Brew Hut Trail Upgrade

Introduction

Access has been one of the Brew Hut's biggest challenges. A trail goes up to Brew Lake from the railroad track near Brandywine Falls, but BC Rail has been cracking down on tresspassing lately, and the trail has now been disturbed by logging. The so called 'winter route' from Brandywine FSR is steep, prone to avalanches, and has the annoying snowmobilers factor. Potential for a new trail in to the area exists coming in from Roe Creek. The terrain is generally quite mellow, and a trail built here could be used in both summer and winter. Furthermore, the first 2km of this route is up Chance Creek FSR, which is now being plowed in the winter for snowcat skiing near Tricouni Peak, shortening the approach by a little bit. Building a new trail to the Brew area is important to ensure that the new Brew hut is well used, and well taken care of.

Rumour has it that the Ministry of Transportation might be able to cough up some money for replacing the existing Brew Lake Trail. Highway upgrades before the 2010 Olympics will make the existing trail completely inaccessible, so they might chip in some money for a new trail. How much money is involved is not yet known.

Trail Building Plan

• Winter 2004/2005 - ski the route up to the Brew Hut and flag an appropriate line through the forest. It's important to choose a line for the trail which can be easily skied both up and down, so checking the area out in winter first is a good idea. Plus, snow keeps the bushes down. The goal is exploration

• Spring 2005 - planning the route based on 1 or more winter sessions, further exploration on skis if necesary. Construction of the lower part of the trail can start once the snow melts back.

• Summer 2005 - most activity will probably focus on building the new hut, which should be the priority. There might be a weekend workhike or two of trail building.

• Fall 2005 - with the new hut in place, the trail can be finished without feeling guilty about it.

Progress Reports

Previous Roe Creek Adventure, May 1999

Roland Burton, Scott Nelson, Andre Zimmerman, Andre Zimmerman's mom.

Roland's Version

Lifted without permission for VOC bulletin board

After crossing Roe Cr we continued up the main line a ways then took a severely overgrown fork which heads back east a ways. Once into the trees, the veg thins out a bit, and we get into some bluffy country, not real steep, more like steps. Eventually you come out on the ridge to the South of Brew Lake, follow it to the end (West), then swing across to the ridge which the Hut is on

Scott's Version

Bushwacked up large clearcut on east side of roe creek, a couple km upstream from the bridge over roe creek. Road (branch R-200) was heinously overgrown with alder, thrashing through clearcut was not so bad. Old growth forest beyond still held snow (no idea about bushes) and was fairly steep. At the ridgetop, we encountered steps in the ridge at first, and then meadows higher up on the west side of the ridge. We dropped down from a col into the basin W of brew Lake, and the continued up the basin to the hut. Coming down from the col here looked like it might be corniced and/or avalanche prone in winter.

Roe Creek Route Exploration November 13-14 2004

Matt Brown, Randy McVeigh, Scott Nelson, Roland Burton, Chris Michalak, Richard So, Kevin Murphy and Danielle Hallet bushwhacked in to the hut from Roe Creek.

There was some new helicopter logging lower down on the ridge running south from Brew Lake. Many small clearcuts are now present on the slopes above the roe creek road. These appear to have been helicopter logged, as there are no roads through them. There is also a new road going south from the bridge. It climbs a few meters and then runs level along the bottom of a few more new clearcuts. The new spur is probably less than 500m long, but we didn't drive to the end.

We hiked from the cars about 600m uphill from the bridge over roe creek at a pullout (end of 2wd road), and up through some clearcuts trending right (due E) to gain the ridge at about 950m elevation. Just above that, some bluffs got us briedly confused. A few climbed up onto the bluffs, and we determined it would be best to pass them on the east side up a small valley with another set of bluffs on the other side. Beyond the bluffs the terrain was very good, with mellow terrain and easy bushwacking (walking) in mature forest. We found a small open bowl that leads up to a system of benches at about 1200m elevation. On the way up, we scrambled up rocks on the left side of the bowl, but there is an easier route traversing into the bowl and following it up. The benches above the bowl led us NE into the creek that drain brew Lake. Some bluffs need to be avoided along here, we went high over the first one then low past the second one, then along the bottom of a talus slope. Smaller trees predominated, so the bushwhacking was more difficult but not bad. There were a few narrow valleys between outcroppings that would have been nice to follow, but they were filled with water (maybe good in winter). Continuing NE beyond the talus slope, we reached the end of the bench and a steeper climb up a ridge. At 1300m, a short traverse to the right led into the start of a meadow system that connected all the way to Brew Lake.

