Don't know if this is the right place to post this...Trip Reports Folder Makes Sense
2012 Labour Day Long Weekend
Moose Valley Provincial Park (for map, see BC Parks website).
Deer Lake Boat Rentals in Burnaby actually rents canoes for offsite use. The rates are cheaper than for use on Deer Lake. They even have foam blocks & tie-down straps for your car. You can get a Clipper Yukon for a week for about $150.
I went with my 3 year old and my non-camping brother-in-law. (The 3 year old has done more wilderness camping than the BIL, lol!) We drove up Thursday night after work. The crosswinds near Ashcroft/Cache Creek were brutal, but the canoe stayed on the car, and the car stayed upright. Everyone was sleeping, so we crashed in a cheap motel in 100 Mile House.
The next AM we drove the logging roads to MVPP. We stopped at 100 Mile Lumber on Exeter Rd, and the fine folks gave us some scraps for firewood. The drive is 17kms of gravel logging road, and then 8.5kms of rough road. BC Parks website says the road is 4wd, but we made it in 2wd (Mazda Protege). There were a lot of potholes, rocks, and one major mudhole right at the foot of a hill. You can just scoot between the mudhole and the trees. This probably makes the mudhole bigger, but we had no choice.
We saw a jacked up Avalanche and an old conversion van up there.
The main park access is at Marks Lake. There are vehicle-accessible tent sites and a pit toilet and a few picnic tables/fire rings.
The portage from Marks to Maitland was very short and the put-in/take-outs were fine (gumboots recommended but you could do it without). Look for the sign that says “Firefly Portage”. There were plenty of loons around.
The Maitland Lake shelter is overrun by rodents and their crap. We poked our heads inside but stayed outside/in tents.
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There is a nice pit toilet at Maitland & a fire ring as well. We had a camp fire, under a bright moon, cooked some dinner and the boy slept.
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The moon was full and the sky was clear, and I went for a full-moon paddle with no lights required! Beauty!
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The next morning was calm and I happened to make a video of 2 sandhill cranes flying by, belting out their otherworldly call. Don't mind the auto-focus madness that happens in the 2nd half of the vid.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOvWXQX03Ig&feature=g-upl[/youtube]
We explored all the bays and went back to Marks lake and camped by the cars the next night. The mother-daughter-dog trio in the Avalanche were great, and the girl and Daniel hit it off famously. They stayed up running around and throwing twigs into the fire until they were both almost falling asleep.
We hiked the short overland trail to the Firefly portage. We hiked towards Crane Lake but the trail just led back to the main access road. The area between the road and Crane Lake was boggy.
We went by canoe to check out the portage to Crane Lake. The take-out was mucky but there was a bit of solid (?) ground 30ft from the shoreline proper--a quick gumboot scamper across the marsh led to solid ground. The portage was dry, but the Crane Lake end was another story: bottomless mush for 50ft across. I found a shoe buried in the muck. Crane lake itself was tiny. With only 1 pair of gumboots for 2 adults, we didn’t go for it. (Gumboots for the 3-yr-old are only 6” tall, so they weren’t going to cut it.) Maybe next time.
We went back to Marks Lake and hung out and then started towards home (Vancouver).
On the drive home, we stopped at Gold Pan PP and spent the night. This location was good for the 3-yr-old: a river with sand beach, train tracks with frequent freight trains on both sides. IIRC, the trains stopped at ~10PM and started at 6:30AM, so you can still get some solid sleep in. There is the sound of the river running, which helps too. Camping spots are on the river’s edge, have fire rings, and are about 50ft apart. There was a mix of campers/trailers and tents.
MVPP will get a return-visit, but with a better plan for the mucky portage access. It was soft enough that you wouldn’t be able to push with enough force to move the boat forward/back. I need to figure that one out...any suggestions would be helpful. Maybe throwing bodyweight around in the boat, or frantic 'swimming' through the mud?
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