Completed - Jones Lake/Hunter Creek day trip.

[BC backroader]

Headed out after lunch today to pick up a new rock hound buddy, who drives a Chevy Cruze, definitely not suited to our logging roads, where the good rocks hang out. Our first objective was Jones Lake, S of Hwy 1, W of the town of Hope. As we started up the road, it was as steep and bumpy as I recalled from my last trip there, almost 30 years ago. What wasn't the same, was the amount of traffic coming down the very dusty road. We stuck it out, and went the 9 km to the lake, where we found huge weekend cabins that I didn't remember, and tents at every spot on the beach. The old trails that used to go beyond the lake were badly overgrown, in some spots even too much for atv's, so we turned around and headed for our second target, Hunter Creek, which I had made a run on last year, while some active logging was going on along the main FSR.

This turned out to be a winner, as I could tell as we turned up the first hill, that no logging was happening this year. There were deep ruts, and washouts across the trail, but nothing that would stop the lifted TB. As we climbed the steep valley we met no other trucks at all, and never did, in our 4 hours on the trails up there. The hills definitely needed 4lo, both up and down, but there were some nice level sections that were very smooth. We explored to the ends of the first and second branches, which I had not done last year, and got some spectacular mountain scenerey for our efforts. Jim didn't find any stones that he thought worthy of collecting, so we turned downhill for home at about 6:30, getting me home for a late 8:00pm supper.

The better parts of the trail were an easy 1.0, but some of the steep hills and washouts pushed other parts into 2.5 class.

Here are some scenery shots: