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Mudslide closes Meager Creek FSR

Bridge will likely remain out until next year

Torrential rains overnight on September 18 unleashed a massive debris slide in the Capricorn Creek drainage near Meager Creek, knocking out a bridge and over 200 metres of road. The washout is roughly five kilometres away from the hot springs and access to the popular getaway is closed until further notice.

Nobody was hurt and there was no loss of property as a result of the slide, but three people who had hiked to Harrison Hut and Overseer Mountain were trapped on the other side of the creek. They were forced to abandon their Nissan Pathfinder on the Meager Creek side of the road and wade across the creek to the other side where they were able to get a ride.

While the Meager Creek Hot Springs are typically busy on a weekend the Ministry of Forests and Range made the decision more than five years ago to move the campground away from the hot springs to the Lillooet Forest Service Road because of concerns over floods and slides in the area. As a result the gates to the Meager Creek Forest Service Road- usually open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily - were still closed when the slide occurred.

The Capricorn Creek bridge was knocked out in July 1998 by a massive debris slide which closed the road for more than a year. The bridge to the hot springs was washed out by a massive flood in October 2003, resulting in an almost five-year closure of the hot springs.

The area is still being assessed by geoscientists after the latest debris slide and it's not likely that the bridge will be replaced until next year.

"The hot springs are closed because right now our operator can't get in, or the public for that matter," said Norbert Greinacher, recreation officer for the Sea to Sky Forest District.

"(The bridge) is likely going to be replaced, but it's not likely to happen this year. In the interim we've closed access for hunters, hikers, or anyone going back there, like mushroom pickers.

"It's still possible to walk in, but that's not something we would recommend. There are rocks that are loose and the mud is as deep as your waist. It's a wide debris field, and it's just not a safe area to be in right now... The gate is closed and it's not going to reopen until the road is fixed."

The Ministry of Forests maintains the bridges and the Meager Creek Forest Service Road, which branches off the Upper Lillooet FSR at the 39 th kilometre.

David Southam, operations manager for the forest district, says that signs have been put up on the Lillooet FSR to notify people of the slide, as well as on the Elaho Valley FSR where there is a trail to the Meager Hot Springs over the Thousand Lakes Plateau.

"I was able to view the area by helicopter for the first time on September 21 and the next day I went in with two geoscientists to take measurements and find out where the slide started. This was a naturally occurring debris flow, in a very unstable area," he said.

"The 1998 event was much larger, 1.2 million cubic metres of material came down in 1998. Although this latest slide covers the same amount of area it didn't move as much material - the new materials blend in with the old, so it looks larger than it probably was. It was still a significant event."

The geoscientists will submit a report on the cause of the debris slide, as well as make recommendations for the future that will determine when - or possibly "if" - the road will reopen.

"It is an active forestry road," he said. "I suspect it will be next year when it opens, but that all depends on the final report from geoscientists as far as the relative safety of allowing the general public on the road. We still don't know how much debris came down, and there's no dollar figure yet either for the damage or how much it might cost to reopen.

"It was good timing in a way, in that it happened during our regular daily closure. If it happened during the day it could have been a different story, and we might have seen a larger number of people and vehicles trapped in that area."

There is a dramatic video on Facebook of a slide in the area, which was shot at 8 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 19 by a caretaker for the hot spring.

Josh Fairbrother works for Sea to Sky Onsen, which operates the Meager Creek Hot Springs under the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture. Every day he opens and closes the gate, and performs maintenance.

When he arrived at the washed out road that morning he took out his camera and filmed a series of debris flows, which came down the creekbed with enough force to splash onto the road. It was an awesome sight, he said, but not surprising.

"It's happened before," he said. "All the debris on the floodplain there is what was left behind last time (1998). There is already a substantial flood plain there of boulders and forest that had been wiped out by earlier slides, so you could always see what the potential was. But actually being there while it was happening and seeing thousands of tonnes of mud and rock coming down definitely painted a better picture. So it's not totally surprising, that's why we evacuate (the hot springs) every night, but I didn't expect to see that."

Fairweather says he is likely out of work as a result of the slide, but he says there are a few small projects underway at the campground. As a casual worker he says he usually has a few things on the go.

He's also confident that the road will reopen by next year.

"It was a substantially bigger project to rebuild the Meager Bridge, and I've heard that (the province) is already looking to put together funds to replace (the Capricorn Creek bridge) in the spring. The hot springs are a popular spot."