Dewdrop Traverse
The Dewdrop Traverse is a route that spans 19 km one way from the Red Lake Road to Hardie Hill, across the top of Red Plateau. It follows old double tracks, the Dewdrop Trail (single track), and some new single tracks on the west end set by motorcyclists, mountain bikers, and hikers. Only the middle section (the Dewdrop Trail) is marked so some route-finding is required. Various points can be reached by vehicle from the Red Plateau Forest Service Road, but it is a narrow road prone to mud and potholes. At the 7.5 km mark on this road, it emerges from the Park and logging is active, rendering the road into a 4WD mud bog. Hiking up is a better choice later in October.
Mountain bikers have featured the route on videos and this site has some articles on sections of the trail:
On this late fall day, we started near the Pimple at the junction of the two roads and followed the old double track up the hill, climbing from an elevation of 798m (at N50 45.189 W120 31.555) up onto the plateau at about 1180m. The route continues west and then we took a turn south to meet the Dewdrop Trail. The final part of the hike was 5 km on the single track trail down to the Dewdrop Range.
On the way up, there were a few viewpoints where hikers can look over Tranquille River Canyon and Mount Mara to the east. Weather was moving in and it rained about halfway through our hike.
Some route finding is needed to follow all the old backroads correctly,but we have done much of this area a few times so we wound our way out to the edge of the Red Plateau Escarpment. Castle Butte was the location for an Eocene volcanic eruption, which formed the lava cliffs on the east end of Red Plateau.
The Dewdrop trail follows the rim with many fine views down to the Dewdrop Range and Kamloops Lake. We looked down on low-lying clouds for much of this hike.
The final downhill has a number of steep sections and the trail was muddy and slippery so we were careful and a bit slow, coming down to the trailhead/parking area after hiking for 3.5 hours.
This fine route covered about 11.8 km. The total climbing elevation was 585 m (1919 feet). Although we have hiked in this area dozens of times, we have never gone to the top in the winter so we were thinking of snowshoeing some of this route over the winter so watch for an update in February.