July 9th Friday
The trail head parking is at The Valleyview Trail road off Hwy 40. This road is now closed and gated. Bear aware. The road runs to Elpoca View Lookout and then onto Little Highwood Parking. The destination for today was the Elpoca Creek Hill. Gaia and All Trails show a trail on there m of Opal Creek and up the road a few hundred meters and bush whack up through the trees to the upper road loop. At the old Lookout a trail is visible on the right through the Stoney prayer flags tied on the trees. Trail is clear at this point and winds up through the trees. Trees break out into a rock avalanche coming down from the gully that you are about to grovel up. Very loose and steep. At the top encounter another trail running left and right .Go left. Take a detour to a rocky outlook but unable to see the falls. Trail is still strong but fades and takes off up towards the rock face. Stay lower. A cairn I built on the way back will help. There is also another strong trail that intersects trail of earth that heads up to rock face. Not sure where it goes but not to Elpoca Creek Hill. Follow animal trail or go down to the creek but keep heading around big rock face. Eventually the Hill is in sight. A few green gullys are between you and the col. We got lucky and came across another strong trail that led us to the col. The rest is up hill and obvious. Going back we took the higher route through the rocks that can be seen from the summit. This trail petered out. Then it was back to sideways bush whacking. Nice area to be in deep wilderness. From the summit we could see our route through from King Creek to Gap Mountain. See link.
lhttps://willski.ca/king-creek-opal-traverse-to-little-highwood/
http://willski.ca/kml/ElpocaCreekHill.kml
http://willski.ca/trailheads/ElpocaCreekHill.gpx
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