley, as the traffic on the highway dwindled to an occasional vehicle, and there was not a breath of wind on this warm night.
The next morning, the sun seemed a bit reluctant to rise – the shorter days are already noticeable. I was on the trail with my bike by 7.30 a.m. under hazy blue skies.
What a start – two lovely bridges, the first a suspension bridge – crossed the double streams of the Kootenay River. My trail climbed a short bank, and came immediately to the Kootenay Valley fire road. Most people cross straight over and head up to Dog Lake for the fishing. The fire road itself is actually a somewhat neglected grassed-over track through the trees. It was dead flat so I whizzed along on my mountain bike for a few kilometers until I met my first obstruction of the day. A large tree had fallen across the trail, and so I had to detour around it. A little further along, I came to another obstacle, then another. Finally I had to leave my bike behind, and continued on foot.
Just over 6 km from the start, I came to an overgrown road junction. The fire road continued on a short way until it apparently came to an end at a washed out bridge. The lookout road to Mt. Daer turned up to the right. This was my route. Buried upside down in the grass was a wooden sign. I was able to read: “Mt. Daer Fire Lookout - 4 Miles” with an arrow pointing to the left. This old forgotten sign, probably erected when the fire lookout was built in 1959, was a poignant reminder of the day when tourists would easily have driven their cars up to the mountain top to visit the lookout.
No longer! In fact, it very soon became apparent that not even hikers had been this way in a while. For the trail was covered by fallen trees and out-of-control undergrowth. It would have been an easy hike long ago, as the road climbed in a series of seven long, but gentle, switchbacks.
It was particularly bad lower down where multiple trees had fallen. I found myself clambering over trees, crawling under them, and climbing up the hillside above them where there was no way over or under. Some clearer stretches gave me some encouragement, but it really was an obstacle course the whole way up. In fact, I almost lost heart at one point. But then I gained confidence after a while, when I realized I was halfway up, so I told myself that I might as well carry on now.
I had been keeping an eye on the weather, and I could see an early thunderstorm approaching across the valley. It started to rain, so I put on my rain gear. Luckily it proved to be a short shower, and the last one of the morning.
The final switchback was a ludicrous push through dense, wet, seven foot high alder bushes hiding fallen tree trunks! But I was almost there. Finally I reached the end of the road and a clearing in the dense forest. And to my surprise, I discovered a little cabin hidden in the trees. I had not expected this.
The cabin, once the home for the fire lookout person, stood neglected in the trees, with the screen door hanging off one hinge. But the front door looked solid and there were curtains in the intact windows. I felt a little trepidation as I reached out to open the door. Perhaps this was the home of a lonely hermit? The inside came as a pleasant surprise.
Here was a beautiful empty room with hardwood floors, cupboards, sink, and a built-in sleeping area with mattress. The windows still opened easily, and there was a broom in the corner by the sink. But there were paint chips on the floor which had over time been falling from the ceiling. I gained the impression that this had been used as a handy overnight cabin in past years, but that it had perhaps been two or three years since the last person had used it. Given the impossible nature of the trail, this did not surprise me. But the state of this lovely home was a surprise. By the sink was a page from an old newspaper – the Calgary Herald dated June 11th, 1974. It advertised Texas Instruments calculators for $89! I felt compelled to sweep the floor before I left this forgotten home and prepared for more battle with the bushes.
I knew that the old lookout tower had been removed many years ago – and was apparently now being used at a helicopter base in Canmore. I found the concrete bases for this tower hidden in the trees just beyond the clearing. On one of the posts the date of 1959 had been written – the year this lookout was erected.
The return journey back down the crazy trail seemed just a little easier perhaps, but still needed a lot of energy in negotiating all the obstacles along the way. There were very few views on this trail. The occasional glimpse of the towering mountains on each side of the valley was through a haze caused by smoke from the forest fires raging across several areas of BC.
