Back to B.C. - Pemberton!

29 July -3 August 2012

C.J. and I had been planning to join Pete "Reaper" Michaelmore for a second look at Pemberton prior to the Canadian PG Nationals. We had been up there for a fly-in years ago and pretty much had been rained out - enough that we had move out of our tent into the Pemberton Valley Lodge. This time the weather was about perfect (mosquito swarms do not count as "weather") and we got some good flying, a day of kayaking, and comfortable accommodations thanks to our Aliner. What we missed was any sign of Pete and his new wife probably because we got there a week early and left just before the Nationals began. We wouldn't have gone so early but Ray Kehl had gotten some other Seattle friends together to go up to fly and the whole thing had snowballed into a Happening.

Camping at the airport

29 Jul, Sun - Although we thought we had packed just about everything the night before, we didn't leave until 1100 (and that was after a return to the house to close the forgotten garage door). We stopped for gas at Costco - last cheap gas (3.479), relatively speaking, before Canada where gas cost more than $5.15 per gal. Our timing may have been bad because we had a 20-25 min wait at Costco and another 25 min at the Lynden/Aldergrove border crossing. Then there was construction on Hwy 1 near Burnaby. However, the new Sea to Sky Highway from N Vancouver to Squamish was really nice and scenic. At Pemberton we continued on through Mt Currie to check out Owl Creek Recreation Area but it was really buggy, and, as far as we could tell, had no toilets or water so we returned to check out the possibility of free camping at the airport. A guy who worked at Blackcomb Aviation (helicopter service) told us we could park in the gravel area right under the No Camping sign. [The next day Rudy, the manager of the sailplane operation at the airport, confirmed the permission for camping.] After setting up the trailer we drove back down the road to Nairn Prov. Park to see if we could spot any of the other Washington pilots who were planning to be at Pemberton this week. No luck there (although we must have missed Gail and Jim Baldo's pop-up trailer) so we went into town and stopped at the Pony Espresso where we ran into Jeff Slotta who told us where folks were staying and gave us a meeting place for the morning. On the way out of town we caught the Seattle crew (Ray, Paolo, Steve, Dave Decker, Tom Kroger) just leaving The Wood where they had had dinner and agreed to meet back there at 1020 Monday.

30 Jul, Mon - We met some of the gang at the Wood at 1015 and caravanned to the LZ (next to St. Francis RC church). There were a lot of us including Matty Senior and some Canadians (?). We had to

C.J. and others on Mackenzie Launch

figure out how to get us all up the 10 km+ bad road (4WD) to launch. Jim and Gail put all the wings in their big pickup, Jeff drove his big SUV and Carl drove his new Jeep Liberty (which began to overheat part way up; putting it into a lower gear instead of Drive fixed that problem). The new Mackenzie launch is large and grassy with a sprinkler to keep it that way. The conditions didn't look stellar even though Matty got up and toplanded so I drove Carl's rig down (it was the only vehicle of ours left up there). C.J. was already on the ground so we went to the visitor's center (TI) for wi-fi and info (and to see if Mc D's had the peach smoothie we had seen advertised in Squamish - nope, but we tried the Oreo McFlurry which wasn't too bad). Then back to the airport.

Panorama looking south from Mackenzie Launch

31 July, Tue - At the LZ we found that Jeff's rig was in the shop getting two flat tires repaired (not from the road to launch but from a foray to the hot springs up the valley) so we volunteered the Trooper. Jim B and Paolo drove also. Shortly after 1300, I got antsy watching Jim Orava's tandem soaring above lower launch,

Topo map of Pemberton area

so I took off before any of the other Yanks. There was nothing lifty to the right but there was lift over the knob above the lower launch, once up a ways I headed back to the right and continued NW down the range toward the Hurley Pass gap. Launch is at 4000 ft and I never got above 5K until I went around the corner of Owl Peak near the lakes in a hanging valley. I turned around at the slides on Mt Barbour about 16-17 km from launch. On the way back I got above 6K briefly and met a parade of paragliders heading out, most of them well above me. I wasn't sure I'd make it past the large no-landing zone in the valley NW of where three rivers converge, but there was plenty of ratty lift and I got all the way back to the LZ in about two hours for a 35 km out-and-return  - a good flight for me. I waited around for a while and then went out with Gail to pick up C.J. and Carl. Then we all waited around for someone to drive three of us to the top to get the cars. Eventually Jeff decided that he didn't want to wait around for Dave to get back to drive and took us all up in his rig with the repaired tires. I didn't get back to the LZ until 2000 and everyone was hungry and tired. A bunch of us went to The Wood which had pretty good food and large servings, but slow service. Since my "ultimate burger" came first, C.J. and I shared that and then her salad, but we carried out her french-dip sandwich for the next night's dinner. Everyone was saying that Wednesday did not look like a good flying day when we left.

