Chris M. at Chipmunk and Tenquille Mountains:
“Dean and Quirine joined me for an overnighter northwest of Pemberton. From Pemberton you travel West along the Pemberton Valley, cross the river, head up the Hurley and finally on to the Hope Creek Road FSR. This logging road is easy. A 2wd car could make it as far as I could; which is about 2 km from the road end.
There is a faint route through the trees that is well-flagged. Until you cross the creek. After that you have to find your own way but the bushwhacking wasn’t too hard. We reached our camping spot at Opal Lake in about 2 hours.
Saturday afternoon we scrambled up Tenquille Mountain. (Dean also went over and bagged Goat Peak). The weather was perfect. The views were lovely. The flowery sections were blooming. Instead of star-gazing during the night we all stayed in our tents, as we were entertained by the sounds of rolling thunder and intermittent rain.
By the morning the storm had passed and we decided it was nice enough to hike up another mountain. We were standing on the summit of Chipmunk Peak less than 2 hours later. On the way down we passed through many wonderful meadows full of flowers. All different colours of flowers. In one section the flowers were up to hip high!
The bugs didn’t want us to sit down and enjoy them however, so we marched back to camp and packed up. During the hike out we saw two moose. Everyone enjoyed changing into clean clothes once back at the car. Along the road we saw a deer and a bear.
We each had a different delicious burger at Mile One. It was very nice to split the driving duties as the drive from parking spot to Burnaby was 250 km.”
