Cathedral Provincial Park

Happy belated BC Day! Well, it was happy for us – we got a long weekend out of it, so we were off to Cathedral Provincial Park in the South Okanagan-Similkameen area. Cathedral Park has a ‘core area’ up above 2000 m asl, focused around several lakes and an old private lodge, that was in the area before it was designated a provincial park. We skipped the private lodge option and found ourselves a perfect walk-in campsite at Lake of the Woods. We used this as our base to go explore the many trails up into open alpine meadows and ridgetop routes. The landscape was very diverse and we had never seen so many different species of wildflowers.

Lake of the Woods

Neil amongst the wildflowers

The first afternoon, we did a loop up past Lake Quiniscoe onto the Rim Trail and up Mt Quiniscoe. We came across a family of seven mountain goats, and they were not the least bit worried about us being there – especially the one fast asleep!

Wandering along the Rim Trail to Mt Quiniscoe in evening light

The local contingent of mountain goats

Neil enjoying the view from Mt Quiniscoe - we camped at the smallest lake you can see in the photo.

Due to several large wildfires burning in BC at the moment, there was a lot of smoke haze in the air. That evening, the setting sun glowed a brilliant orange.

The next day we set off back towards the Rim Trail, via a different route. We did a there-and-back route on the ridge past Smokey the Bear, Giant’s Cleft to the top of Grimface (got to love whoever named them!). The route to the top of Grimface was a very fun rock scramble.

The dry rocky landscape of the Rim Trail, with the craggy top of Mt Grimface in the back right.

Neil puts some scale to the rock walls of Smokey the Bear

The beautiful blocky rock of Grimface

The final day, we headed across valley, away from the Rim Trail and up through some alpine meadows to the rocky tops of Lakeview Mountain. From here, we could look back on where we had been the day before. The brief rain of the previous night had also cleared the air somewhat of smoke, and we could see across to Mt Baker and the North Cascades, down in Washington State - very nice!

Ptarmigan in the alpine meadows

The panoramic view from the top of Lakeview Mountain, looking over at the ridge we had explored the previous day

Neil running off down off Lakeview Mountain

All in all, Cathedral Park was a very different landscape from what we've seen elsewhere in BC, and we loved the big rock landscape and open ridge wandering. Definitely very glad we made it here before disappearing off from BC :-)