Month: July 2023

Cathedral Park part 1 …..the journey up.

This hike had become a bit of a bucket list thing…….having had two failed attempts at getting into Cathedral Park in Oct 2021…the first time cos we just did not understand the scale of the thing.(click)…and the second because it was just too far to make it in one day. ( click).

( I highly recommend clicking on the pictures in this episode……some of them are spectacular..!!)

There are only two ways in, hike the 16 km walking trail from basecamp to the highest wilderness camp in Canada at 6800 ft above sea level and then camp…….or book the transport in with Cathedral Lakes Lodge ( click) utilizing the only (private) road in the park. Transport is only available from June to September, depending on the weather. In 2021 we were just too late in the year, but this time we were set to book in June and as luck would have it, we’d be daytrippers on the longest day of the year.

We had to set off from the trailer by 6.20 am to arrive in enough time to munch down our brekkie sammiches…and make sure we made it in good time to the gate. We were up early enough that we spotted a black bear strolling up the side of the road on the way there.

As it turned out…that was a very good move because the guy who was driving us up (we were the only two day trippers that day) was ready to take us up early. That gave us about a 40 minute start on the day getting up there. ( Early bird = worm 😁 )

Having walked part of this road before…I could not even imagine how someone could get a jeep up without a winch. It was stomach churning on foot….!!! Turned out it was not a jeep..!! it was a Chevy Suburban making the journey up. Our driver had been driving this road for 33 years…….and he made it seem remarkably easy, knew where all the bumps, channels and ginormous rocks were.

It’s a 13 km drive which took us an hour to get there…and I have to say …even if you could…you would not want to go any faster.

The trip up itself was an adventure. I must have been on enough of these ropey BC logging roads cos I surprised myself I was still conscious looking at some of the sheer drops off the side of this very narrow…very ‘rugged’ road….!!

What seemed like maybe halfway up…..it was difficult to track time on this journey…we crossed the Lakeview Trail…..the one we attempted before….

It’s so difficult to show just how steep this path is with photographs but nigh on impossible to take those pictures as the truck bounces over the rocks and through the little washouts on the road.

The driver told us it takes them several days to open the road in the spring because of the number of fallen trees and washouts they have to repair.

The camp…when you eventually get there is beautiful. There are cabins and a lodge up there. Sensible people would book accommodation with the meal plan (the reviews for the meals are pretty good..!!) . If one wanted to do any of the hikes up there the whole experience…with the comfy bed, the hot tub at the end of the day and the meal plan. ….and the very friendly very helpful staff, would probably be the way to do it.

The requirement for everyone is to sign in and provide their route for the day (and the direction of travel)……just in case you need fetching off the mountain before the predators come out to dine…..!!

If, and when, you do return from the hike the map needs to be picked up to effectively sign out and indicate that you have returned safely. (There are bears…grizzlies…..and mountain lions up there…!!)

The route we picked was blogworthy but I would not necessarily recommend that anyone else follow it..LOL… We tried to pick out a trail using Alltrails that would allow us to get up to the rim trail…..and make it back down..maximising our hike within our limited time yet still getting back without having to be rescued..!!

The beginning of the trail from Quiniscoe Lake goes through some of the camping areas. ….complete with the hoist thingies to keep your food away from the bears…!!!

We headed for Lake of the Woods……..the first lake of the day….

For what is most definitely a challenging hike…..it starts out gently …and is oh so pretty….

We met a partridge on the path. I’m thinking it was cold because it did not seem much interested in moving off the trail……

….and then around the Lake of the Woods……

After the lake the trail did start to climb a little…….

We had lucked out with a really lovely day (first day of summer..!!) the folks in the lodge informed us that it had been snowing up ’til the day before…!!!

…and then the trail started to climb a bit more seriously…..

…with some switchbacks heading up in to the forest……

…until we were high enough to be in snow…..

…then we reached the first peak of our trail crossing the shoulder of Pyramid mountain to take us down towards Ladyslipper lake…

The range of alpine wildflowers was quite spectacular up here…….the mountains above and below….breathtaking…….

Its hard to describe the feeling descending to the edge of Ladyslipper, it’s one of those almost ‘otherworldly’ places and so beautiful….

The trail we had picked out took us along the edge of the lake and then up to the ridge to follow the rim trail…..

…..but that’s the next installment….don’t touch that dial.😁

Extra pix.

Penticton….the name is derived from the Salish (indigenous language) word which means roughly…a place that one can stay year round. The city of Penticton adopted it as their city slogan….slightly modified.

From the disappointment of Mount Revelstoke, between the weather and Parks Canada fire management, we tested the wind and it spoke of a brilliant plan. Re-visiting Cathedral Park. Last time we were in the Okanagan it was late in the season, and then too early in the spring to either get the transport in, or for the daylight hours to be long enough to get us into the core.

Here we were a few hours away and quite literally around the longest day….it seemed like the obvious choice.

We secured a campsite at our old winter stomping ground at Wrights Beach Camp on the northwest shore of Lake Skaha, hitched up old Xolo and off we trotted.

Back in Penticton again, set up in what feels a bit like home from home (having spent the winter of 2021 here) ……the search was on for a trail to stretch our legs out in prep for the BIG hike.

Looking around on alltrails it is surprising just how many of the trails we have done here….or ones that neighbour or cross ones we have done. We found an interesting looking one up the Carmi Road on the east side of the valley….this one led down to the Ellis Dam…which holds back the reservoir for Penticton. Something different…let’s give it a go….

It was an easy walk as we were intending to save our legs for our epic journey up to Cathedral Park (yet to come)

It started out with a bit of a trudge up the logging road…..then turned to strike out across the dam. What a lovely spot if you wanted a quiet evening picnic…..

