Bowron Lake Canoe Circuit Part 1 – Getting Going

The forecast wasn’t looking too promising when we left home this past June – a 30% chance of showers for the whole week – but we’d booked our spot on the Bowron Lake Canoe Circuit the previous November when reservations had opened, so we were going anyway. We left after having breakfast, packing sandwiches for lunch, and cleaning up the kitchen. Wells is less than 300km from Vanderhoof so we had only a half day’s drive ahead of us – no need to get going really early as we often do on trips. We’d spent the last two days packing – laundry, clothes, TrailFare meals, tent, sleeping gear – the last week preparing – baking energy bars, crafting and portioning trail mix, refinishing the canoe – and the last six months planning, sourcing, and practising. With the weather predictions as they were, we decided against camping the last night before setting out and had booked a hotel room in Wells. Actually, we’d booked a room in the hotel in Wells.

There are other options for accommodations in the form of suites and cabins both in Wells and at Bowron lake, but The Wells Hotel is really a historic centrepiece in a historic little mining town. It was built in 1934 on the first two lots in Wells to sell after the town was surveyed in 1933 and was the first building in the Cariboo to be designed by a a qualified architect. Extensively renovated in 1996 and purchased in 2022 by its current owners, it retains a lot of its historic charm while providing a more modern level of comfort. When I reserved the room, I was asked if I would prefer a queen and two single beds, or two queens. I opted for the two singles, thinking the kids could each have their own bed. After checking in, we went upstairs to find our room. I opened the door and did a double take – the room was quite small, and there were the two single beds. But nothing else. Had I misunderstood? There was a sink and mirror in the room, and then another door beside the window. I discovered this led into the bathroom – which had a second door on the opposite wall. It was a relief to find that there were two rooms, with a shared bathroom – a layout quirk from the old mining days when men would rent a room and share a bathroom with their neighbour. It wasn’t until 1939 when the hotel expanded that there was an option to have a private bathroom. The kids were enthralled to have their own room (we thought it was pretty great too), and Alice couldn’t get over the fact that they even had their own sink.

Before you depart on the Bowron Canoe Circuit, you are required to attend an information session and at the registration centre between 9 am and noon. You also need have any gear that will ride in your canoe during portages weighed by park staff to ensure it is less than 60 lbs (hatchet, waterbottles, first aid kid, paddles and life jackets don’t count) to prevent damage to the trails. I wasn’t sure if this only ran at 9 and noon, or if you could watch the required video between those times. Regardless, we wanted to get going as early as possible so decided to drive up to Bowron Lake from Wells the night before to get and idea of travel time and where to go. It took about half an hour to cover the 30 km to the park on a relatively well maintained gravel road and we were lucky enough to find a park staff member in the parking lot. He answered our questions and we were pleased to discover the centre was often open even a bit earlier than 9 am. After locating the parking and the gear weigh station, we headed back to Wells feeling much more prepared for the following morning. We had dinner at the pub in the hotel then spent the evening walking around Wells. There were some great local walking trails and then the kids wanted to visit Frog on the Bog’s outdoor marble run they remembered from our trip to Barkerville two years ago. By that time the store was closed, but the marbles were still out. Back at the hotel, as the thunderclouds rolled in and I listened to the rain on the tin roof out the window, I couldn’t help but think this was a great way to spend the last night before a week-long backcountry trip – well fed, clean, and dry.

Between November and June, I had done a fair amount of research into park regulations and gear requirements. Our local library had a 40 year old guide book by Richard Wright that described the trip, but it was a copy of The Bowron Lakes: A Guide to Paddling British Columbia’s Wilderness Canoe Circuit by Jim Boyd, Chris Harris, and Dean Hull that I found through inter-library loan the most helpful (and up to date). It’s specifically printed in a size that fits in a ziplock bag so you can bring it along with you on the circuit, has maps of all the sections and campsites, and gives you a run down on areas that require more technical paddling or can be tricky in bad weather. I wasn’t about to bring along a library copy and risk it getting soaked, so when I found copies for sale through Western Canoe and Kayak, I added it to our order for two large backpack drybags – one for the tent and all the sleeping gear, one for the food.

When we canoed the Nanika-Kidprice lake chain two years ago, we had the luxury of flexibility – if the weather was bad, we could call it off. This time, we booked the third week of June and we had to plan for all scenarios. Of course, June weather is unpredictable – good rain gear for everyone was a must and all the gear needed to be in drybags. We found the kids some big kid one piece rainsuits, youth sized bug jackets, and some lightweight, inflatable stadium seats to keep them off the floor of the canoe. Not sure of how cold it would be at night, we picked up a warmer kid sized sleeping bag for Alice and let Anna use Leroy’s warmer single bag from his guiding days. To get a better feel for paddling on flowing water, we practised eddy turns on our own Nechako river, putting in upstream of the park down the road from our house. We spent the weekend before we left double checking lists, weighing packs, and planning how it would all fit in the canoe. I read and re-read all the BC Parks regulations and suggestions so we knew the rules and, coupled with the info we got on our recon mission the previous evening, we felt properly prepared. When we left Wells in the morning, we had a plan.

The Hotel offered complimentary continental breakfast and coffee at 7 am, so we took advantage of that before heading back up the road to Bowron Lake. By 8 am, we had picked out a parking spot, unloaded the gear, and carted the canoe. While I put bug dope on the kids, Leroy got all our pre-packed drybags, life jackets, paddles, and other gear into the canoe and rolled it down to the scales. We hiked up the hill to the registration centre and were just in time to jump in on the required video viewing that had already started. After the video, a parks staff member gave us more specific info on campsites that were closed due to flooding, where bears had been hanging around, and corrections to information in the video. Since the mountain pine beetle went through the park years ago, they have changed the rules about firewood – instead of picking up your allotted amount at woodlot locations, it is now typically available at campsites, and you are allowed to forage dead branches and sticks at the sites, just not to cut down more dead trees. That done, Leroy headed down to get the gear weighed by staff and I filled in the paperwork – party size, canoe colour and make, estimated time on circuit – all the information they would need to come looking for us should the need arise. And then we were off. By 9:15, we walked away from the campground, down the portage trail to Kibbee lake.

Most of the portaging is at the start of the full Bowron Circuit. The trip starts with the longest one – a 2.4 km trip to Kibbee lake. The trails are well maintained, however, and our cart we purchased from Wike a number of years ago worked pretty well. Leroy carried the food bag (I did offer to take a turn) and pulled the canoe, while I hung onto the stern and helped to keep it level, push it up hills, and slow it going down them. The kids were full of beans and, if anything, we had to tell them to slow down and wait for us. As we came up to the put in, there was an older couple just pushing off. We got the kids seats inflated and rearranged everything in the canoe as we had planned, then clambered in for the real test – just how much freeboard would we have? We’d weighed everything, including ourselves. We’d googled the capacity of a 17′ canoe for a ball park idea of how we would do. We’d compared it to that time we went fishing with all of us and an adult friend in the same canoe and were pushing the limits, and re-assured ourselves that all our gear didn’t weigh as much as our friend. But we hadn’t actually put all the gear and us in the canoe and tried to float it. In the end – we were fine. There was well over 6” of freeboard in the bow, and our old, but freshly refinished, Frontiersman would do the job.