Working together to preserve the Stoltmann Wilderness
Hiking bridge over Lava Creek. Photo credit: Doug Carter
Upper Elaho Valley from the air. Photo credit: Ian Mackenzie
Trail blazing a spectacular hiking route
The Stoltmann Wilderness Trail Route is a surveyed pathway through a spectacular wild country. Throughout the summer of 1995, Wilderness Committee volunteers work hard to clear fifteen kilometers of the route through the oldgrowth forests in the Upper Elaho Valley. This summer volunteers will be out there again, snipping away at the undergrowth with "loppers" (large-pruning shears). By the end of summer, 1996 WCWC's entire thirty kilometer Stoltmann Wilderness Trail Route will be cleared and marked from the Upper Elaho Valley to Meager Creek Valley.
Why is WCWC surveying this trail? To gather public support for the presevation of the entire 260,000 hectare Stoltmann Wilderness. WCWC's trails have worked in other places like Carmanah, the Stein and the Boise valleys. If enough people experience the Stoltmann, we're convinced the public pressure to preserve it will be unstoppable!
Walking along the Stoltmann Wilderness Trail Route is awesome. The Elaho Valley is a gentle valley, cut with a series of rainforest-draped canyons. Within two kilometers of the trail head, the route passes by B.C.'s third largest Douglas firs-the Elaho Giant. It then winds to the bottom of Lava and Cessna (nicknamed "Impassable" by WCWC's first survey crew) canyons, crossing the creeks on temporary pole and rope bridges.
Click on map to enlarge.
There are many outstanding trees found in the Stoltmann, including some of the last large groves of oldgrowth Douglas fir left on the B.C. coast. Many of the trees are over a thousand years old!
Further up the Elaho River, the valley widens out and the forest is interspersed with wetlands and groves of ancient yellow cedars. This is prime moose country. In fact, it's about as far south as you can find moose in B.C's Coast Mountains.
Wilderness Committee volunteers building hiking bridge. Photo credit: Kerry Dawson
After a day and half of hiking, the trail route zig-zags up a ridge to the Hundred Lakes Plateau. From here you get an amazing panoramic view of the huge glaciers that crown the mountain ridges above the Elaho, Clendenning and Sims Creek watersheds.
The marked route then meanders across the heather and flower meadows of the plateau, connecting crystal-clear lakes and ponds. If you are lucky you may come across grizzly or cougar tracks in the sands and hear a wolf howling from one of the ridges. At the end of the third day you camp on the northern lip of the plateau overlooking Meager Creek Valley. From here it is a half-day hike down the winding trail route to the logging road below. A soak in the hotsprings found five kilometers down this logging road should help to ease any over-worked muscles!
Note: WCWC's Stoltmann Wilderness Trail Route is not an officially approved hiking trail under the Forest Practices Code. The B.C. Forest Service has only approved the section to the Elaho Giant. It is currently considering the section from Meager Creek Valley to the Hundred Lakes Plateau. WCWC is now applying for a permit for the rest of the trail.
