Completed: Garnet Creek to American Creek Pass, BC

by **BC backroader** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 10:37 pm

This was a short day trip, with a buddy riding shotgun, and another couple of buds in an Explorer, to scout a local trail that I had never run, in 50 years of backroading. I didn't know any of those existed within 2 days drive of me! We headed out at 0800, with clouds, but the 2 day downpour had ended about midnight last night, so we hoped for no washouts.

We met up in Mission at Tom's, who was the only one who had run the trail before, and headed east on Hwy 7 about 40 min. to Ruby Creek, a small settlement on First Nations land ( the PC term for the rez), and found the trail start. It was because of it's location on the reservation, that I had never noticed the trail before, as it's not signed at the Hwy, and looks like a driveway into a business. The FSR (Forest Service Road) starts to climb immediately from 60' ASL at the turnoff, to about 1200' by km 4, then contours the valley for 5 km, and once again climbs steeply for another 5 km, topping out at about 2600' at the point where it crosses a gap in the mountain, and becomes American Creek FSR, and descends to Hwy 1 a few km east of the town of Hope. We were unable to complete the loop down, as we hit deep, wet snow at the pass, and were not equipped for that, as I don't yet have the right size chains for the truck ( I'm waiting to buy them after I do the lift and upsize to 31-32" tires), and my Hankook ATs weren't cuttin' it in that stuff. At that point we turned around, and trekked back out to the start point, then headed back to our favourite greasy spoon, in Matsqui, for a good lunch, and to make plans for a run up this road later in the year.

This was not a hardcore trail, probably a 2 on your scale, though some side branches looked like they could be a bit more challenging. We'll find out later.

Some shots from today:

Hmmm - I see they load from bottom to top, so I'll have to remember to load in reverse next time :-0