Stein River

This August long weekend after much debate and some last minute planning James, Dan, Jay and myself headed north up the Fraser Canyon with our sights set on the Nahatlatch River outside Boston Bar and the Stein River outside Lytton. This rant will only cover the Stein River because I believe the Nahatlatch River is worthy of a full report with better pictures than I took. The Stein and Nahatlatch are within an hour or two of each other, which makes this an awesome grade 3+/4 weekend destination. Also within an hour or two of these rivers is an array of other rivers and creeks some of which have yet to be paddled. To name a few The Fraser, Thompson, Nicola, and Bridge River, as well as Spius and Cayoosh Creeks. But enough about the endless paddling in the Fraser Canyon and on with the Stein.


The Stein is right outside Lytton on the other side of the Fraser River, that's no problem though because you can take the really cool reaction ferry across the Fraser. The Stein is a very popular hiking trail so if you have a half decent map finding the trail head should be easy.


Yes that's right I said trail head. This run involves a rather long and some what steep hike into run the section that we did. This is the most common run piece. There is two other ways to do this run as well, you can fly to Stein Lake or drive from Pemberton and hike into run the North Stein all the way to the Fraser. Both of these options involve multi day trips and lots and lots of world class grade 5.

Me packing my boat in. I tried dragging and shouldering the boat part of the way as well and the back pack is the only way to go.


About the hike, I'm no hiker, in fact Ill do what ever I can to get out of hiking further than I need to, especially while carrying my creek boat, gear, water and some food. That said I will gladly do that hike again, in fact as soon as possible. In total we hiked somewhere between 4-5 kilometers. There is a camp sight here and a massive grade 5 drop called "Devils Staircase". The drop is up river from the camp site that is normally used as a put in. To run the drop its easiest to take the trail that splits off to the left and up the rather steep hill. I should mention that the scenery and landscape are a pleasure to hike through, even if it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 degrees. Also the trail is very well maintained to the point of bridges over all creeks and obstacles. The trail is never harder than grade two. We hiked up as far as we could bare from the camp site and put on to run the bottom of "Devils Staircase".



The run Starts off with a bang at that put in. Its mostly continuous grade 4 reed and run except for a few grade 4+ style drops with big horizon lines generally with some sort of head wall involved. We ran the whole thing without scouting but any higher water there would probably be some more scouting required. I believe we were there around a medium level.






Looking up at "Devils Staircase" .










Cooling off at our put in after the hike up .

Jay snagging the first boof of the day.

The boys running some drop around the half way mark.

Jay trying to boof the camera man.

James on one of the many eddy service surf waves.

James, Dan and myself relaxing around the half way mark down the run. Given the speed of the river and length of the hike in, its good to take lots of breaks and enjoy everything, otherwise the run would be over in an hour.

This was my favorite rapid, it probably has a name but I don't know it. Aside from "Devils Staircase" this was the steepest and hardest drop on the run, lots of nice big regurgitating holes.

Jay on one of the bottom drops near the bridge, awesome scenery all the way to the end.

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One of the last big drops on the run. Even the big drops had easy enough to find lines they didn't require scouting.

Stein River Video