M Gurr Lake, Bella Coola

Jodi and I headed up for a quick visit to Bella Coola at the end of June. Bella Coola is 6 hours west of Williams Lake, while Williams Lake is 6 hours north of Vancouver, so it was a long drive to say the least. Including breaks for food it took us about 14 hours to get there. The last bit of driving is on a stretch of road known as "The Hill," which drops about 1200m over 20km. It's seal-coated gravel, can get as steep as 18-percent in some places, and is often only single-lane. It's pretty fun to drive down in the summer, but I can imagine how scary it would be in the winter.

M GURR LAKE HIKE: On Monday we headed up to do a short hike at M Gurr Lake. See the Bella Coola tourism site for a great map and trail description. We actually gained a lot of elevation by driving 17km up Clayton Falls Creek FSR with Jodi's Grandpa's truck - I can't remember how long it took but I think it was at least an hour of steady climbing, with spectacular views along the way. We got to the trailhead around 9am, started hiking, and came to M Gurr Lake (still partially frozen!) about 30 minutes later. There were an unbelievable number of mosquitos at the lake (I think the only time I've ever seen more has been at my Grandma's farm), but fortunately we had lots and lots of bug spray.

We kept climbing beyond the lake and got some very nice views of the lake and surrounding peaks. The mosquitos followed us for a while but gave up once the wind picked up.

After about 45 minutes more hiking, we came to the viewpoint, with an incredible view down into the North and South Bentinck Arms, which are salt-water inlets that connect Bella Coola to the ocean. The reminded me of the fjords I saw in Norway. After a whole bunch of pictures, we headed down and got to the cars around 1:30pm, which was good because it was starting to get really hot! We drove a little further along the FSR to check out Grey Jay and Blue Jay lakes, and then headed back to Bella Coola.