Finally, after the grueling final stretch, I made it back to the fire road junction. I dropped down to the lonely Kootenay River to relax for a short while, before returning to my bike and then back to the campsite. It was not surprising that I had seen nobody at all on this trip – nor any bears luckily. They might have been lurking in the alders a few feet away from me and I would never have known!
For the rest of the day I put my feet up in the campsite, recovering from a tough six hours on the trail. That evening a thunderstorm rolled across the valley, and so I sat in the car enjoying the spectacle. My tent was perfectly dry – easily able to withstand such an assault. It was an early night for me.
Statistics
Mt. Daer Lookout
Fri. 6 August
Total Dist. 14.0 km (hike) +10.4 km (bike) = 24.4 km
Height Gain 1770 ft.
Max. Elev. 5525 ft.
Time on trail 6 hrs. 30 mins.
Sat. 7 August: Above the Clouds (“The Good” and “The Ugly”)A mist clung to the treetops as I drove out of the silent campsite early the next morning, and turned west onto the deserted highway. The mist hid any sign of the mountains which rose steeply on each side of the road. Suddenly, as I started to drop down towards Radium and the Columbia River Valley, the sun came out. It’s a spectacular entry into Radium, through a short tunnel and then squeezing between two cliffs, past the hot pools. Suddenly one could have been in Switzerland. Chalet-style motels with balconies festooned with bright flowers, lined the road. Turning left onto the highway to Windermere, I was once more in the fog.
My destination this morning was Swansea Mountain, site of a former fire lookout. This mountain sits above the resort town of Windermere and its lake. I could see none of this in the fog. Partly by luck I found the road I was looking for and was almost at the foot of the invisible mountain when I came upon a sign proclaiming “Race in Progress”, and two people in red safety jackets barred my way. It seemed very early for a public event, being around 8 a.m. I was directed back and along a mine road which ran slightly higher up the mountainside. Soon I was on the rough fire road heading up a steep mountainside.
The second edition of Mike Potter’s Fire Lookouts book offers a long toil up from the foot of the mountain to the summit. His first edition, however, has you driving almost the whole way up the mountain. I chose to follow the first edition! This proved to be a classic fire road, very like many fire roads I have hiked up this year. So it was fun, for a change, to be driving up the narrow, rough, switchback road, imagining perhaps what it would have been like in the past for every lookout observer on their way to their remote mountaintop lookout homes.
This road ended a few hundred vertical feet from the summit in a small car park. From here it didn’t take me long to climb the steep, narrow trail through the trees to a superb mountain-top. Here I was above the clouds. Far below me, the clouds lay along the Columbia Valley floor. Small sections of Invermere and Windermere were visible through holes in the cloud. This was a sensational vantage point.
This hilltop is used by those crazy people who strap themselves to hang-gliders and para-gliders and launch themselves off the cliff-top using steep ramps. And today would be the grand annual gathering of all these brave souls at the top of this mountain, waiting their turn to cheat death.
Preparing to greet them were a couple of friendly guys who were up there early to set up a barbeque and to coordinate the arrival of the helicopter carrying the hang-gliders from the valley below. It takes a special devil-may-care person to enjoy this sport. One of my new friends told me of one person who took off and headed left instead of right, and ended up hitting a cliff-face head-on. If they get it right, they will land in the car park of the pub down beside Lake Windermere – a definite incentive to turn the right way!
Apparently all the participants were currently enjoying a hearty breakfast in the cloud-covered town below, but would soon all be heading up the fire road to get the day’s events under way. So not wanting to end up in a traffic jam on that steep and narrow road, I didn’t stay long. I should have waited another five minutes as I soon heard the approaching helicopter and missed seeing it drop off the hang gliders. But I was already on my way to my next fire lookout!
