The surprises continued as I headed further west. I was going to take a jaunt about 30km up a mainline forest road to check out two more lakeside recreation sites. It was a pair of pairs in succession for me. Having scouted the aerials, I could see my destination looked very promising, which was why I was willing to travel 30km up gravel roads, despite dire warnings about potential floods. I was a bit worried about finding enough sun, but there seemed to be some open areas to check out near the water. Join me to see if the jaunt was worth it.
The rapids at the entrance to Moricetown Canyon
I started my day with the longer drive back to pavement from Kitseguecla. It wasn’t a particular long time as most of the gravel road is quite good. As I had a not too long drive to my next destination, I tried to play tourist a bit along the highway, stopping at what looked like some rapids at the entrance to a canyon. The view from above wasn’t much but I saw you could drive down and cross the river, to a little informal parking lot. Here I saw an old sign telling me the name of the canyon, and the rules at what is part of an Indian reserve. The rapids were impressive, but the grey skies had me taking only my ‘I wuz there’ pictures then moving on.
I continued towards Terrance, where I intended to resupply before heading onto the gravel roads to my next site. You are in the coastal mountain range here, with snow capped peaks around you. The range is the southern end of an area that is still mostly glaciated as you follow the Alaska-BC border. Looking at satellite photos, you will see vast expanses of white with only a few deep valleys having arms of green in them. Imagine that only 10,000 years ago, this whole area was still ice as the ice sheet retreated from the central interior to the east and the coast to the west. The bits remaining show you what all of Canada was like at the maximum ice times. Down where I was, only bits of glacial ice remain, but there is more to the south and north of me here.
I arrived in Terrace to hit the Walmart for resupply. In researching the area, I found out that Prince Rupert recently lost their Walmart due to damage to the building the corporation deemed not worth repairing for the level of business in town. Now everyone from Prince Rupert needs to make the 1.5 hour drive to Terrace to get those always low prices. I was getting the sense already that Terrace was the civilization center of the area. I could also see that there was boondocking in every direction from here. I had previously thought Prince Rupert was where you went to buy stuff, but perhaps not. In fact, one local in my previous camp had described the port city as ‘a bit of a shit hole’. I’d reserve judgement on that for my own visit to the small city.
Flood evidence at the Red Sands entrance
I continued through Terrace after my resupply, turning north just after leaving town and crossing the Kitsumkalum River. This bridge is just above where the river enters the Skeena River, with natives having traveled up both rivers to different camps. Terrace was originally an important junction point the natives lived on. The first bit of road is through an Indian Reserve, with a right hand turn taking you into a gravel mining area. Careful or you’ll miss the turn, ending up in a native suburb area of Terrace. The road continues through some ugly mining scars and what looks like the remains of some lumber mill before finally exiting onto Crown land and trees again. The road is built to a higher standard being a mainline forestry road, so less curvy and hilly. There were stretches of potholes but a lot of the time you could manage 50kph. It’s a good thing you could go faster because I didn’t want to do 30km of potholed road at 20kph.
Beach part of Red Sands campground
I arrive at the turnoff to Red Sands Recreation Site and see evidence that the area did have water running through it at one time. It looked like the road had been repaired to minimum standards – it could flood again, thus the warning signs. Just be wary coming out here during spring runoff combined with heavy rains. I arrive at the site to find no one there. At least I thought there was no one there. I’m surprised at how large the place is. In fact, it is so large I never saw the one other person camped way in the back against the riverside part of the campground until I took a walk around.
The weather improved eventually to get the kayak out
I have the whole beachside to pick from for camping spots, nice! Either end seems nice, but the end I came in on is a bit more separated from the road and other campers, and has just a bit more sun too. That would be my spot for the week. I step out to the water and marvel at the perfect sand. It’s reddish colored, perhaps in the light of a setting sun it could be considered red. From chatting with a local later, I found out the lake is high at the moment due to spring snows still melting, but later on there is a lot more beach to lay on. I’m just happy to have a place to launch my kayak again and try some fishing. But where is everyone at this campground? The place is huge, with a shelter and choices to camp on the beach, in the trees, or with a river view on the backside of the campground. Yet there is only one other camper on the riverside who leaves the next day.
The weather definitely had something to do with the lack of campers. It was cool, windy, with light rain or the threat of rain almost all the time. I wasn’t getting the kayak out in this weather for sure. The site also has an extensive trail system. With the rain being not more than a light drizzle most of the time, I contented myself with daily hikes to explore the trails. Most are in heavy forest, so the wind is much less of an issue.
I walked the first full day over to the other campground I could have gone to. I doubted it was going to be better than what I had found, but I had to see what was there. The trail there is just your average forest walk through pretty flat terrain, nothing much to see. I arrive at Hart Farm Recreation Site to find it almost empty but for one suspiciously permanent looking camper at the far end closest to the river. We chat for a couple of minutes but I can tell they don’t want to be social. Again, this is a good sized campground, but (almost) no one is here.
