My vision of boondocking in BC when I first contemplated the idea was to head up any logging road and camp somewhere up in the hills. Logging is everywhere in BC, I thought this would be easy. Turns out that it is more difficult than I thought, but certainly possible, if you look hard enough for it. After my re-supply I was planning on heading up my first logging road, to the dizzying height of 100 metres above sea level.
My explorations of logging roads had taught me two things so far. One, any area near civilization is likely to be gated off, so no boondocking there. Two, anything logged longer than ten years ago (give or take) is likely to be overgrown if it is not maintained, so no boondocking there either. That narrows the range down quite a bit. The south end of Vancouver Island is much more populated and anything can be considered near civilization. The north end follows more the rule if it is off a highway or near a town it likely will be gated off.
While you could take out the first tree, the road gets progressively worse further in.
I said give or take earlier as a lot of roads get a bit of informal maintenance, I’m guessing by hunters who want to maintain access. But they will take out enough for a truck, not an RV so sometimes you are blocked by a tree that has partially fallen, too low for your RV. Those are the worst, as they are difficult to cut at height.
These are Red Alders starting to grow on the road
You might lose out on an area if the road passes through a particularly suitable to bush section and the bushes start encroaching early. I’d guess other parts of BC with a less lush climate take longer before the roads start to grow in too. In my case, snow was an issue too thanks to the previously miserable weather. I still needed to stay low to avoid the white stuff, so no going into the higher country.
This road is just starting to grow in. The area was logged about nine years ago
So my initial scouting focuses on areas that had recent logging from looking at the googles earth. I will consider older logging cuts, but generally there has to be maintenance for them to be navigable, like my road into Suquash. I had the luxury at my previous camp to be within walking distance of some of the places I thought had potential, so I walked over, checking the roads along the way. The snow had melted enough that I was pretty confident I’d make it over the one snowy bit. I’d even thrown some gravel and sand over the icy bridge, just to make it as safe as possible.
I head into town, resupplying my propane in the only place within two hours to be able to fill an RV tank. I only mention this because the previous week their pump had been out of service, reminding me how sparse services are up here. One outage can result in a lot of travel if you need something now. But I had been able to stretch my propane one more week, freezing a little more than I’d like at night.
The drive back was uneventful, but I still was a bit nervous heading over the icy bridge and up the snowy bit. The RV only slithered just a tiny bit, no problem this time. I’m certainly a little more gun shy now that I’ve run off the road once. Past that, the snow is all melted and I turn up the Varney 100, excited to see what kind of spot I could get. I ended up going past my initial spot I scouted since the road was free of snow now. The spot I selected is a little higher up with a little more room and a better view. In my previous hike up here, I saw some of the tracks ended at the steep bit where the vehicle could no longer make it up the snowy hill. They’d camped with a messy fire right on the road – not the first time I’ve seen that out here.
While I couldn’t see Rupert Inlet from here, the view was still nice enough with the young trees. My googles earth historical imagery showed the old trees disappearing in 2016 so I was looking at trees around five years old for the most part. There was a nice little brook burbling past my RV here, going around the site and down the road. It made for a calming sound to listen to for sure. Being on the side of the road wasn’t the best. A dead end would be better for solitude, but I figured not too many people would pass. There were some – the road goes back in a ways and branches to several different areas. That also meant I had lots of trails to explore, as you’ll see next time!
Sunset my first night boondocking on the Varney 100