Safely back down in the Columbia River Valley, I now turned north, back through Radium, and on to Spillimacheen. Driving through these grand BC valleys is not a journey, it’s a special experience. This long stretch of road from Radium north to Golden is much less used than the Trans-Canada and the road to Windermere. I was able to drive leisurely along the green valley enjoying the scenery and some of the pretty farms and homes which generally looked quite prosperous – although my BC friends tell me the Province is in a mess and nobody can make a living off the land any more. It was hard to tell from a casual glance.
At the tiny hamlet of Spillimacheen I turned off the highway and crossed the valley floor, on a narrow, but modern bridge over the wide and swiftly flowing Columbia River. This valley is part of the great geological feature called the Rocky Mountain Trench which stretches for 1600 km and separates the Rockies from the next range of mountains to the west, being the Purcells.
On the other side of the valley I could see a high, forested hillside, behind which were grand mountains half-hidden in a hazy atmosphere caused by the forest fires across BC. This hill was Jubilee Mountain, and on its summit was my next destination – Jubilee Lookout.
It was an easy job to drive about ten kilometers up the good fire road, to the start of an abandoned mine site. From here the road was everything that the Daer Lookout road wasn’t! In fact, I could have driven all the way up to the lookout itself – but that would have been boring indeed.
Making good time, I soon came to the forested ridge top, where sat a very ugly and tall steel tower, on top of which sat the fire lookout building. In a way it was actually quite spectacular from an engineering point of view. And you could seal yourself off up there and feel very safe. But it was not one of the more scenic lookouts I have seen.
I sat below the tower, looking down on the hazy valley far below. Then I heard a voice from above (!). It was the lookout observer welcoming me and asking me how long I had been there. When I told him I was “doing the lookouts”, he replied “Well, you had better come up then”. Not believing my luck, I quickly climbed the metal stairways winding up the tower, to the upper platform.The friendly observer bore some resemblance to the rugged ex-paratrooper, John Ridgway, whose Scottish Adventure School I had worked at forty years ago. “Forty” seemed to spring up more than once in the conversation. Later he told me he had been hiking for forty years, and I calculated that I had also been hiking for over forty years! In his case, he had encountered a dozen bears, and had been treed once. With many of my earlier hiking years being in Scotland, I had no such statistics to relate!
I was invited inside the spartan lookout building. In the centre was the firefinder telescope. In one corner a bed, and we sat at a table on two upright chairs. Of course the walls consisted entirely of windows and there were no curtains. We studied the maps and he gave me some very handy tips on ridge hiking in the Bugaboos, which on a clear day would have formed a spectacular western horizon for this lookout tower. Today the peaks were a hazy blur.
My friend, whose name I am afraid I did not ask, and was not told, was acting as a weekend caretaker for the woman observer who usually lives up here. He has served as a lookout at several places, including Ironstone, in the Crowsnest Pass of southern Alberta - which I visited earlier this year. He was now retired, but had worked for the forestry service all his life.
In his view the job of the fire lookout in BC is in jeopardy. The government has no money to make repairs or to properly man the towers. This is in contrast to Alberta where he said that people go to Rocky Mountain House for proper training, and of course the lookouts are fully manned all season. Apparently in BC you are lucky if you get as many as ten days a year up in your lookout, as these BC towers are only manned at times of high fire alert. Sadly, this tower on Jubilee Mountain now usually stands empty.
After a very enjoyable chat, I thanked my kind host, and climbed back down the tower to the trail below. I took one last look back up into this colossal – and I still say ugly! - structure before heading down off the ridge.
It didn’t take me very long to stride back down the hill. The lupins were very colorful. The mosquitoes had been a little annoying, but had mostly been kept at bay by my bug spray.
Returning to the valley floor, I stayed on the west side of the river valley, and followed the lonely gravel road to my next destination: Lower Bugaboo Falls. Here the mosquitoes were of the warrior breed. They were out to get anyone who dared to walk the trail, regardless of bug spray. As a result, this was a speed walk through the woods, up to a high point then down to a dangerous clifftop viewpoint of the falls far below. The Bugaboo River carries a lot of water down from the mountains, and the falls were certainly worth a visit- but those pesky bugs were all over one’s face. It took me even less time to get back to the car.