The wildflowers were spectacular…..

..then a goose family swam out to give us a little show of their fluffy offspring.

We turned down the path past the dam following the Alltrails route. At the point where we should have been able to ford the creek, we quickly realised that the spring run-off from the dam had raised the water level too high for us to cross.

After a bit of searching further down…it was quite clear that the normal fording spots were too far underwater…so we had to turn around and head back. A bit of a disappointment……but we were looking for an easy day…so it worked out perfectly.

Extra pix

It rained a lot in Revelstoke, not sure if it just so happened that we were there on a rainy week……or if it’s typical for this part of the province…….but it rained…a lot…!!

When we first arrived and drove up to the gate at the base of Mount Revelstoke National Park, the road to the top was not yet open due to snowpack on the top section of the road. The low level walks are fairly short (1 to 3 km) and with no real ‘views’ due to the dense forest. So having already visited the Rail Museum…the next day we headed back up the Rogers Pass to the Discovery Centre (there is no visitor centre at Mount Revelstoke NP…so I had to go back to get my pins for my National Park pin collection..!!)

In an effort to manage at least a little bit of activity, I downloaded some of the short walks along the Trans Canada.

The first one was the Skunk cabbage walk…..

There is a paved road down to a small park area literally a right turn off the eastbound Trans-Canada. The road leads down to the river, where my intrepid blogtographer HAD to climb down the bank to take some pictures…..

The path leads off through some pretty big old growth cedars in true BC style.

….and then to the boardwalk leading to the habitat of the Skunk cabages…(not entirely sure why they are called that because they did not particularly smell…..but maybe that is a seasonal thing..!!)

There was more giant hogweed than anything else along most of the boardwalk…LOL…

…and then we found some…

Unfortunately the second loop of the boardwalk was closed and under restoration…….maybe that’s where most of the cabbages were…..

Rock Garden Trail.

The second trail was the Rock Garden. I downloaded the trail for this one mainly because it was one of the few that were actually open. Between COVID and two successive harsh winters with a lot of avalanche activity in the pass…..there has been a lot of damage to the regular boardwalk trails in Glacier Park. The rock garden was a little hidden gem.

Although not a long path, it is quite an extraordinary little ecosystem around an old rock slide.

It’s like a fairy garden that someone very clever might have landscaped…..except that it was designed and built by the ultimate landscape gardener…….

…it’s a natural place…and well worth the stop if you are ever travelling this highway.

….and we found this little bright and colourful little chap on the way back down…..

Coming back into town…we thought a drive back to the Mount Revelstoke park gate might be in order……and were delighted to find that the road had been opened, it’s a winding drive to within a km of the summit so we drove up to check it out…….. and walked the final part of the summit trail to the top since we were there anyway.

Mount Revelstoke Summit Trail

The road up to the summit of Mount Revelstoke is paved, 24km of switchbacks weaving up to the top (6,375ft above sea level). It’s densely forested with a handful of lookout spots on the way up. …and then from the parking area it’s one last kilometre up to the top.

Once at the summit their are a bunch of short trails there with quite spectacular views…..

One to the north….

…one more to the south….

…and a little climb up through the last of the snow ( this was on June 15th..!!) to the Fire lookout…..

…..with my faithful blogtographer waiting for me to fall over in the snow…!!!

It was another easy little walk…but very pretty with the wildflowers busting out all over the place to make the most of their short season…..

We hatched the plan to do the Eva Lake Trail from the summit over to the next peak as the weather was looking good for such a trip….

Next day..dressed and booted ready for the hike…they closed the top road again…( aaaaaaaaaaargh…!!) …….this time the fire guys were in cutting some of the dangerous trees…..talk about all dressed up and nowhere to go…..

Extra pix.

Only a three hour drive from Fairmont Hot Springs, up the Colombia Valley and over a few mountains we reached Revelstoke This location offers access to two national parks…..Mount Revelstoke National Park and Glacier ( the Canadian one ) National Park.

Revelstoke is on the other side of the ( historic) Rogers pass ( nothing to do with Rogers cable btw) The whole saga of the Canadian railroads and the monumental task of finding the route through the mountains for both the railway and the roadway is quite the tale….and a far more interesting portion of the history, discovery and development of Western Canada than I might ever have imagined…….and the not so distant past at that…..

Having settled ourselves in to Revelstoke RV campground…….

We took ourselves up to the gate at Mount Revelstoke National park….only to find to our dismay…even tho’ it was almost the middle of June…the snow pack on the road to the summit still had the top half of the road closed.

….and then the next day the rain started………so…intrepid explorers that we are…we spent part of the day at the Rail museum……seemed like the place to go in a railway town.

The Museum is a lovely building with bits of the old station incorporated into a new structure.

It’s a fascinating little spot…and we followed the history of just how crucial Revelstoke was to the railroad and thus the development of the western side of the country. The railroad made it possible to cross the mountains and to move freight and supplies that changed the west. Difficult to imagine the scale of the operation….or even the scale of the vision to build roadways across and through this terrain. Wintertime presents another range of issues with snow and dangerous avalanches necessitating the development of protective snowsheds for the rail line and road. There is a HUGE set up of a model train layout of the Revelstoke yard and some of the surrounding landscape….

The outdoor part of the museum is a cutting off the main switching yard….with the constant movement of huge trains all around (lots of loud metallic groaning and screeching..!!)

You can climb into the caboose…… its sparse utility tells a whole story about how spartan life was for the guys building these rail lines….

…and the inside part of the museum also has some full sized trains…..one of them purports to be the luxury tourist train that used to do the trek through the mountains……..again…utility seems more like the name of this game…!!..and I’m pretty sure British rail still uses that carpet LOL….

All in….a fascinating rainy-day activity…….

Extra pix.