Cache Creek, Chasm & Canyon

Hi Blog!

Today is Friday, May 6, 2016. We decided to take our coffee walk down to Cache Creek and treat ourselves to breakfast out. As we left the campground and headed down hill into town, we passed the Cache Creek Cemetery. It sits high on a bluff overlooking the town.  Here you see town in the distance below an old cemetery in the foreground:

Cache Creek is a historic transportation junction. It is located on the Trans-Canada Highway at a junction with Highway 97. The same intersection (and the town that grew around it) was at the point on the Cariboo Wagon Road where a branch road led east to Savona's Ferry on Kamloops Lake. The name Cache Creek is derived from a cache (buried and hidden) supply and trade goods depot used by the fur traders of either the Hudson's Bay Company or its rival the North West Company. This happy miner greeted us as we entered town.

After a hearty miners breakfast at Chum's, we walked over to the Jade Store. As much as Kathy wanted to take this little beauty back to the RV, Dave objected and thus this photo was all Kathy got to keep.

On the way back to camp, we stopped at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Shrine. This Catholic Church is also a retreat house. The church itself is rather small, but it completely opens up to an outdoor seating area so when the weather gets hot, folks can sit outside in the shade. Kathy is taking a moment to admire the brilliant stone work of the shrine.

To get back to camp, we followed the old Stage Road which was the branch road going east to Savona's Ferry on Kamloops Lake. If we just kept walking for a day or so, we'd end up back in Kamloops! If you look real hard, you can almost see the old stage coach heading east.

There are a couple Canadian Provincial Parks nearby, so we decided to pay them a visit.  First stop was Chasm Provincial Park located near the town of Clinton. The park was originally created in 1940 to preserve and promote a feature known as the Painted Chasm, or simply The Chasm, a gorge created from melting glacial waters eroding a lava plateau over a 10 million year span. It was impossible to get the whole chasm in a single photo.

The walls of the Chasm contain tones of red, brown yellow, and purple and are an average of almost 1,000 feet in height. The Chasm is approximately 2,000 feet wide and 5 miles long. We walked along the rim stopping at various lookout points to take in the view.

The once might Chasm Creek which helped form The Chasm, is just a small babbling brook. From the point where the stream tumbles over the cliff side, we can peer down the entire valley.

Our final stop today, was Marble Canyon Provincial Park nestled in the rugged Pavilion Mountain Range. Here is our first look at the limestone cliffs towering over the park.

This canyon was once part of a Pacific island chain, another section of which lies in the northwest corner of the province. The limestone was under so much stress from its journey from the Pacific Ocean that it began to change and marble.

After rooting around the base of the cliff for a few souvenirs, we walked back over to the campground and started exploring the two small lakes. Here is a look at Turquoise Lake.

We walked around the far side of the lake to get a better look at the Marble cliffs.

We thought we had the whole lake to ourselves until we ran into this couple.

Right next to Turquoise Lake is Crown Lake. Again we walked around the far side to get a better view. We had to be careful where we walked, as free-roaming horses are allowed to graze in the valley. There was a little too much wind coming up the valley to get a good reflection in the water.

There is so much to see and do in this area, we feel we have only just scratched the surface. We have a couple more days and will try to get out and explore some more. Stay tuned.

Kamloops!

Today was our first day in Cache Creek, and we hoped to explore one of the nearby provincial parks. However, David woke to discover that tick had embedded itself in him, and our plans suddenly changed to finding a clinic to have the tick removed.  It turned out that the closest health clinics are in Kamloops, an hour's drive west of Cache Creek.  So, we decided to spend our day exploring the area around Kamloops.  It turned out to be an enjoyable trip after all.

Kamloops is located at the confluence of two branches of the Thompson River, upstream from Cache Creek.  It has nearly 90,000 residents, and so is not a small city.  We found it to be an attractive.  The city was originally founded by fur companies and was known as Ft. Thompson.  Later, it became known as Ft. Kamloops, possibly derived from the name local Shuswap Native Americans gave to the area, "Tk'amlups," meaning "meeting of the waters," possibly due to the similarity of its pronunciation to the French, "Camp des Loupes," meaning, "Camp of Wolves."  The gold rush of the 1860's and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway contributed to the town's growth.  Logging continued to cause it to prosper.

