SOUTHWESTERN BRITISH COLUMBIA - British Columbia: Including the Alaska Highway - page 335

visitors leave their gold pans at home, coming mainly to fish or to hike in the beautiful
valleys around Pemberton. The summer-only Pemberton Visitor Centre (604/894-6175,
www.tourismpembertonbc.com , 9am-5pm daily mid-May-Sept.) is back out of town on
Highway 99.
From Pemberton you can take one of three routes to Lillooet. Whichever route you de-
cide on, it's important to note that the weather can change rapidly, and even in summer you
might find yourself traveling through a sudden snowstorm at higher elevations. However,
the scenery makes the effort worthwhile. You'll see beautiful lakes, fast rivers, summer
wildflowers, deep-blue mountains, steep ravines, never-ending forests, and vistas in every
shade of green imaginable. Campgrounds and picnic areas mark all the best locations.
The most direct way—the route once taken by fortune seekers heading toward the Cari-
boo goldfields—is paved Highway 99. A few minutes' drive out of Mount Currie, the high-
way begins switchbacking as it climbs abruptly into the Coast Mountains and crests at a
1,300-meter-high (4,260-foot-high) pass. Just before the pass is 1,460-hectare (3,600-acre)
Joffre Lakes Provincial Park, where a short trail (about 20 minutes round-trip) leads to
Lower Joffre Lake. The trail continues beyond the first lake, making an elevation gain of
400 meters (1,300 feet) before reaching the main body of water, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles)
from the highway.
From the pass, Highway 99 loses over 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) of elevation in its des-
cent to Lillooet. Along the way is narrow Duffey Lake (the highway itself is referred to
locally as the “Duffey Lake Road”), backed by the steep-sided Cayoosh Range.
The second route (summer only) spurs north through Mount Currie following the
Birkenhead River, passing the turnoff to 9,755-hectare (24,100-acre) Birkenhead Lake
Provincial Park, then descending to D'Arcy. Beyond this point, the road can get extremely
rough, so check conditions in town before setting out. The third, northernmost, and longest
route, over 200 kilometers (124 miles) of mostly unpaved road (also summer only), climbs
north along the Lillooet River through Pemberton Meadows, over Hurley Pass, and to the
historic mining communities of Gold Bridge and Bralorne before closely following the
shore of Carpenter Lake in an easterly direction back to Lillooet.