On the way down, Matt and Scott explored some different route options. The first was a prominent notch in the ridge that was passed on the way up at about 1360m. Passing through the notch lead to complicated rocky terrain the was inferior to the ascent route. This route connected back down to the bench between the talus slope and the third bluff through steep forest.

Next, a route around the bottom of the 2nd bluff was attempted. This proved to be a bit difficult, as the open terrain leads one downhill, too far to the east. The terrain was a bit rougher than the route along the top of the bluff, but more exploration is necesary here to find the best route.

We flagged the lower part of out route on the way down, starting just below the open bowl but wandered off the top of the ridge to the west. The flagged route is quite good at the bottom and top, but needs to be reflagged in the middle section. This would best be done when travelling uphill, because the ridge is easier to follow when travelling uphill. The flagged route starts at the top of one of the clearcuts (GPS location marked, will be posted here) and then goes up a narrow valley between two rock outcroppings. After that, the route diverts incorrectly to the west, when it should simply follow the ridge crest due North. The flagged route terminates at the bottom of a rock outcropping below the open bowl. The open bowl is the the climbers right (ESE) from the end of the flagging

Waypoints (all given in NAD27)

Top of Bluff #2

Meadows above Brew Lake

• Parking on Roe Creek FSR 486137E 5538354N
• Bottom of Flagged Route at the top of a clearcut: 486638E 5538290N
• Top of Bluff #1, flagged route passes to the east of here: 486683E, 5538454N
• Top of Flagged Route, just below a rocky slope 486800E 5539294N
• Bottom of Open Bowl: 486857E 5539264N
• Top of open bowl, start of bench section 487093E, 5539391N
• Top of Bluff #2: 487094E 5539868N
• Bottom of Bluff #3: 487170E 5540108N
• Bottom of Talus Slope: 487160E 5540257N
• Lowest Meadow 487150E 5540588N
• Notch route diverges to the west 487077E 5540667N
• Meadows #2: 487050E 5540789N
• Meadows #3: 486985E 5541169N
• Meadows above Brew Lake: 486823E 5541723N
• Basin with Lake and stream: 486259E 5542164N
• Microbrew: 486400E 5542896N
• Brew Hut: 486784E 5542749N

Meeting with Terminal Forest Products, December 17, 2004

The foresters from Terminal Forest Products were glad to meet with us to talk about our trail building aspirations. They are logging in Roe Creek only, and not in Brew Creek were the existing summer trail is. That logging is being done by Western Forest Products. They provided us with 1:10,000 and 1:5000 maps showing all the existing and future roads in roe creek, and indicated where their future logging will be. These maps are for VOC use only, and should not be distributed to others.

Also, they said that branch R-200 (the completely overgrown road from the 1999 adventure) was reactivated a few years ago, so it is no longer choked with alder. This road may provide the best access to the Brew Hut area, because it climbs to about 1200m on the east side of roe creek, and skiing up roads is easy work. A new branch will be extended north from this road in the near future for logging.

Information from Western Forest Products, January 2005

Western Forest Products is the company that is logging around the existing Brew Lake Trail from the railroad tracks to brew lake. They were kind enough to forward a map showing their logging plans for the area, but asked that the plans not be released publicly, so I will not post them here. Email me (Scott Nelson) if you want to look at them. They have 1 clearcut that intersects the trail, and falling was started on the clearcut last fall. Harvesting will be completed on that clearcut this spring, and no more clearcuts will intersect the trail. Western Forest Products is planning to rebuild the section of the trail that they logged over once logging is completed, routing the trail along the edge of the clearcut. The VOC should communicate it's plans for the Brew Lake Trail to Western Forest Products as soon as a decision has been made on whether to continue maintaining this trail.

