Chilcotin Mountain backpacking adventures

This denotes the day(s) spent in Vancouver before the listed start date of the trip. We will meet at a North Vancouver hotel with backpacks and gear to go over trip details.

The fly-in service stoppage for 2023 has caused us to reformulate this tour. If the service is available, we may choose to fly into the park and hike out, but much of the new itinerary would remain intact.

Transportation from North Vancouver to South Chilcotin Mountains Provincial Park, in our 15-passenger van. Pick-up is on the North Shore, in North Vancouver, early! We will leave North Vancouver for our five-hour drive to our starting point, north of Pemberton. The drive, along Howe Sound and the Coast Mountains, is an extremely scenic one. We will stop at Pemberton to grab a snack, coffee and lunch food. Once we arrive at Gold Bridge, we will park and begin our first leg to our first camp in the sub-alpine meadows of the Eldorado Basin.

Today, we will continue into the Eldorado Basin. This trail is up and down in a mix of forest, grassland and wildflowers growing alongside the small creeks. The Eldorado Basin is a large area of connected valleys, ringed by peaks about 2,200 to 3,000 meters in elevation. This is a habitat for grizzlies, marmots, and mountain goats.

Windy Pass connects Eldorado Basin to Gun Creek and the Spruce Lake area. Much of this day hike is in the meadows below the pass, but in the alpine as we head into the pass onto the saddle area below it to explore this alpine expanse. We return to our camp later in the day to have a good rest for the ridge walk the next day.

On Day 4, we cross the creek in Eldorado Basin to veer left up into the alpine to the top of the tree line. We follow a ridge, part of the peaks circling the basin, making our way up to about 2300 m, then down a scree slope to the downward trail of the loop back to camp. The views from the ridge are spectacular, looking over the South Chilcotin mountains, south and west.

Today we climb up and over Camel Pass and follow the western section of the Ridge-o-rama trail before heading into the head of Cinnabar Creek in Taylor Basin. Today is another spectacular ridge walk, but with backpacks. With this ridge walk, we get to see into both Eldorado Basin and Taylor Basin before starting the descent to our camp near Cinnabar Creek.

Today we climb up and over Camel Pass and follow the western section of the Ridge-o-rama trail before heading into the head of Cinnabar Creek in Taylor Basin. Today is another spectacular ridge walk, but with backpacks. With this ridge walk, we get to see into both Eldorado Basin and Taylor Basin before starting the descent to our camp near Cinnabar Creek.

Our final morning is breaking camp and sorting our gear, going through memories of the strenuous, but extraordinary mountain hike in remote BC that we just experienced. We will then drive out, stopping again in Pemberton or Whistler for lunch, and arriving in North Vancouver in the afternoon.