Stein Valley, BC

Congrats to everyone who played Canadian Nats last weekend in Victoria.  I’m still out with my knee injury (the current diagnosis is a torn medial retinaculum) but it was exciting following everything online.  Congrats to Zephyr on reaching their goal of top-four in Canada and to my brother Dev who won bronze with Calgary’s Open team “The Ghosts”!

While everyone else was sweating on a field in Victoria I was relaxing next to the beach at Harrison Hot Springs.  This post though is from a backpacking trip to Stein Valley just before my knee injury over the May Long Weekend.  The Stein Valley is a great early season hike since it’s at a low elevation so that the snow clears out by the end of April.  Plus most of the hike is right along the river which means it’s hard to lose the trail (always a concern in the wild, wild BC West).    Unfortunately I’m missing quite a few photos since Rod’s camera met an untimely end.  Only about an hour from our car heading back out we stopped for a break near some steep cliffs and the camera went tumbling down.   That's our offering to the river gods I suppose.

The trail starts a little ways beyond Lytton, but to get there you have to take a ferry across.  It’s tiny with a maximum load of only two cars.  We had to wait awhile for our turn, but it was pretty neat.  It’s a “reaction ferry” which is propelled entirely by the river by angling the rudders into the current.  The overhead cable guides the ferry to the other side.  It’s environmentally friendly operating on just a little man-power to turn the rudders  (there’s an emergency motor which is rarely used) !   We were a bit worried as to high water levels since the spring melt can put it out of commission, but luckily we missed it by about a week.

The provincial park is a rare success story in conservation -  there was a plan in the 80s to log the valley, but there were enough protests raising awareness and public support  that a park was created in 1995.  A strong argument was that it was the last untouched watershed in the southern Coast Mountains.

Entrance to the park through the valley:

Stryen Creek bridge close to the start of the trail:

The park is run jointly between BC Parks and the Lytton First Nation since the Stein Valley has been used for centuries by aboriginals for spiritual purposes.  There are pictographs and petroglyphs, although you have to look closely to find them.  (FYI I didn't know this before but pictographs are paintings, done almost exclusively in red ochre, while petroglyphs are carvings).

Ponderosa pine trees forming a tree memorial for members of the Lytton band, a number of whom helped protect the Stein from development.

I think I’m going to introduce “thar” into my vocabulary. 

This park is also great because there are campsites every 3-4 km.  We decided to push on and go 15 km to Suspension Bridge Camp to escape the crowds and multiple boy scout/girl guide groups.   To get there we went past the “Devil’s Staircase”; this was the most elevation we got on the trail, which wasn’t that bad except that I had Beck’s “Devil’s Haircut” song stuck in my head the entire way up. 

The eponymous suspension bridge of “Suspension Bridge Camp”:

Vancouver’s Clubtread hiking website says of Suspension Bridge Camp “Lots of camping room here, but room for only about 5-6 tents *perfectly* level.”  Ha!  We were the second group of people to arrive.  Not wanting to crowd the first tent and not knowing how many were still to come, we tried to give the first guy some privacy but ended setting up on quite the slope.  I woke up about ten times each night having slid all the way down to the bottom of the tent. 

We settled into camp, enjoying the access to fresh water to soak our feet after 15 km of pounding.  The elevation gain wasn’t much (~300 m), but 15 km is still a long way with full packs!  Rod and I’s packs are snuggling after a long day.

 JS cooked us a delicious meal with lamb sausage, chickpeas and roasted vegetable curry.  We thought we were being a bit ridiculous dragging several litres of wine up the trail to enjoy with dinner, but we were put to shame by a crazy group in their mid-thirties who had whole vegetables (onions, leeks, dill, etc.), a cutting board, beer, a pineapple  (!?) and eggs.   In the morning while they were cooking up their eggs we saw a guy add a splash of amber liquid to the pan.  Olive oil we guessed?  “Whisky” was the reply. These guys had EVERYTHING, except for one member of their crew who did the whole hike in crocs and somehow forgot to pack pants (it was pretty chilly in the evening and you feel bad seeing someone wrap shirts around their knees). 

An amicable guy also brought his mandolin entertaining us all with everything from Acadian folk songs to a cover of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” (which I enjoyed much more than the original).  One woman had her own indestructible bear cache barrel which also doubled as a drum for musical accompaniment.   All in all a fun group of hard-core foodies.  

The next day we hiked another ~15 km (7.5 km in and back) to check out some more of the trail.  The trail keeps going another 30 km or so, but we weren’t super impressed beyond the Suspension Bridge; it was pretty much just bushwacking and mosquitoes, although there were some beautiful wild flowers and more glimpses of the river:

Victorious after surviving the Stein Valley!  Let me know if you have any other recommendations for backpacking trails in BC!