Lost Valley 07/08/10

Chris exploring the Lost Valley:
“The weather may not have been ideal and the bugs fairly bad but we had a nice surprise which more than balanced this trip. With no signups, Cara and I were free to join a WCWC trail building trip that was, coincidentally, also going up the Wade Creek trail. Both the Haylmore FSR and the various Wade Creek roads are in excellent-to-decent 2wd condition and it’s possible to park within 1 km of the bridge over the creek. The trail is steep with an average grade of at least 15% and sticking to the ridge crest even when it doesn’t seem like a good idea. There’s some blowdown around the mid-point of the route but it’s well flagged. The WCWC is improving the trail by adding switchbacks when needed. The final stretch side-hills above steep slopes. The trail fades just below the lakes near the pass. With a bit of trail-building thrown in, we got to the lakes in about 5.5 hours. From the pass, we wandered ridges and meadows to reach deep into Lost Valley to its headwaters. You need to pick your ridge ascents and descents carefully. The lower meadows were lush with plants to our shoulders at times and footing was tricky because we couldn’t see our feet. Along with more ptarmigan and pika encounters, the highlight of the trip was the multiple wolf sightings we made (3 out of 4 days were wolf days) including watching a litter of pups play in a meadow for an hour or so.”