November 17th , Hawthorne Mountain, a bit of snow…..

Another trail starting from that winding road from Okanagan Falls…The weather forecast was for snow, so we rushed out the door fingers crossed.

The starting point we found from the Dogtown trail…is the Mahoney Lake Ecological Reserve….and this was roughly in the vicinity of the trailhead for this one…but heading north instead of south. The path itself starts through ponderosa pine with those enormous pine needles (8 to 9 inches long) covering the path as you go.

There is an area just inside the reserve that has a generous scattering of those big white mushrooms peeking their heads up…an area obviously being harvested by someone judging by the number of cut stems….need to get my mushroom app on those ones…..they might just be delicious..!!!

Interestingly (to me anyway) this trail is two valleys down from where all the flooding happened in Merritt BC…destroying the roads and rail…and much farmland and homes in these past few days….but the pools and ponds along this trail are quite dry and at low levels……interesting how those mountains drain…..and how narrow the influence of that ‘atmospheric river ‘ was.

Lovely trail…with a few rocky scrambly up bits…..I might be getting used to these…maybe just a little….

As we headed ever higher we realised the view from this one is actually down onto the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO…… https://astro-canada.ca/l_observatoire_federal_de_radioastrophysique-the_dominion_radio_astrophysical_observatory-eng )………..…and then we started looking for better vantage points to see down that valley.

As we continued up…as promised the snow clouds rolled in…and now we were up in the snow line…..not a lot…..just enough to make it pretty……(not too slippery just in case anyone is concerned)

It was another bust on the view from the top…as once again we were in the cloud and blizzard so the views down were not up to promise….but we made up for it with some of the snowy scenes we were able to witness….and no bears…..

We did have one lone deer galloped across the path…waited for me to fumble out my phone and then take off again before I could snap any pix…..

It was a long loop across the top of the ridge ( we came up through the valley) on the way back down…we managed to find our way without dropping off any cliff faces…again.

….and just a little bit of bear sign………!!!!

Another great day out…thoroughly enjoyable…….

Next trip out is back to Skaha Bluffs but this time for the pictograph route.

Extra pix….