After David's tick removal, we popped over to the Visitor Center, which was graced by a large wooden sculpture of a rainbow trout:

We got some tips from the visitor center host on places to hike.  When we asked her one thing we should not miss when visiting Kamloops, she unhesitatingly recommended the BC Wildlife Park, just east of town.

The BC Wildlife Park operates the only licensed wildlife rehabilitation center in the area. The staff and volunteers work closely with the environmental agencies and community partners to provide rehabilitation services for injured, ill, or orphaned mammals, birds of prey, amphibians, reptiles and endangered species until they can be returned to their natural habitats.  The Center also has a partnership with Thompson Rivers University's – Animal Health Technology Program to teach and prepare students to become Animal Health Technicians. In 2006, the Center rescued and rehabilitated 139 animals.  In 2007, the park took in five rescued rattlesnakes and rehabilitated them by the fall season when the snakes were eventually released to a den site. One of the snakes also gave birth at the park and the surviving young were also released into the wild. In 2008, the Center took in 11 deer fawns, and has released eight of them into the wild.

Members of the public are permitted to tour the facility and view of the animals that are being cared for.  All of the animals are given spacious outdoor natural habitats.  On this day, most of them were lolling about in the afternoon sun after having had their morning meals.  They included:

Grizzly bears -

- a shy peacock who was free to roam the campus and who, when we passed, was crying out for his mate, who cried back from the veterinary section where, we imagined, she was receiving medical attention -

 - two regal bald eagles -

- a barred owl -

- a red-tailed hawk -

- a Bactrian camel -

- llamas -

- and several mountain goats, including a ram -

- and a ewe with her newborn kid -

- a white wolf -

- a cinnamon-colored black bear enjoying his own swimming pool -

- two coyotes roaming their habitat nervously -

- a female moose who didn't seem the least bit bothered by our presence nearby -

- and a mountain lion who was howling his general displeasure with the world:

Some of these animals are too injured or too habituated to humans to be returned to the wild; those inhabitants will be cared for at the center for the rest of their lives.

After our visit to the wildlife center, we returned to downtown Kamloops for a very tasty lunch at The Noble Pig Brewhouse.  Seven house beers were on tap, and Kathy selected a Belgian blonde ale to fill her growler for later enjoyment.

Our hunger - and thirst - thus sated, we headed out to Kenna Cartwright Nature Park, which preserves 2,750 foot Mt. Dufferin in its natural state (except for several microwave and cell towers on its summit).  We climbed to the top and, because it was a clear, sunny day, were treated to exhilarating panoramas of the city and surrounding regions.

Here is a view north up the North Fork of the Thompson River looking toward snow-capped peaks to the far north:

Kathy was so excited about the view from the summit of Mt. Dufferin, that she asked David to take this panoramic video of Kamloops from Mt. Dufferin.

Finishing our hike, which was about 4 miles, we hopped in the truck for our drive home to Cache Creek.  On the way, we stopped for a view of Kamloops Lake, which is a natural widening and deepening of the Thompson river and measures about 1 mile wide, about 18 miles long, and up to 450 feet deep.  Today it was a deep, clear blue:

Both Kamloops Lake and the Thompson River generally offer some good trout fishing this time of year, so we are scheming to get out and thrown a line in the river to see what bites.  More on that another day...

Hopping Around Hope

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Today is Tuesday, May 3, 2016. It is our last full day in Hope. Yesterday, we ended up working on logistics like getting Canadian Health Insurance and loading all the Canadian topo maps in our hiking GPS. By the time we finished all our chores, it was Happy Hour! So today, we decided to get an early start and see some of the sites in the immediate area.  First stop - Othello Tunnels - located in the Coquihalla Canyon Provincial Park.

