Taylor Basin

Pavilion, BC, Canada
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Roundtrip: 23.0km
Elevation gain: 700m
High point: 1850m
Time needed: 9 hours
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2WD logging-road
NEARBY TRAILS
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DIRECTIONS: Starting at the entrance to the town of Gold Bridge, drive north on Lillooet Pioneer Road. As you begin to drive along magnificent Carpenter Lake.

Drive north on Lilloeet Pioneer Road from the town of Gold Bridge, heading alongside Carpenter Lake. 11.2 km north of the entrance to Gold Bridge, turn left onto Tyaughton Lake Road. This gravel road is now signed, and there is a large number of resort signs next to it. Zero your odometer here.

Follow Tyaughton Lake Road, ignoring all side branches. Skip the left branch to Gun creek. At 8.4 km, keep left at the junction with Tyax Drive. At the 13.5 km mark, a three-way fork in the road is reached. Turn left here, taking the left-most fork in the road. Zero your odometer again. You're now on "Mud Ck-Taylor Ck Forest Service Road". If you see an old wooden bulletin board next to the start of the road, you'll know you're in the right place.

The road can be followed by high clearance 2wd vehicles for 1.5 km until you reach a fork in the logging roads. You can park here. You may be able to drive some of the following roads if you have a high clearance vehicle. Take the right branch in the junction after the parking spot. After 5-10 minutes you reach another junction. Take the left branch this time, and after another 5-10 minutes you reach a clearing. A trail marked by ribbons (and perhaps also an arrow on the ground) branches off to your left. This is the trail head - go left here and do not continue straight on the logging road. Follow the trail until you reach Taylor Basin Cabin.create
SUMMARY: This area is very scenic and different from the coast mountains. The mountains are rounder, more arid and have lots of colors (white snow patches, green plants, various shades of brown, red and green from many of the minerals found in the ground).

There is an old cabin close to the end of the Taylor basin. It's ~11km walk from the 2WD parking and an elevation gain of 700m. The cabin is a little decrypt, has mice in it (but they were harmless when we slept there in Sep 2010), a heating stove, an axe, pots and a lantern. It has 4 bunk beds with a 'chain-net' bottom, but only 2 mattresses. From the cabin there are multiple easy day hikes that can be done. Here are two options:
1. Climb the pass to Eldorado Basin and continue onwards to Windy pass - this is about 8km one way. From windy pass return the way you came or via the more scenic north ridge. From windy pass you can also go all the way to Spruce lake.

2. Climb the camel pass (named after a rock in that shape right on the pass) to the south of cabin and walk along the ridge between Taylor, Pearson and Cinnabar basins.

3. Climb to the peak of Eldorado mountain.
There are many more trails to be found in the area. Bring a map.

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Taylor Basin
Sep 13, 2010
Katja and I went for a 3 day camping trip to the Taylor Basin area. We drove to Gold Bridge via the Hurly FSR. It's 2WD driveable all the way. It took us about 3 hours of brisk walking to get to the cabin, where we found two other people using it. We brought tents, but decided to stay the night in the cabin because it was quite cold outside. The next morning we hiked up Taylor basin over the pass to Eldorado basin. The area is very pretty and looks quite different than the coast mountain range closer to Vancouver. It took us about 3 hours to get to Windy pass from the cabin. We had lunch and decided to return via the "high route" scrambling along the ridges back to the pass seperating Eldorado and Taylor. This was my favorite part of the hike, along the ridge you can see both Eldorado valley and Nea basin. Returning to the cabin, we had a nice chat with Jim and Bill the two other people sharing it. They were hunters but didn't manage to find any animals, and so were leaving the next day. The next day we hiked up Camel pass and walked the ridge between Pearson and Taylor and Cinnabar basins. We had a decent view of the Carpenter, Gun and Downton lakes, but it would have been much better had the weather was not so cloudy. We came back packed and returned to the car.
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POSTS FROM NEARBY TRAILS
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Cinnabar Basin
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Cinnabar Basin
Aug 2, 2009
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