Phil is no cartographer but he is a determined route finder. He spent a great deal of time with the maps before the trip plotting our ideal route however, in the field is not the same as what the maps may portray. It is not that the maps are wrong but back country maps can get dated easily. A friend of mine that works for Forestry told me the back country maps are only good for one season; what happens is the forestry roads get decommissioned once the logging company has completed the area - the foliage grows in, bridges fall apart, trees fall across the road and rain washes deep groves into the roads. But even though a road is decommissioned, it can appear on the maps for many iterations.
Route finding is one of Phil's pleasures. For him, it is not travelling from Point A to Point B; all of us who ride motorcycles do so for the pure pleasure of riding but Phil gets an added bonus of examining the map, figuring out the contours and getting on the right road. I learned early in the trip to not worry about the fact that even though he had carefully planned out the route in advance, there was only a small chance that we would actually be going that way.
From Settler's Road, which starts in Kootenay National Park, we were heading a long way south, all the way to Gilnockie Creek Ecological Reserve. No, I have never heard of it either; it is a postage stamp sized park and when I get home, I will Google it and find out what it is about. But the map shows clearly a marked route with a thick black line so it should be a good road.
Well, what looks like a trunk line on the map is more like a trail. It starts out as gravel but with each spur branching off, it diminishes a little more. Trees more than a few inches in diameter that have fallen across the road have been chain sawed to provide unfettered passage. Anything less than a few inches in diameter lay where it fell and we rode over it. By the time we reached Gilnockie, the bushes had filled in the sides and growing right into the road. In addition to fallen trees there are occasionally large rocks to avoid but for the most part, it is easy passage. It looks a little like my own driveway with two gravel strip and a center line of grass but much thicker foliage encroaching from the sides.
Gilnockie is a great place for lunch because there is a campground. We are hot and sweaty in our riding gear and I am hankering for a swim. The creek is big enough that nice swimming holes are formed so it works out great and as we are getting ready to jump in, to our amazement a truck drives by: the first vehicle we see since we were at Lake Koocanusa several hours before.
From Gilnockie, we are getting into the route finding. Our ambition is to get to Yahk and there is a large range we have to navigate and cross to achieve this objective. We spend several hours riding down numerous spur roads, retracing our steps, exploring others trying to find the way over to the other side. And while we are not "worried" about it, we are starting to think about how much gas we have. Our original plan had been to fill up at Jaffray but after Tom crashed, we just pilfered his spare gas and "topped up", not "filled up" thinking that would be enough. And it should be, depending on how much exploring we do. However, we are doing a lot of exploring.
If you have every in your life been driving down the road, saw a side road and thought to yourself "I would like to drive down there and see where it goes", you should ride with Phil. This pretty much describes my entire life however, I have never really done it because I was always "going somewhere" so this ride is my ultimate fantasy since we are taking every side road we see. Phil doesn't even get remotely stressed about driving down a road and getting to a dead end. It is all part of the adventure and an opportunity to see something seen by only a handful of loggers and truckers. In looking for a route over the range, we were up and down the trunk road several times and some of the spur roads got more than a single look. (One track ended up being a trapper's driveway. A sign over the door proclaimed there was nothing inside worth dying to get.) Again, this goes back to what roads show in the map that have long since been returned to nature; one we were on looked very promising in that it was heading in the direction we thought would take us to where we needed to be to join up with the trunk road on the other side. It was almost completely grown in but passable, but our gas situation kept us from taking a chance. Plus, the sun was starting to get perilously low in the sky. We decided we needed a new strategy and we would abandon the quest for a pass, head north on the trunk road which would exit at Moyie however, this was heartbreaking for Phil.
And then we saw the second vehicle of the day. Since we had already revised the plan, I just went by but Phil tossed his Man Card, stopped the guy and asked for directions. It turns out the fellow had just come over the pass we were seeking. He told us the exit, which we knew because we had already passed it four times. However, as we had already observed several times, we could not always match the road names, if any, on the map with road names, if any, on the roads and so even though we had already stopped at it once and considered it, abandoned it because the road name seemed to correspond with a different road on the map.
The ride up to the pass was my first exposure to "technical" riding. The road included some very tight switchback turns up a steep, steep grade on gravel that was at times the size of baseballs. At times, there were deep crevasses It was tough for me but I did OK. I stayed upright.
At the top, we were rewarded with a spectacular view of the valley where we had spent the entire afternoon. On the way down, we were back to riding in sunlight. At the bottom, we were rewarded with Hart Creek Recreation Site, a lovely campground completely unoccupied.
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