Into the City : Agassiz to Chilliwack

There is quite a bit of rain forecast for the Fraser Valley this week, beginning today. When we looked out across Harrison Lake many of the mountains, which had stood out in detail yesterday, were already partially shrouded in low hanging clouds.  Others were completely hidden, making the landscape appear completely different than it looked yesterday. When we set off across the fields outside of Agassiz the overcast morning was already beginning to darken, but thankfully it wasn't yet raining.

The first few kilometres along the Trans Canada Trail were pleasant enough as we meandered agricultural fields southward, but then we reached the Agassiz-Rosedale Bridge that spans the Fraser River between Agassiz and Rosedale.  This cantilever truss bridge was built in 1956 to replace the existing ferry, and it is now a crossing for the extremely busy two-lane Highway 9.  As Mel Vogel warned a couple weeks ago, this 1.8 km bridge has narrow lanes and no sidewalk.  There is a 6 inch wide concrete curb on either side, bordered by a metal railing, but it is broken by light standards every few meters.  The only way for a person on foot to pass the lamp posts would be to swing out into the traffic, placing one foot on either side as they did so.  There was absolutely no space between the curb and the driven portion of the road, and the stream of traffic was non-stop.

To make matters worse, this morning there was construction on the bridge as crews worked on the light standards.  At first we thought this might help us, but we quickly realized that the crews couldn't let us pass, even though they were stopping traffic in one lane for a couple minutes at a time (never long enough for us to make the 2 km crossing). The closures alternated on each side of the bridge, creating delays and making the traffic even worse.

We had been standing at the bottom of the bridge watching the chaos and wondering what to do for a while, cursing the Trans Canada Trail for once again blithely giving the name 'trail' to a death trap for hikers,  when another trail miracle occurred. Two German ladies who had stopped to chat with us on the shores of Harrison Lake this morning, and who had expressed great enthusiasm for our endeavour, saw us, stopped their car, and asked if we needed a ride to the other side of the river a few hundred meters away.  As a general rule we don't accept rides that take us forward on the trail, but in this incidence we were faced with a bridge that in our opinion was completely impassable on foot.  The two very kind ladies dropped us off just on the other side of the bridge, at the entrance to a construction site for the Trans Mountain Pipeline – whose security team was none to impressed with the appearance of two hikers with cameras on them.  We thanked our two German angels profusely, convinced they had been sent by Saint Roch, and continued on our journey.

We followed a quiet, paved road that wrapped around under the base of the bridge, and then followed the shoreline of the Fraser River.  Truly enormous trees towered above our heads on both sides of the road, mostly hiding the river from view.  As we move west the trees, plants, animals, and birds have grown larger, and it feels like since leaving Hope they've increased several sizes all at once.  As we made our way down the road, a small pond was nestled in among the trees, filled with a large flock of Mallards and Canada Geese whose loud and endearing quacks and honks filled the still morning air.

Soon we reached a small parking lot at the Agassiz picnic grounds.  A large, soft sandy beach led down to the shores of the wide, shallow bed of the mighty Fraser River.  Behind us we could see the Agassiz-Rosedale Bridge, the forested slopes of the mountains rising up and disappearing into the clouds behind it.  The trees and mountains across the water made fuzzy reflections in the nearly smooth surface.

At first everything seemed still and quiet, but then we noticed a Great Blue Heron standing near the bank, looking from a distance much like a piece of driftwood.  Out on one of the rocky shoals two Bald Eagles, whose shadowy forms we'd glimpsed through the trees along the road, stood for a few moments before taking flight and heading down river.  Above us we noticed lines of gulls flying past, silhouetted against the heavy grey sky.

We took a few minutes to enjoy the scenery along the shoreline before heading back out along the quiet country road.  Soon we picked up a crushed stone-dust trail that paralleled the road, running beside a row of small homes.  Across the street was a very large greenhouse and a small herb and flower farm.