Hart Farm campground is on Kitsumkalum Lake
Looking at the campground, it is a bit more open than I expected, but with not near as many lakeside spots. At the entrance, the spots closest to the water are also in deep sand. I would not venture to those spots with my RV. There were a couple of spots near the entrance I would consider good with both sun and terra firma. The big advantage is the prevailing winds there are offshore rather than the onshore I had at Red Sands. I would have had no problem kayaking along the shore at Hart Farm even with the wind we were getting.
As I still had too much wind for the next few days, I explored almost all of the trail system in the area. I quickly noticed that the trails were mostly in a state of disrepair, some only slightly, some I found to be near overgrown with boardwalks that were more like obstacle courses rather than paths. Some infrastructure had been partially decommissioned, like the outhouse I found at the top of Look Out Hill that had the toilet removed. The picnic table there was good, but the view was mostly obscured by trees now growing in after logging in years past. The campgrounds were maintained I could see. In fact, someone had been in and raked every site along the beach area clean. But the facilities in the campground were kept up minimally. The trail system looked maintained for some of the popular trails, with the least popular being allowed to grow back in. Bridges were rotting out and all the interpretive signs were gone, only the sheltered backboards remained in various states of decay.
I can only guess at how this campground and trail system came to be like this, but I did get a few clues from the locals that finally showed up on the weekend as the weather improved. It turns out a lot of them don’t even know about these campgrounds, according to one. Evidently, the only time this campground might fill up is on a long weekend with good weather. Another told me this used to be a provincial park but got downgraded at some point. I doubt that, I think this was just a ‘tier 1’ rec site at one point that has been downgraded to ‘tier 2’. There is a paved highway (113) going on the other side of the river valley here. You can hear it in the distance from the campground. But there is no way to get from that close pavement to these campgrounds. You need to travel 30km up the gravel mainline. The road on the other side (east) got paved in 1984 as it goes to some villages and an inlet of the ocean further north. That side, having part of the same Hart Farm Rec site, got upgraded to a Provincial Park with facilities there too. So most people now go there and access Kitsumkalum Lake. As to why these two site were built so big originally, who knows? The era of this building did have a lot of spending, I remember a few very well built facilities in BC from when I was a child.
Pine Lake Dock
The weather was finally improving so I took out the motorcycle to explore one day. I was headed for Pine Lake Recreation Site, a small lake I had passed on the way into Red Sands. Pine Lake turns out to have camping sites, four in total spread between two different spots. There is also boondocking in between on the power line clearing that has lake access. There was even a half sunken dock at the first spot. It looked like a pretty lake to kayak, with some day visitors coming in as I was there on the weekend. It definitely got marked as a potential spot to visit, perhaps on the way back.
Just as narrow behind me, so no turning around
I checked out several boondocking spots on the way back to Red Sands. I don’t know that I’d ever boondock here as the rec sites are pretty quiet, but I did find one spot on a peninsula on Treston Lake, the next lake downstream of Red Sands. It would be a tricky spot to get into, having to back in a hundred meters as there is no way you can turn around there. The peninsula is artificial, being the remains of a mooring pier for big boats built sometime long ago. Other spots I found were not on water – I had hoped to find roads going to the river with camping, but no dice this time.
I returned to my camp to find the sun had come out, with the wind having died down to almost nothing. I hurried to get the kayak into the water and get out for some fishing. The wind had been a constant pain; I was going to delay dinner to get some fishing in while things were calm. No fish were to be had in my time on the water, but it was great nonetheless to get out on smooth water in the sun. I could see how gorgeous this place is now in nice weather. There were even a few other campers along the lake now, having coming in for the weekend.
Red Sands from the water
But in my haste, I had not checked the fishing regulations for the area. I was going on the assumption that Red Sands Lake was considered a standard lake with a 5 trout limit. It turns out not to be so. The regulations are more complex but the important one for me was that this lake was considered part of the Kitsumkalum river, with the river being a classified water I’d have to pay $23 dollars to fish in for the day. Note that Kitsumkalum Lake to the north is considered a standard lake with standard rules for fishing. It’s a weird area of regulations including some applying only on certain days of the week, so read up if you are going fishing anywhere around there.
This powerline is right over Pine Lake.
Oh well, at least the odds of getting checked were low here, although you never know with a paved highway and boat access on the other side of the valley. Fisheries could easily launch a boat and check everyone in the all the lakes and river along here. Having some illegally gotten fishing intel, I decided to forgo the payment and not fish. I’d have to have really good fishing with the chance to keep fish to pay $23 dollars for ONE day, like I did on the Elk River. My time on the water next day was spent kayaking on the lake and up the river a little ways – the current is just gentle enough for me to make slow progress paddling upstream.
With the start of a new week, it was time for me to move on. I might have stayed longer if I could have been fishing on a calm lake with no people around, but it was no longer calm again and people were definitely around. It was time to figure out which direction I was going to go from here: north up the Cassiar, or west to Prince Rupert. It turns out I’d end up going south, to Kitimat, to see if I could find any ocean camping out there. See you as I travel south next time.