“Bugaboo” seemed to be a very good word to sum up this short hike. Then the pesky blighters all seemed to want to join me in the car and I spent the next ten minutes busily swatting them before I could safely drive away.
And so I returned to my campsite at Mcleod Meadows after a day filled with plenty of exercise – and after enjoying a huge bacon-cheeseburger in Radium. Nevertheless, I had the energy to bike around the campsite and the picnic area taking advantage of the bright evening skies to catch a few photos.
Statistics
Swansea Mountain
Sat. 7 August
Total Dist. 1.0 km (hike)
Height Gain 345 ft.
Max. Elev. 5675 ft.
Time on trail 0 hrs. 41 mins.
Statistics
Jubilee Lookout
Sat. 7 August
Total Dist. 8.8 km (hike)
Height Gain 1035 ft.
Max. Elev. 5503 ft.
Time on trail 2 hrs. 45 mins. (incl. an hour chatting at the top)
Statistics
Lower Bugaboo Falls
Sat. 7 August
Total Dist. 3.0 km (hike)
Height Gain 100 ft.
Max. Elev. 2900 ft.
Time on trail 0 hrs. 29 mins.
Sun. 8 August: Marble MarvelSometime in the middle of the night, it started to rain. It was comforting to know that my tent was more than up to the challenge. As far as I was concerned, it could rain as much and as hard as it liked, as I lay snugly in my sleeping bag. I had taken the precaution to load the bike onto the car rack and take down the tarp the previous evening, so I was able to make a very efficient exit early that morning, without really getting wet.
The return journey through the damp Kootenay Valley was very enjoyable. There was just about no traffic. I saw any number of deer as usual. But then up ahead I saw two dark shapes moving across the road. By the time I could see what they were, one had disappeared into the trees. The other, a large black wolf, stood there in the middle of the road, watching me with curiosity. I took a poor photo of it before it moved off behind the car and into the trees.
Near this same stretch of road on Thursday evening I had seen a black bear shuffling off into the forest. And just a little later in my journey, in busy traffic just west of Banff, a bear raced across the Trans-Canada Highway, jumped over the central barrier, and was narrowly missed by the car ahead of me as it ran off into the trees.
Near the top of Vermilion Pass is a tourist hot-spot – Marble Canyon. There is always a reason that a certain place becomes a magnet for passing drivers. This place lived up to its reputation.
Tokumm Creek tumbles down from the mountains as a normal busy stream, but then suddenly plunges into a deep chasm, 200 feet deep and just a few feet wide, before eventually emerging again, and joining the Vermilion River. The scary scene can be safely observed from a series of bridges built across the canyon, and connected by an easy interpretive trail.
The most impressive place to stand is where the river suddenly takes a dive into the abyss, at the top end of the canyon. This place had been ravaged by huge forest fires in 2003, but the trail and bridges have since been rebuilt. It’s definitely worth a visit – especially if you go early and have the place to yourself.
On the way home, I stopped at the Alpine Helicopters base in Canmore in search of the old Mt. Daer lookout tower – there is a photo of it in Mike Potter’s “Fire Lookouts” book. Sadly it no longer exists, and now a nice new, modern heliport stands in its place.
Statistics
Marble Canyon
Sun. 8 August
Total Dist. 1.4 km (hike)
Height Gain 100 ft.
Max. Elev. 4900 ft.
Time on trail 0 hrs. 26 mins.
Statistics (Total)
Daer/Swansea/Jubilee/Lower Bugaboo Falls/Marble Canyon
Fri. 6 – Sun. 8 August
Total Dist. 28.2 km (hike) +10.4 km (bike) = 38.6 km
Height Gain 3350 ft.
Max. Elev. 5675 ft.
Time on trail 10 hrs. 51 mins.
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