In the early 1900s, the Canadian Pacific Railway decided a railroad was necessary to link the Kootenay Region with the BC coast. Andrew McCulloch was hired as the chief engineer in May 1910. The railway was built over three mountain ranges. In the Coquihalla Gorge, the Coquihalla River cuts a 300 foot deep channel through solid granite, which magnified the challenges. Here is our first look at the mighty Coquihalla River.

To get through the gorge, a straight line of railroad tunnels were built through the mountain, which are known now as the Othello Tunnels. Mr. McCulloch was an avid reader of Shakespearean literature, and he used characters such as Lear, Jessica, Portia, Iago, Romeo and Juliet to name stations of the Coquihalla subdivision. The tunnels in the Coquihalla Canyon were near the Othello station – thus, the Othello Tunnels. Many of the passengers on the Coquihalla rail line came expressly to see and photograph the station boards and to send postcards from the stations’ post offices as a souvenir. Here is our photo of the Othello Tunnels.

The Coquihalla River is a tributary of the Fraser River in the Cascade Mountains of British Columbia. It originates in the Coquihalla Lakes and empties into the Fraser River at Hope.

Unfortunately, fishing season doesn't open in this area until June 30th. We had to satisfy ourselves by catching a selfie!

Our next stop - Kawkawa Lake. The lake is home to many species of fish, but it is best known for its large kokanee (land-locked salmon), which can reach up to 3 pounds in weight. We are really looking forward to the day we get our kayaks.

We took a short stroll around the wooded banks of the lake and found a spot to peek out across the water.

Kawkawa Lake Park is situated on the lake and has amenities such as: toilets, swimming beach, grassy play area, park benches with picnic tables and a small dock that has a concrete boat launch. We are still early in the season, so it wasn't very busy today.

Onward and upward - Thacker Mountain! The Thacker family - early Hope pioneers - built their homestead at this mountain (originally named Little Mountain) around the turn of the century. Upon their death, they willed the mountain to British Columbia. Here is the view from the first lookout. That's Landstrom Ridge just behind Hope.  We noted that it would make a good hike on a later visit.

We followed a utility road up to the microwave station at the top of Thacker Mountain and we were rewarded with a fine view of Hope Mountain.

The trail circled the summit and gave us a view of Kawkawa Lake.

After hiking back down to the trailhead, we went into town for lunch. When we got back to the campground, we found a text message from our friends George and Nancy looking for a campground recommendation. Before we had a chance to respond, they knocked on our door! Fate brought them to the site next door to us!

Can you say "Happy Hour"?

Hiking Lightning Lake in the E.C. Manning Provincial Park

Today we wanted to drive east to E.C. Manning Provincial Park, and our plan was to hike a falls trail. We set out southeast on Canada Highway 3 from Hope and our first stop was at the Hope Slide site. The Hope Slide was the largest landslide ever recorded in Canada. It occurred in the morning hours of January 9, 1965 in the Nicolum Valley east of Hope, and killed four people. Prior to the landslide, a small avalanche had forced four people to stop their vehicles a few miles southeast of Hope. As those people contemplated waiting for clearing crews or turning around, a second slide occurred and buried them, fatally.  Rescue crews only found two of the four bodies—the others have remained entombed under the rock since 1965. A Greyhound bus traveling to Hope was stopped just before the slide. The driver turned back and was credited with saving his passengers from a tragedy.

Here is a view of the mountain face that collapsed due to the slide:

The force of the slide was so strong that it sent the rubble (and water from a lake at the bottom of the canyon) high up the opposing canyon wall before all of the rubble settled at the bottom of the ravine. It was sobering to imagine the rocks being so deep that rescuers had no hope of finding two of the victims.

Further up Highway 3, we had our first encounter with the Skagit River.  Here in Canada, it anchors the Skagit Valley Provincial Park; but, further down the Skagit River, in the United States, the river forms the backbone of the North Cascades National Park, which we had visited on our hike around Ross Lake in the North Cascades of the State of Washington.  Here, close to its source at Allison Pass (which forms the boundary between the Fraser Valley, to the west, and the Okanagan Watershed, to the east), the river is smaller and wilder:

We topped 4,500 feet elevation and the pass.  Soon, we arrived at the Manning Resort Lodge, only to learn that the Three Falls Trail, which we had planned to hike, is blocked by snow and ice and would require snowshoes and crampons, which we had not packed.  Perhaps if we had thought about it, we might have guessed that regions above 4,000 feet might still have snow.  However, we had not thought about it.  So we asked for alternatives, and the resort employee suggested we hike around Lightning Lake.

