It has been years since any amount of regular traffic has travelled up to Henrietta Lake. It might be many more before anyone gets up there because of access issues.
The route to Henrietta Lake is via a steep logging road and an even steeper trail up to the Henrietta Lake dam, which was built in 1947. The distance from the trailhead to the cabin on the lake is about 10 kilometres and hiking there and back is an all-day adventure.
Internet posts written more than six years ago at www.car-free.ca indicate the cabin was mouse-infested back then. Who knows what’s happened to the cabin in the years since?
Beyond Henrietta Lake and its rustic cabin popular with mice, hikers will find Sylvia Lake and Mount Roderick at a summit elevation of 1,475 metres. Roderick offers spectacular views across Howe Sound to Shannon Falls and the Stawamus Chief.
The trail to Henrietta Lake is closed because Western Forest Products controls the access and at the moment, the company isn’t welcoming guests to the area while remediation of the old Woodfibre site is ongoing. Rick Kormendy with Western Forest Products (WFP) points out there’s also logging currently taking place in the area.
Kormendy is the WFP site and project manager at Woodfibre. Kormendy says he isn’t in a position to allow hiking through to the end of the remediation work being done by WFP because of safety concerns.
I spoke with Byng Giraud of Woodfibre Natural Gas Ltd. about the hiking and biking potential in the area above the former pulp mill site. He likes the idea of allowing access to the backcountry to the west of the industrial site if his company’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant plans are approved.
Whether Giraud’s project goes ahead or not, there are people interested in using the trail system above Woodfibre once the former pulp mill site is cleaned up and public access is restored.
I’m planning now for the time when the trail re-opens and hikers are again ascending to the summit of Mount Roderick to wave across the waters at the people hanging out on the Sea to Sky Gondola patio.
In the meantime, as the proposed Woodfibre LNG export facility winds its way through various approval processes, hikers interested in doing the trip will be watching to see what the future holds for the industrial property on the shores of Howe Sound.