Road access to the clearcut is from Brew Creek FSR, which leaves highway 99 just south of the bridge over brandywine creek. Since the brew creek watershed is used to collect drinking water for Black Tusk Village and Pinecrest Estates, the entire road system has been gated to prevent public access. This is consistent with other watersheds such as Magnesia Creek (lions bay), 21 mile creek (whistler) and Capilano (north vancouver). We may be able to arrange a key to the gate for the duratoin of brew hut construction, but the road system will not be publicly accessible in general, and thus cannot serve as a new trailhead access. The road system is not very suitiable for access to the trailhead on foot, because it takes a very round-a-bout route to reach the point where it intersects the Brew Lake Trail. It would be faster to hike the lower part of the trail to this point than to take the road.

Scott Nelson 16:16, 3 Feb 2005 (EST)

Roe Creek Route Exploration Part 2 February 5-6 2005

JP, Karine, Richard, Maciek, Doris, Soren, Scott and Sandra hiked/skied/snowshoed the Brew hut following a similar line to the November 13-14th route. See the Brew waypoints for more detailed information. We started at the first switchback on branch R200 at 1050m, bashed through the clearcut and then traversed east through mature forest to join the previous route at 1150m at the top of the old flagging. From here, we went up the bowl, across a small frozen lake (caution, there are many of these) and traversed the bench crossing below the 2 sets up bluffs. At the talus slope, we climbed part way up it (horrible with no base of the rocks) and then traversed north on some friendlier terrain to reach the start of the meadows at the same point as on the previous trip. Part of the route was flagged on the way up, and the rest was flagged on the way down, and we made some corrections on the way down as well. We used yellow flagging tape from Canadian Tire, the remains of which will be left in the clubroom for future use. The start of the trail (the bottom) is about 30m above the first switchback on R200. We put the start of the trail here to avoid a patch of really horrible alder lower down.

The trail is flagged well enough to allow a party unfamiliar with the route to follow it, with the following difficulties:

• The section between 1150m and 1200m goes up an open basin with no proper trees in it. We resorted to tying some flags onto the slide alder. A significant snowfall could bury these flags completely. This section also had lots of devils club, which isn't a problem in winter, but it could be nasty in summer.
• The snowpack was definately less than average (only 1.6m at brew lake, nearly no snow in dense forest at 1300m) so some flags could be buried with a deeper snowpack. This would likely be most problematic higher up near brew lake, since the lower parts of the trail probably don't get enough snow in a normal year to bury the flags, most of which are a least 1.5m off the ground.
• Some parts of the trail had only young conifers, and the flags could be easily obscured if the trees were covered by snow. We did our best to make the flags as visible as possible. A longer term solution will involve strategically removing branches from trees to make the markers more visible.
• Flagging ends at Brew Lake, so some navigation is required to get to the Brew Hut, if that is your destination.

Land use considerations

Snowcat Skiing

Powder mountain catskiing had their tenure extended by LWBC to include much of roe creek, including slopes on the east side of the creek that are very close to brew hut. These slopes were not included in their previous 1 year exploratory tenure, but were added when the final tenure was approved in May 2004. PMCS seems to be willing to carefully manage use of the area for both user groups, but there have yet to be any conflicts to test how they will actually act.

Logging

Commerical logging in Roe Creek is being carried out by Terminal Forest Products. Logging around the summer trail, on the east side of Mt. Brew, is being done by Western Forest Products. The contact person for both companies is Scott Nelson.

Mining

Alberto Corso of Powder Mountain Catskiing also says that there will be a new mill built by Huckleberry Stone Supply in the near future about 1km uphill from the catskiing base at km1.5 of chance creek FSR. PMC's tenure indicates that they will be using a new road constructed by the mining company to access roe creek, and then the existing road higher up. This new road may offer a more direct access to the upper part of Roe Creek FSR, especially if the road is plowed in winter for vehicle access to the mill.