At 4,000 feet above sea level, Lightning Lake still had an alpine character.  Our first view of the lake confirmed this:

After a quick lunch, we started out on the trail, only to discover that much of it was still snow-covered.  The resort employee had said, "It might be a little slushy."  However, this was NOT merely slushy, but snowy and even icy in places:

Along the whole trail, previous snowshoers and hikers had kept to a narrow path, packing down the snow into an icy elevated passage that varied between one and two feet above the level of the ground. Where the ground was bare, we could tell how high we were walking; where the ground was snow-covered, we were not so aware of our height, but it was easy to make a mistake and posthole into the soft, deep snow beside the snowshoe track:

We worked our way about a third of the way around the lake to the Rainbow Bridge, where we relaxed and took in the view:

Down lake, the view was spectacular, giving opportunities to see snow-capped peaks:

There were places where rockfall had obliterated the path, but the snow had allowed hikers to make passage across the boulder field.  This was icy in spots and made for some tricky walking:

After about 1.5 hours, we made our way to the bottom of the lake, and looked back up toward where we started:

Working our way back up the lake, we spotted some kayakers paddling placidly beneath the glacial peaks:

As we neared the end of our trail, we were treated to a spectacular view of the lake and surrounding snow-capped mountains.  As we hiked back to the truck, we tried to remember other hikes that were as scenic.  It wasn't easy to find any comparable experiences:

All in all, the hike was about 6.5 miles, which, in distance, doesn't seem long.  However, the entire path required us to choose between post-holing in deep snow or picking our way along a narrow, 9-inch snowshoe track that was icy and very slippery in spots.  There must have been 30 or 40 downed trees across the path, and each one challenged our climbing, ducking, bobbing and weaving skills. By the time we returned to the truck at 4:45 pm, our desire for outdoor adventure had been fully sated, and we rested peacefully on our 45 minute drive back to the campground in Hope.

Flood Falls Hike in Hope, B.C.

From our campground, we can see a pretty waterfall come tumbling down one of the many Cascades peaks bordering the Fraser River to the south:

Locals told us that this is Flood Falls, and that we could find a trail to it by walking a short distance from our campground.  Sure enough, this morning while we were on our daily coffee walk, we found the trailhead with no trouble:

You can find the trail easily.  The trailhead is located at a small gravel pullout at N 49.362319, W 121.519306 and the trail is searchable on Google Maps, on a parallel road running along the south side of Canada Highway 1, just east of the Floods Interchange.

The trail leads into a typical Northern Cascades forest, filled with moss-covered rocks and trees, and boasting vines of all types:

 Along its lower stretch, the trail follows a deep streambed.  It took some looking and pondering before we realized that the bed of the stream seemed too artificially cut.  We eventually came to a spot where it started to make sense.  The area was transformed by the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, beginning in 1858.  Prospectors climbed all over these hills like so many ants, dredging out streams and searching for gold nuggets and powder.  It seemed to us that we were seeing a spot where dredges had dug up piles of river stones and spit them up onto the near bank:

By 1889, some 40 years later, Hope saw the beginning of logging and milling.  We found stumps of old growth trees that remained from a clear-cut logging of the area beneath the falls and steep cliffs: 

Turning a corner, we caught our first close-up view of the falls:

Our heartbeats and pace quickened, as we neared the base of the falls.  Every step brought the falls nearer.  Here, Kathy stands at the base, by the pool into which the falls flow, gazing up at the water as far as she could see:

No waterfall really comes alive without video, so here is a video of Flood Falls from the pool at the bottom.

It's rare that we get a hike before breakfast, but today was one of those days, so we still are looking forward to the hike we planned for this afternoon!