Stats: 4 km / 1:40 hours MT / 415m gain / 739m high
Last year a group from our club joined some others in dismantling the old fire lookout tower on the west side of Harrison Lake and then rebuilding an exact replica of it. This short but steep trail (it has almost the exact same stats as the Abby Grind) led us there in just 1 hour. The catch being, you have to drive 23.5 km on the gravel Sts'ailes (Harrison Lake) FSR to get there.
After the yellow "23 mile" sign and before the "24" sign, we turned right at a junction, drove up that road for about 500m and parked at the base of a steep dirt road with a deep drainage bar at the beginning of it.
After helping this couple get their jeep unstuck (just a little ways up this road), we left the road, turning right onto a faint overgrown logging road.
pic 1) Tufted Loosestrife. 2) Forest Moss with red spores capsules. 3) Early Blue Violet. 4) Salal.
The Cheam Range above Harrison Lake.
Soot & ash covered trees from the 2015 human caused fire that burnt 1325 acres.
The old fire lookout tower was one of the last intact towers in the Lower Mainland, having somehow escaped the flames of the 2015 fire.
What an amazing job these guys did. It looks exactly like the old tower.
The Breakenridge Mountains - view northeast
Medissa & Fagervik Mts to the left and the Old Settler Mt. to the right - view east
Mt. Baker - view south west
Bardean Mtns - view northwest
Cheam Mountain range - view south
pic 3) Saxifrage
Heading back down.
We had to do a bit of crawling under and over fallen trees (9 spots in particular) on a not-always-so-detectable trail.
Back on the road we stopped at the 9 km mark and bushwhacked a bit down to this pretty pond to check out the flowers...
My landscaper husband was thrilled. He'd never seen these in the wild before. Name: Western Bog Laurel. The ground here was flexible and swooshed when walked on. It actually wasn't ground at all but plants that had formed a semi-solid layer on top of the pond.
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