The best view in the Kamloops area is from the south side of Mount Mara.   There are 3 routes to this spot.

The best known route is up Mara Canyon and at the 3 way junction, continue upward on a steep loose slope in the gully.   This is a challenging route and not recommended.   An easier, but longer route is to take the backroad which starts just across the tracks just above Tranquille and hike on the double track for 4km.   At a 4 way junction at Massey Lake, a track works its way south up to the top over the next 2km.   This is the easiest route, but it is a 12km return trip.   My favorite route, though, is from the northeast.

Drive north on the Lac du Bois Road and turn onto the rough Pruden Pass Road.   Go the end of the road and park at the gate.   This is also the site of the Wheeler Mountain School (1912), although all traces are now gone.   A “No Trespassing” sign will discourage some hikers, but the private property section actually starts 600m up the road.   This sign is on the cattle fence, grandfathered from a time before the Provincial Park (which was created in 1996).   Go through the gate, closing it behind you.  Turn immediately left (south), following a single track onto a ridge.   With deadfall and overgrown sections, you will lose the track, but persist in a southwest direction until you come to a bench.   A pond and an old homestead (at N50 44.802 W120 27.477) sit in the low point of the pasture.   This was the Damsgard Quarter, a family from Denmark who lived up on the mountain from 1912 to 1919.

Go south past the old building and watch for a trail starting up the hill through an open patch just past a large fir tree (at N50 44.639 W120 27.242) .   Follow the trail up the hill to the west.   On top of the hill angle south at the edge of the hill, looking for a game/horse trail (go to N50 44.472 W120 27.952) that angles through the gully that cleaves the mountain in two.   Follow the rough trail at the bottom of the gully to the south end, then climb up to the top again and go to the edge of the mountain for the viewpoint (at N50 44.639 W120 27.242).

This route goes through open forest, but only follows a trail for part of the way.     The advantage of the route is that it starts at a higher point and only climbs 262m as compared to 634 m with the other two routes   It is also the shortest route – only 3.3 km each way.   We hiked to the viewpoint in just over an hour.

This is my favorite route, but it requires some navigation and some off-trail hiking.  Whichever route you take, the views are wonderful.   The Thompson River merges with Kamloops Lake below.

The ragged slopes of the south face of Mount Mara lie below the viewpoint.

We saw deer on the way up and bighorn sheep on the south slopes.   The return trip was an easy one.   We spotted a large black bear on lower eastern slopes and then, perched on a mirror where we parked, was a western mountain bluebird who flitted back and forth at the mirror to see the other bluebird.