Wonderful fall colors at Illal Meadows this weekend. The meadows had been on my list of places to explore and a couple of weeks ago a paragliding friend confirmed that it was well worth a visit. Its a relatively quick hike in so carrying over-night gear was not much of a pain. The trail is about 4 or 5 km long and elevation gain around 500 m. There are very nice camp spots in the meadows, but care should be taken to pick a sheltered spot as it gets windy here - a look at the trees tells the story ... they have no branches on the windward side.
We wandered up some ridges to Illal Peak and enjoyed views of Needle, Yak and other peaks in the Coquihalla area (even saw Robbie Reid and the Judge on the horizon). On the second day we circumnavigated Jim Kelly. Although the scramble to the top is reportedly not too bad we skipped the summit as winds were still very strong and we didn't want to get blown off the ridge.
Glorious yellow mountain ash and red blueberries leaves but the berries were almost done; the ones left had started to dry out and ferment. I had much better luck with berries at Elfin Lakes 3 weeks ago. We didn't see any wildlife such as goats or grizzlies, but some disturbed spots could have been grizz digs. Up on windy (white-capping) Illal Lake we met hunters who said they were looking for deer - not exactly deer country ?
Some more notes: Trailhead is off a branch road of Tulameen FSR (from Coquihalla highway, around 19km mark), the last 3km on the branch requiring 4WD and reasonably high clearance (the Tracker had no problem).
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| Glorious colors with the Old Settler, Robbie Reid and the Judge |
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| Pete hiking on Illal Peak, Coquihalla Mt in the back |
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| Looks like a painter had an accident and spilled his/her colors |
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| The Milky Way from the sleeping bag. Without realizing I also captured 2 shooting stars in this exposure. Quite different from the outing on Mt Seymour to watch the Perseids when we spotted only a few meteorites and I captured just a single one. |
