DR SIOUXSIE'S TRAVELS: Rowbottham, Arrowsmith and ...?

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Rowbottham, Arrowsmith and ...?

We rode a 140 km today. It was a cool, but well worth it, despite getting snowed on at elevation and being stopped at 2400 feet on all three trails we tried today. Briefly, this is the route:

Above: we rode from Dumont to 155 via Boomerang and the hydro lines. Timberwest crews were out in force today in the Okay Lake area, which we briefly tried to get to, and also blasting a new road parallel to the hydrolines on the southeast side of Okay mountain. Once at 155 it was straight down to the Englishman River bridge and right and up towards Rowottham Lake.

Above: the three routes we tried today from the ERBridge opened up lots of possibilities for future exploration. This is an area we have only visited rarely.

The climb towards Rowbottham lake was aborted at about 2400 feet by snow and the footprints of solitary predator tracks shadowing an elk or two...the views up there were stunning, with the weather rapidly changing every few minutes..

Above: the other two routes. We nearly made it to the Arrowsmith Lake entrance (you can see teh reservoir-lake perched tarn-like some thousand feet above the route), past the 28km sign, but we were stopped by snow. Riding back to the bridge, we explored 155 a few km to the right (south-south-west), and again, climbing, were eventually turned back by snow. This is an interesting route with many side trails worth exploring too. This could well offer a route to the Cameron Valley Main and the other side...

Here are some pics of the route:

Above: Saw this Turkey Vulture picking over some bones of a medium sized mammal (winter kill?). He got a little spooked by our close attentions. Luckily it turned out not to be an oman for our ride...

Below, en-route to Rowbottham (east along the other side of the Englishman R), a recent windfall blocked the road. A large boulder enabled us to roll and crack it...