I started exploring this area in 1976 and I continue to follow tracks and routes wherever they lead, with the aid of map, compass, GPSr and camera. After many dead-ends, but also many discoveries, I chose to share this information. Getting out 12 months each year, I continue to explore trails, tracks, routes, and waterways of the Kamloops area and beyond.
On a mild winter day I started a snowshoe outing at the Dogwood Marshes Trailhead and continued south toward McConnell Lake following user-made tracks. At the edge of the marshes area the track crossed a fence then climbed the hill into McConnell Lake Provincial Park. The Dogwood Marshes area has a number of cutblocks and plantations, but the park around … Continue reading…
On a mild winter day I struck off south from the Timber Lake Road, climbing the hills, making my own route on snowshoes through the open forest at 1140m (3740 ft.). For the first section there was a bit of track up a ridge on the west side of the Peterson Creek gully. There were a number of eclectic choices, … Continue reading…
We needed to take a trip to the dump in early December so we decided to stop to hike the Mission Flat beaches afterward. With the Trans Mountain Pipeline work underway, we couldn’t use the main entrance so we parked at the west end of the beaches and hiked west to east around the island and back through the willow … Continue reading…
There are a number of off-road-vehicle routes on the flank of Chuwhels Mountain that can be hiked or snowshoed. Some navigation is required and there may or may not be any tracks to follow. I parked off the side of the road to Lodgepole Lake and snowshoed up one of the trails to Bow Lake and back. For much of … Continue reading…
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Continue reading...There are a number of trails along the south side of Lac le Jeune that can be snowshoed in winter. The main trail for hiking is the Gus Johnson Trail, but there are more user-made single track trails too that are used enough to be stomped in and followed. We snowshoed 7.7 km on a mild winter day. We passed … Continue reading…
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Continue reading...We snowshoed from Dogwood Marshes to McConnell Lake going past the Fish and Wildlife cabins, then we tried to push through a route to the backroads above and beyond, but we met with many fallen trees and brushy conditions so we returned to the lake and followed a known track back. We can see that a different route will need … Continue reading…
In winter the backroads become blanketed in snow and they make fine snowshoeing corridors. An out-and-back is easier in the snow, but it is more fun to create a loop route, which may mean stomping through deeper snow. A long route through deep snow is okay, but quite tiring so some kind of planning helps, using maps and Google Earth. … Continue reading…
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Continue reading...On a hiking trip to Jasper National Park, we drove up the Mount Edith Cavell Road to the Astoria River Trail. We hiked for 2 km the turned up a side trail that followed Verdant Creek up into Verdant Pass. The trail passes by Cavell Lake before starting a gradual descent into the Astoria River Valley. This trail is the … Continue reading…
The Bush Lake area offers many winter routes for snowshoeing. The area south of Bush Lake has a number of ridges, forested slopes, cutblocks, marshes, drainages, and double tracks which can be combined to create a new route each time out stomping in the high country. On a recent mild winter day I made eclectic choices, following some tracks and … Continue reading…
A new video is now available on YouTube: Click the YouTube link on the menu bar for more KamloopsTrails videos.
Continue reading...When snow blankets all of our hiking routes, we can continue to winter hike, looking for trails that get stomped in. We can snowshoe, going to higher elevations to stomp our own routes on tracks and trails. We can also do winter walks on backroads. We look for gravel roads that get little winter traffic. We walk in boots with … Continue reading…
The snowshoe trails at Stake Lake make an enjoyable stomp through the woods in winter. We chose to do a 2 hour loop, avoiding any larger hills. We included one of the new trails near the end. Tthe trails are well-marked and stomped in, but we ventured out on a day with some new snow on the trails. There was … Continue reading…
On a cool and snowy January day, we did a 2 hour loop on the Stake Lake snowshoe trails. the trails were in good condition and we enjoyed the single track trails winding through the forest. The snowshoe trails skirt the edges of marshes and follow stream drainages, routes that can’t be hiked in summer. For this day we chose … Continue reading…
