When we started to hike the Interior in the mid-1970’s, we purchased a copy of Exploring Wells Gray Park by Roland Neave.   It was our guide to the Park and we hiked every route we could and did not really finish the listed hikes until the 1990’s.   Some routes have disappeared as deadfall and overgrowth has returned paths to forest or have been washed out by springmelt-erosion events.   Gone are the Shaden, Kostal Lake Trail, and the Flourmill Volcanoes from the Mahood River which are no longer viable routes.   But most of the same trails described by Roland in the 1974 First Edition are included in the most recent (2015) edition and since the Park has also changed, additional detail and updates have been added.

By defining these routes, Roland has led hikers and explorers to these trails for decades.     Many of us have followed and we are now leading others into Wells Gray.   Roland’s ceaseless promotion of Wells Gray has partly led to its current prominence.   The Wells Gray World Heritage Committee (link) is actively promoting Wells Gray as a Geopark, a step on the way to becoming a UNESCO site.

For this latest edition of the book, Roland returned to hike as many of the listed hikes as he could in 2014.  A few of us helped to hike some of the more remote routes (link) and passed the information on to Roland.   We were able to join Roland for his hike of the First Canyon Trail last fall too.

The 6th edition of Exploring Wells Gray Park has been updated, but it also has color photos, aerial photos, color maps, hiking logs (GPS waypoints, distances, elevations), and some new sections.   I have several copies of different editions of the book, but this last one was the best of the series, a must-buy for serious hikers.   “It is currently on sale at Chapters, Coles, Save on Foods, Wells Gray Tours (all in Kamloops); Buy Low Foods, Jim’s Market, Wells Gray Inn (all in Clearwater), plus many bookstores around BC should have it by now.”