Next our route turned back towards the Fraser River, and we picked up the Canyon to Coast Trail.  This 18 km crushed stone dust trail connects the Ferry Island Provincial Park to the Island 22 Regional Park.  Its purpose is to connect communities from Hope to Chilliwack, allowing people to experience the nature and culture of the Lower Fraser River Valley.

The Fraser River is the source of some of North America's richest soil, and as a result, it is surrounded by farmland.  The minerals and silt carried down from BC's Interior are deposited into a broad, open alluvial plain downstream from Hope.  For thousands of years, fertile soil has been delivered every spring to the Fraser Valley, which has an area of 25,000 square kilometres.  As the valley was settled, dykes and ditches were built to hold back or redirect the floodwaters and create productive farmland.

Today, more than 100,000 hectares are farmed between Hope and Vancouver.  Most of Metro Vancouver's 6,000 farms are in the Fraser River Valley, and they produce well over 50% of BC's agricultural revenue.  Vegetables, fruit, hay, grain, livestock, poultry, mushrooms, berries, and more are grown in this region, close to the markets of the Greater Vancouver Area. 

We followed the raised dyke for most of the day. To our right, the Fraser River slipped quietly past, forested slopes rising steeply up beyond its rocky banks.  On the other side of the dyke rich brown and emerald green fields extended across the flat valley bottom, dotted with picturesque barns and beautiful ranches.  To the south and east we could see the high, snow capped peaks of the Cascade Mountains rising up and disappearing into the clouds.

Our pace was slow because we were distracted by the stunning scenery, but even more impressive were the birds.  For the first time in a long while our day was dominated by birds and their migration. Overhead a constant stream of gulls, geese, ducks, and swans flowed by in small groups and huge v's.  The distinctive voices of Snow Geese and Canada Geese filled the quiet, still valley.  Curiously, although the stream of birds never ceased, they seemed to be going in every conceivable direction!

To make things even more interesting, the avian activity wasn't only overhead.   Small groups of Mallards and Common Mergansers floated in the calmer waters near the shore of the river.  A thick layer of brambles bordered the trail, and it was full of Dark-eyed Juncos, White-crowned Sparrows, and Spotted Towhees.  Strangely, we also spotted quite a few Red-shafted Northern Flickers flying back and forth across the fields as well.  A highlight was spotting Bald Eagles perched quietly atop tall cedars of bare snags in the fields on either side of us.

As the day wore on we passed squares of freshly ploughed rich brown earth, patches of lush emerald green grass, and fields of harvested corn that were filled with large flocks of Canada Geese.  We also walked between fields of bright purple winter greens, which the farmers were just harvesting as we passed.  Chicken coups and larger poultry farms lined the trail in several spots, and fields of bright red blueberry bushes added colour and warmth to the overcast day.

One of the other things we enjoyed today was coming across information plaques at many of the access points and parking areas along the trail.  One described the tendency of the Fraser River to flood, especially during spring when it naturally swells as a result of snowmelt running off the mountains.  This event is known as a freshet.  The area that can potentially flood, known as the Fraser Basin, covers about 1/4 of the province.  Put another way, it is roughly the same size as Great Britain!  Once again we were left humbled by sheer size of Canada and it’s regions! When we began our #Hike4birds in 2019 we crossed Newfoundland which had more trail to cross it than Spain on the Camino de Santiago.  This week while trekking a small part of British Columbia we find ourselves in a watershed the size of the UK.  Canada is an amazing nation of stunning scope!

Another bank of information plaques described the importance of the Fraser River as a transportation corridor between New Westminster and Yale. Especially during the gold rush, people travelled the river in shallow-bottomed, steam-powered sternwheelers.  Riverfront towns like Chilliwack began to develop between the 1870's and 1920's as traffic from people and freight increased along the waterway.  Chilliwack had five landing sites along the river's banks, that gradually developed from simple wharves to warehouses for transporting goods and people.  In 1910, development of the BC Electric Railway changed how people moved through the Fraser Valley, and by 1924 stern-wheeler traffic had ceased.

