Mabel Lake South
We paddled much of the south end of Mabel Lake, launching out of Mable Lake Provincial Park. The shoreline down to where the Shuswap River drains into the lake is 3.5 km away. A circuit of the south end is about 10 km. There is a concrete boat launch at the park, but we hand-launched off the beach.
The lake is 1.5 km wide near the park. Treed hills rise steeply above the shoreline on both sides for much of the 35 km long lake. It is a deep lake with an average depth of 114 m (374 ft) and a maximum depth of 192 m (630 ft). While we were there, the lake was high and the beaches were small, but we could see a number of golden sand beaches along the eastern shore.
From the park, the lake stretches 15 km north to Kingfisher, where the lake drains west through the Shuswap River down to Enderby.
The weather was cloudy while we were there, and the clouds reflected in the lake’s surface as we paddled north.
We paddled north up to look at some marine campsites up the lake. All of the sites had beach landings and primitive campsites.
We wanted to scout out the lake to see if it would be possible to paddle-camp with our high-capacity kayaks on the southern half of the lake since there are a few potential camping spots.
Our paddle to the Cascade Creek sites and back was about 12 km.
Mabel Lake Provincial Park is a good launching point for paddling the south end of Mabel Lake. We have paddled the north end, launching out of the Dolly Varden Beach at Kingfisher too. There are 2 marine-access campsites at that end too. A complete circuit of the whole lake is a long way, but we can divide the loops into several days of paddling launching out of different spots.