Big Silver Creek Trip Rpt & Slide Show

When looking at the Lower BC Backroads Mapbook, Big Silver Creek stands out like a sore thumb. As such, it's been on the radar since way back in the day, & the idea of checking it out seemed to pop up maybe once or twice a year. There had been some chatter that one of the BC OG's (Stuart &/or Dave Reid) had done some exploring up that zone, & that it was reportedly holding bigtime .. but nothing more detailed than that hearsay, & so for whatever reason, the effort was never really made to go bushwhackin' over in that part of the province. It's difficult sometimes to motivate for a mission with long drive times & high likelihood of failure when there's epic runs surrounding you that are a sure thing.

That is until Chris Tretwold lobbed the first bomb at us back in the first week of April:

"Hey kids,

I just spent some time this weekend scouting and came across something really
nice. If I had to guess it would be somewhere in the 80-140 fpm range, hard to tell for sure. At least 7 miles long, and just about 5 of those miles lie in beautiful box canyon. The rock is granite and the scenery is of dome mtns and pine forests. And its a f*#@ing river! Everything I saw was pool drop and alot was clean, i saw hardly any wood in the river (thank god im tired of wood already).

There, hopefully I have your attention."

Um, yeah, interest piqued ..

Then he sent some video & photos .. I believe my reaction was:

"GODSUCK!!! this email is up in my wheelhouse!!!

i am all fired up tretwold. any day after this coming sunday. name it. we're there."

((Don't ask what that first word might mean, I have no idea .. I think I just blurted it out, but trust that it is not derogatory & it does not make baby Jesus sad.))

So anyway, Schertl & I totally disregarded our very own Zero Tolerance For Cold Wet Weather rule, & drove headlong into a fierce headwind -- after a post-work Top Tye lap, natch -- with a B'ham ETA of 8 pm. Tert, Ryan & Hale would have fresh filets of salmon poppin' out of the oven upon our arrival & after some coffee & further arm twistin' we'd be off to face the always interesting US/CAN border crossing & then drive through the night. Nothing like showing up to a chilly, soggy campsite at 2 or 3 in the a.m. with the prospect of an epic BC exploratory mission when you wake up a couple tossy-turny hours later.

The morning afforded us our first glimpse of the "creek" from a bridge spanning an intensely beautiful & very CaliSierra-esque gorge .. +/- 800-900 cfs charging over silky smooth granite dome rock, through nasty sieves, & over numerous perfect ledges -- hooray!

Then the real fun began. The put-in is a stunning 25-30 waterfall with a tricky lead-in, then the river ducks in & out of jaw-dropping sheer-walled BC granite gorges with manageable class IV & V rapids. In terms of character, this river is somewhere in between the Norrish & the Ashlu, if that makes any sense. Due to a super-late put-in on Saturday, we ended up leaving our boats in the canyon & hiking out to camp for the night. The next day, we finished the mission when we came to a totally unrunnable gorge on the second day. Knowing what we do now, we think we did the best possible contiguous "section" of BS, & could easily do it as a day trip.

Big Silver is totally worth any trouble it takes to figure out the logistics & flows .. Highly recommended! I'll let the photos do the rest of the blabbin'. Enjoy.

*** IMPORTANT NOTE ON THE SLIDESHOW: Roll your cursor over the main image window to get rid of the preview thumbnails & to maximize image window. Otherwise, the bottom hundred or so pixels of the image gets cut off! ***

Flash Slideshow