Stein Valley Trip Report | North Vancouver

Some background information first. The trail Pete Watson and I were attempting is 90 something kilometres. The start is at Lilloet Lake, going up the washed out access road to Lizzy Lakes (12km or so with 3000+ ft of elevation gain). Next, we'd enter the forest and start climbing to the next couple lakes. 10km takes us to a new ridgeline (again, a bit over 3000 ft of gain) then we would drop into a saddle between two valleys, ascend the next mountain and drop into the basin around Tundra Lake (5km), over another ridgeline to Stein Lake (5km) and into the Stein Valley. Once in the valley, it's 60km or so along the valley bottom to finish up in Lytton. It's never been done in less than 24 hours, so our goal was to finish the trek in less than that one day period. This meant we were going completely bare bones in terms of gear and supplies. Light and fast - no tent/sleeping bags, just some garbage bags in case we became stuck for a night out there.

We got to the start around 9:30pm, had some food, then attempted to sleep beside the car for 3 hours. Up just after 1am, we were on the trail at quarter to 2am. Making good time to Lizzy Lakes, we had to take some side trails to bypass the washouts on the overgrown access road. Once entering the forest, it started raining and we cooled down substantially. After another hour or so, we were soaked and frozen. We had to stop at a shelter and build a fire for a short while to warm up. The fire took much longer to build than we'd hoped (very wet wood) and in the time it took to get the fire going, our body heat dropped completely and all we could think of was how miserable we were at this point. Eventually, we got the fire going and warmed up some while waiting for the rain to pass (and waiting for better visibility). We put our gear back on and headed back out.

It was clear by this time and the sun was starting to light the sky. Entering the Alpine, we'd been out on the trail for 4 hours by now and were still rather cold and wet. A beautiful sunrise was behind us as we approached Arrowhead Lake. Here, we refilled our water, then started the next climb.

Midway through this climb, we started hitting frost on the ground. A little further, there was fresh snow. By the top of this climb, we were at a huge boulderfield which led onto a scree slope. Both of these were covered in ice. A biting wind had blown the clouds in and we lost almost all visibility. Climbing over the boulders was treacherous and time consuming. You place your foot on one boulder to find it covered with a sheet of ice as your foot rockets out from under you and you desperately cling to the edge of the rock to stay on top. Battered and bruised, we were quickly losing valuable time as we tried to find our route in the snow and clouds. Eventually we managed to claw our way up a semifrozen streambed to the top of the ridgeline where we could regain our route. At the end of the ridgeline, looking down 600ft drops to either side and across the saddle we needed to cross, there was the mountain we needed to get over.

We waited until one batch of clouds had passed to ascess the situation. The mountain across from us was completely covered in snow. At least a foot - we could not get over that with our gear. We'd have to skirt around the mountain and drop down to the lake beside it. This would mean crossing another icy boulder field. It would work, but would slow us down significantly. We'd then need to cross another pass which was a similar elevation to the mountain in front of us, so would like have to deal with the same amount of snow. It wasn't looking good. It was only another 10km or so to the Stein Valley. Once there, we'd be fine. We wouldn't be able to make the 24h mark, but it would be warm enough to sleep in the valley floor. With a fire and huddled in the garbage bags, we could probably manage the temperatures over night. But if we lost visibility again or had problems in the boulder fields or snow, we'd have to spend a night in the alpine. And the subzero temperatures were not survivable with our current supplies.

We made the tough decision to turn back.

Turning back, we made our way back along the ridgeline and once we got out of the snow and ice started running back down the mountain. A few hours of intense downhill trail running later, we were back at the car. We'd covered around 45km and our altimeter showed 7400ft of elevation gain during the day. So still quite an epic trip. We drove back to our other car, parked on the Lytton end, but were far too exhausted to drive back to Vancouver that night. Instead we picked up pizza and beer, camping out for the evening.

The elements got the best of us, but it's not over. We'll be back next year (slightly earlier in the season) and challenge the mountains once again.

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