Birkenhead Lake looking south

1 Aug, Wed - The weather continued to be partly to mostly cloudy all day but it did seem a bit windier in the morning. In any case, the Seattleites were not planning to fly so we loaded the kayak (which I had locked to the fence near the Aliner) for a trip to Birkenhead Lake Prov Park, about 60 km north. First we stopped at the BC liquor store and bought a couple of bottles of wine for Rudy and, on the way, took some photos of the cool junk sculptures at Big Sky Country Club just off Airport Road. When we arrived at Birkenhead Lake (the last few km on gravel) it looked "blown out" for kayaking with whitecaps showing near the center of the narrow 6-km-long lake. However, a few minutes later we decided that it wasn't blowing as hard and, anyway, we could paddle along the west shore in the lee of a point for a ways and see what it looked like around the point. If it was too windy we could just turn downwind and be back at the boat launch quickly. So that's what we did and when we rounded the point conditions were good enough that we could continue on through the striking mountain scenery to the end of the lake. Surprisingly, there was a community of summer homes there that must be reached by another road. We saw one or two small power boats with fishermen and one canoe but that was the extent of the boat traffic for the day. Bugs weren't bad even when we stopped for a snack at lake's end and again for lunch at the point where a rushing stream emptied into the lake (but we had the Deep Woods Off "dry" with us which worked very well). Back at the Trooper, we were pretty tired after having paddled 7-8 miles but we took the time to check out the campground and then drive the 2.5 miles to the First Nation town of D'Arcy at the end of the highway before heading back to Pemberton and camp.

Looking up Pemberton Valley

2 Aug, Thu - After breakfast we stopped by the TI to pick up email. We rode up to launch with Jim and Gail; the road had been graded somewhat and widened for parking and a turnaround near launch. It was still rough 4WD. I took off after several people had gotten into the air and at first I thought the lift was going to be mellower than on Tuesday, but it quickly turned ratty and was even stronger and rougher. I didn't take any of the climb-outs and just headed along the ridge without losing much. At 8km from launch I headed out into the valley to see if the air was any friendlier. It was but there wasn't much lift and I had to pick a field to land in that did not have crops or horses, and had, preferably, a gate or no fence. I picked a likely field with a bare spot and land going N which was into the wind a couple thousand feet above the field but was lightly downwind on the ground. I walked carefully through some spotty new growth and out the the road to a shady spot for packing up my wing. I was surprised to find that my "Pilot needs ride to car" sign was still in my harness, but it didn't net me a ride back to the LZ. Beth picked me up in John Schneebeck's SUV and then we got Ernie and Carl. C.J. was up toward Hurley at 17.4 km from launch. Back at the LZ I joined the group that was going up in Carl's Jeep to retrieve vehicles - I drove Owen's Nissan down and Jeff Slotta drove his own. C.J. was back by the time I got down and we headed back to camp. On the way we met Nicole who had flown up the valley on one side, back down the other side and made the crossing to Mt. Currie before landing at the airport.  We gave her a ride to Mile One where she was going to meet Alex.

Lower Joffre Lake

3 Aug, Fri - We left a thank you note for Rudy, bought $30 worth of gas (135.7/liter), and picked up email at the TI before heading NE up Hwy 99. After leaving the Lillooet valley we climbed a steep and windy stretch and stopped at Joffre Lakes Prov Park. We had no idea what was there but the signs indicated that it was a trailhead to a high valley beneath Joffre Pk and Glacier. It was just a short walk to the first lake but it had a really good view. We met several folks heading up with backpacks for the August long weekend. Back on the road it was only a little farther to the high point and then we started down past Duffey Lake. The road followed the course of Cayoosh Creek and there were several Prov Rec Areas with camping along the way - they looked much better than Owl Cr Rec Area but we didn't stop to check them out. Vegetation changed as we got farther east and out of the Coast Range and into the drier interior and there were deep canyons with steep sides cut by Cayoosh Creek, now a river. We detoured off the main highway at the town of Lillooet to see what it looked like and then continued on to the south through Lytton where we hit Hwy 1. Hope was busy with early starters for the long weekend and we had to wait for gas ($25, 1.269/l) at a Shell station. Passing Bridalveil Falls we saw one paraglider flying and a couple of cars parked at the LZ. There was a long, slow line at the Sumas border crossing and it took more than a half hour to get across into the US. We stopped  at Edaleen Dairy along with a lot of other folks, but the ice cream is good and not expensive. I wanted to avoid the lines at B'ham Costco so we pushed on to Burlington. Just as we were getting off I-5, the Trooper ran out of gas. Fortunately it restarted and ran long enough to get us up the overpass and into Costco where we filled it with 21.4 gal at 3.479, about $75). With no more adventures or slow traffic we were home by 1945.