Spur 4 Bridge Hike, January 23rd 2022
Rob writes:-
This trip to the Spur 4 Bridge in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve was done Saturday January 23, led by Rob, with 10 of our members participating. The route was supposed to mainly follow the Fisherman’s trail up the Seymour River to the Spur 4 Bridge crossing, but a reconnaissance trip by Sheila and Rob the week before discovered that the Fisherman’s Trail is completely washed out not too far from where we were going to start and so is fenced off. We took an alternate but not quite as interesting route that mainly took the Seymour Valley Trailway up the Seymour River valley. This trail name is somewhat misleading as it is a paved road, not a “trail”. Many people still think of this as the Seymour Demonstration Forest Road. It parallels the Seymour Mainline which is also a road and not open to the public (which leads up to the fish hatchery and Seymour Dam).
The route we ended up taking started at the main parking lot near Rice Lake (at the water treatment plant and washrooms), and going down the steep but short Homestead Trail, along part of the Fisherman’s Trail, up on the Circuit 8 Trail, up the Seymour Valley Trailway for several kilometers, down the Hydraulic Creek Connector to the Spur 4 Bridge. Weather was not too bad, with the sun trying to peek out from behind the clouds from time to time. We had lunch at a nice picnic spot with a large, covered shelter where the Hydraulic Creek Connector crosses the Mainline. The trip was approximately 17 km and 6 hours return.
A nice trip in future - for when there is better weather and no ice on the trails and when the Fisherman’s Trail is repaired – would be to take the originally planned route up Fisherman’s Trail, across the Spur 4 Bridge, up the Spur 4 Trail to the North end of Lost Lake and back. A great aspect to hiking in this area is that there are far fewer people on the trails than around Rice Lake or the trail to Norvan Falls.