As the afternoon wore on we watched as rain storms crested the mountains and began to move across the valley, hiding the hills and slopes behind walls of white.  Our luck held until just after noon, when the rain finally caught us.  It began as a light drizzle that was on-again-off-again, but slowly it grew more serious, until we had to pull out our rain gear and cover up.

Although somewhat unpleasant to walk in, the rain really brought the colours in the valley to life.  The last of the yellows in the fall foliage came alive, and the reds and strong greens of the brambles at the trail edges seemed to glow.  We noticed that the rain did nothing to dampen the bird activity either, as we stopped to watch a pair of Bald Eagles standing in an open field.  The high keening of a second pair that was perched atop a lone cedar tree in a nearby pasture also caught our attention.

It had begun to rain quite hard when a small green ATV approached us from behind, having come from one of the trail side farms.  A man and his daughter got out and walked towards us in the pelting rain.  They said their neighbours had seen hikers on the dyke, and they had come out to ask about our journey and offer two coupons for free coffees at the Yellow Deli in Chilliwack.  They said they had come from Winkler, Manitoba, and were part of an international organization that had need of help farming in the valley.  We wondered if perhaps they were Hutterites. Either way, we greatly appreciated their thoughtfulness and kindness!

Eventually we reached the end of the dyke system, and turned down a quiet, paved road. There was a small pond at the end of the trail with a group of Ring-necked Ducks, Buffleheads, Mallards, and Canada Geese swimming in it.  Even though it was raining hard, we stopped for a few minutes to watch them.

A very short distance down the road, which was lined with small farms, ranches, and homes, we passed a second small pond that had a large group of Wood Ducks sheltering under a weeping willow.  There was also a lone Great Blue Heron fishing in the duck weed covered water.  We were delighted to see several wooden benches, a hand carved chess board, and several very fancy bird boxes along the road at the edge of the pond.

From that point on the walk became a bit of a slog through neighbourhoods and the city.  It was pouring rain as we wove up and down the sidewalks and bike lanes of Chilliwack's subdivisions.  School was just getting out, and there was a lot of traffic on the roads, which continually sprayed us with waves of chilly water.  The trail was unmarked, requiring one of us to constantly look at the map on the phone to find our route, and we were finding the noise and busyness of the streets and sidewalks very overwhelming. On top of it at one point a procession of 14 RCMP cruisers went by, their sirens screaming.

We were cold, soaked, and tired, and wishing for a café or restaurant in which to stop and warm up.  Characteristically however, the TCT routed us away from the amenities of downtown, and instead took us through neighbourhoods, an industrial section, and around the airport.

There was one particular highlight, in the form of a Steller's Jay perched in the trees above a small creek we crossed.  This magnificent blue and black bird is the provincial bird of British Columbia.  It is quite an accomplished mimic, having the ability to sound like a cat, dog, chicken, and even a mechanical object when they want to.

Eventually we passed the Molson Coors Fraser Valley Brewery, and arrived at a ring road of box stores and chain restaurants.  Soon after we gratefully stopped at a Starbucks for a hot coffee.  It felt good to step in out of the cold rain, but it was immediately clear that two hikers with large packs weren't much appreciated in the very crowded and busy coffee shop.  Here several well dressed city people were quick to make comments about our appearance, “evident homelessness”, and “obvious burden” on local society.  Sigh, if only we could remind people not to judge by appearance and presumption. 

We are now on the outskirts of Vancouver, and camping is no longer really a possibility for us. We welcome the warmth of motel rooms, and the ability to dry off and enjoy a warm shower, especially on wet, cold days like today. However, we have never enjoyed crossing cities on this adventure.  We struggle to find joy or inspiration in walking from motel to motel, and walking city streets isn't something we love.  We are surrounded by beautiful scenery, but the weather seems to be turning, and we are now heading into the third largest metropolitan area in Canada.  If Quebec City and Toronto have been any indicator crossing the Greater Vancouver Region is a tough way to end such an amazing trek across the nation.  These last few days will certainly be a challenge!

See you on the trail!

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