Friday, June 26 we finished class and hit the road by 4pm. We had everything pre-packed and ready to be loaded into the car. When that final class ended, we raced to the car, picked up everyone else, and hit the highway. Driving from Vancouver to Bowron is a long journey. Estimated time is 9 hours to drive the 760km. We didn’t have to be at the lake until noon the next for orientation so we decided to make an overnight stop at Lac la Hache and make the rest of the 
journey in the morning. The drive was made significantly shorter thanks to the sing along playlist of Disney songs. I was impressed at how well we mastered “I Just Can’t to be King” from the Lion King (Click on the image).
We had a very early start on the Saturday and made it to the provincial park site with plenty of time. We rented our canoes and paddle gear from Becker’s Lodge, conveniently located on the lake. After being outfitted, we were ready to go for the epic 6 day journey.
Lets meet the team. Our paddle group consisted of my buddy Nick, Dan and Anna, a couple that are close friends of Nick’s (who are now friends of mine), and myself. None of us had much paddling experience before this trip but we knew the calm waters of the Bowron Lakes would not be any trouble.
For the seven portages of the trip, we decided to rent wheels for the our canoes. We considered carrying our canoes like true rugged adventurers but for the type of trip we planned. This was going to be a trip taken on the leisure side, looking to escape, see some wildlife, and enter the tranquil waters that the Bowron Lakes offer.
In other words, we did not conserve weight. We packed luxuries that aren’t normally brought when packs have to be carried on backs. We were gracious in our food planning. We took liberties of the fact we weren’t carrying our weight in that we would eat well, extremely well. During our trip, we ate eggs and bacon, fajitas, currie, chilli, steaks (from the keg), pasta, and much more. I ate better than I normally do at home. How did we keep everything from getting spoilt? We were careful in our food planning, freezing our meat, keeping everything in soft coolers and only accessing it when we needed to. It worked brilliantly over the 6 days.
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