Status of Urquhart - Charles Creek - Cogburn Creek

[JaapSuter]

Hello,

 

does anybody know the latest status of access to Urquhart? I have a two-wheel-drive and I'm more than happy to walk a fair bit on logging roads. The latest update on Cogburn on Bivouac mentions an impassible slide near the 7km mark, but it's dated from July 2005.

 

Anybody been up there recently?

 

Thanks,

 

Jaap Suter

[hubris]

phone Lakeside Pacific...talk to John (area engineer). Good people. Report any vandelism to Bear Creek Camp...good people.

Edited August 17, 2006 by hubris

[JaapSuter]

Thanks. Just gave him a call and he was very helpful. I'll post an update on the road here and on Bivouac when I get one soon. Thanks again!

[JaapSuter]

Also known as; "going scrambling for a day and never actually leaving the car..."

 

For the past year or so, I had been eying Mount Urquhart as a potential BASE jump spot. This Sunday we finally planned to take a look at it...

 

Around 6:00 AM, Paul and I leave from his house (in Burnaby) and drive down the number 1 in the direction of Chilliwack. Around 7:45ish we hit the Harrison East FSR and start the 24km loggin-road trip to the Cogburn Creek FSR turnoff. I had called the logging company on Thursday and they had assured me that the Cogburn gate was open.

 

The directions for the Cogburn turnoff were a little vague, so first Paul and I descended 10km down a strictly 4wd road (in our shity 2wd car) until my GPS device finally confirmed that we were indeed on the wrong road. So we slog 10km back (after turning the car around in what can only be called a

20-point-turn) and keep looking. Several kilometers further we find the Cogburn Creek road and start driving...

 

Optimistic how 2wdable the road is we plow ahead. Until 3km in - we hit the gate. No problem I figure, we'll just open it. Wrong.... the gate is locked.

 

Fortunately the logging company (Bear creek camp) is only 4km back, so we drive back to there to pick a key. Our yelling wakes up two aggressive dogs and minutes later a very suspicious man named Fred. He was very skeptical (probably from his experience with the beer and drug using kids that park their hundreds of cars along the Harrison FSR a few kilometers back, it's crazy there) until he saw that we carried topographical maps for Urquhart. Fred became excited now and quickly ran back inside and traded his key for my driver's license.

 

Now optimistic again, we drive the 4km back to the gate. Only to find that the key doesn't fit. F*ck! So we drive back to Fred (4km) and explain him the story. He apologizes and runs back inside to give us his entire keychain with all the keys for the area. So we drive back to the gate again (4km) and try all his keys.

 

No luck...

 

So we drive 4km back again. Awesome! By this point it's just funny...

 

Fred was very friendly and apologized profusely. He also told us we were shit out of luck. He would replace the lock soon and he encouraged us to give him a call soon and come back to climb Urquhart and Old Settler.

 

By now it was about 11:00am, five hours after we left from home. We drove to the gate three times and back three times. We're running out of time...

 

Fortunately I had brought the Bruce Fairley Guide book I picked up yesterday.

 

In the past I had flown over Cheam Peak while skydiving and would swear I remembered a well-traveled road almost up to the top, making it a quick and easy hike. We figured we'd climb up that, take a gander over the edge (potentially jumpable too) and then drive home.

 

The Bruce book mentions several approaches, some from the north and some from the south. Since we came from the north, we figured we try that first. Unfortunately, the only road we found was a shitty overgrown 4wd that we could never go up.

 

We asked four people at the gasstation, none of which could help us (you live there, and don't know how to get up Cheam Peak? Geez...). So we figured we'd try the southern approach instead (we were determined to get some hiking done).

 

Unfortunately this involved going around a bit of a ridge system so driving back to Cultus Lake area and then back again, all in all about 70 kilometers around the mountain. Getting there, we find the road that Bruce talks about, only to discover that it is discontinued and only accessible to high clearance 4wd.

 

Well f*ck.

 

When we finally rolled back into Vancouver around 3:45pm we had been in the fucking car for almost 10 hours and hadn't done any mountaineering.

 

The sushi tasted pretty good though...

 

I still don't know if Urquhart is jumpable. I'll have to go back soon, as soon as Fred has the proper key.

 

The moral of the story; make sure you double check and triple confirm that you have a way to get past any gates.

 

Jaap Suter

[stinkyclimber]

Jaap, if you are going to be hucking yourself off of BC backcountry walls, you might as well save yourself some of the added pain and suffering on the approach by paying the $20 fee to join the Bivouac Mountaineering Directory. You probably burned twice that in gas this weekend!!

 

Bivouac contains a great and mostly up to date database of SW BC logging roads and access to peaks, including both peaks that you failed to reach in this TR. Bruce's book is great for peak info, but it is 25 years out of date for access in an area where access beta changes by the month.

 

Happy BASEing. Stay safe. It'd sure be cool to see you fly by while on a wall...

[JaapSuter]

I've been a Biviouac member for a year and a half now. It's my biggest distraction at work, trying to find new stuff to fall off.

 

Yeah, I noticed Bruce's is quite outdated. I had all Urquhart material on Bivouac (topos, GPS coordinates, etc.) printed out and with me as well.

 

From now on, I'll always make sure I have Matt Gunns book in my car as well, should I have the need for a quick and easy backup scramble.

 

Thanks for the tip!

[G-spotter]

Hey Jaap.

Just so you know, you can also get to Urquhart from further north. You could have tried that instead.

 

Cheam is not steep enough to BASE jump off of but you might give the north face of Lady a look if you are up there.