Bear in mind you’re in grizzly country!

Day 11: Hat Creek Ranch-Gott Creek

Today’s stage I had mentally split into two parts: The first one from Hat Creek Ranch to the town of Lillooet was about 75 kilometres. The second part would go into the mountains from Lillooet for another 23 or 31 kilometres, depending on which campsite I would stay at.

I thought that the first part would be relatively easy going because Lillooet is located at 260 metres above sea level only and thus lower than my starting point. What I didn’t know was that there was a lot of up and down on this part already. So instead of four hours as I had expected, I used five hours and arrived first at 2:30. I also felt a lack of energy today on this first part.

In Lillooet I had a quick lunch break at a petrol station and left for the second part, for which I had estimated another three hours, at three o’clock.

The climb from Lillooet was very steep. And it was extremely hot today – 39 degrees Celsius according to my tachometer, and the sun was burning like crazy. However, I felt more energised during this second part. So even though I took many breaks in between, I climbed kilometre after kilometre and reached eventually the high valley which follows the Cayoosh Creek all the way upstream. Here I reached at 5:30 the first possible campsite, but decided to continue because I still had some energy and I wanted the day to be shorter tomorrow. Shortly after six o’clock I finally reached the place to stay tonight. It’s called Gott Creek Recreation Site and is one of those unserviced campsites run by the state of British Columbia. It is a very idyllic place directly at the river. And there is only one other family with a caravan here. After a while a park ranger came to collect the camping fee which was almost nothing. I commented that there were no bear boxes to keep the food and asked whether I should still keep my food outside the tent. He confirmed and said that bears haven’t really been a problem there, but that I should bear in mind that I was in grizzly country now.

From here to Whistler it is now “only” 99 kilometres. I’m planning to leave early so that I can see a bit of Whistler when I arrive.