Cathedral Lakes Park

My brother recommended Cathedral Lakes Park as one of his "top 3" hiking destinations in BC, so Jodi, Evan, Greta, Bob and I all decided to go check it out on the 4-day Canada Day long weekend this year. Cathedral is near Keremeos, in the Okanagan, and it's roughly 4-5 hours from Vancouver if you drive through Manning Park.

From just outside Keremeos, there's a gravel road that takes you to the bottom parking lot for Cathedral. From the parking lot, it's a further 14km and 1200m elevation along a private (not allowed to bike or drive up yourself) gravel road to the "core" area, where all the good hiking and scenery is. There's a private lodge at Cathedral that runs a Jeep service up the logging road for about $100 return. We thought about taking it, mostly because we wanted to maximize our time in the alpine, but eventually decided to hike up and earn our elevation the hard way!

DAY 0: Jodi and I left Vancouver early (3pm) on Friday afternoon to try to beat long weekend traffic and to get an early start hiking up to the core. We ate dinner in Hope, drove through Manning, and were at the base parking lot by 10:30pm. The gravel road from Keremeos to the parking lot was in great condition. We were pretty tired, so we made the dubious decision to not pitch the tent and sleep in the back of the Firefly instead. Whatever they designed that car for, it certainly wasn't to sleep two adults comfortably.

DAY 1: We woke up pretty early since neither of us was that comfortable. Jodi ended up sleeping in the front seat and I was in the hatchback. We packed up our bags and were hiking away from the parking lot (~950m) by 7:30am. The first section of the ascent was on a steep trail that shortcut between road switchbacks. We were at "Noisy Creek" an hour later. We hiked a very steep but short road section, and then came to an intersection.

We had a choice between continuing on the road, or hiking up Lakeview Trail, to get to the core area. We decided to try the trail. It climbed for a long time through trees before we broke out around 11am onto a ridgetop with a great view of the valley below, and a peek towards the core. We walked along the ridge for a short time and then went back to climbing through trees. We got to the campsite at Lindsey Creek (~1900m) around 1pm. We were expecting Evan, Bob and Greta (who had left Vancouver Saturday morning) to meet us on the trail, so we took a very long lunch break (including a nap) there, and finally left around 2:30pm after leaving a stick-mail message for them.

We climbed a bit higher along a very constant slope in the trees before breaking out into the core area alpine, and hitting a max height of 2200m, then dropping about 100m to reach Quiniscoe Lake, which is where the lodge is located and where the Jeep road ends. We hiked another 20 minutes further to get to Lake of the Woods campsite around 4:30pm, which is where we met Evan, Greta and Bob, who had arrived before us! They had walked up the Jeep road in only 4 hours - obviously the much faster route than Lakeview Trail. We set up camp at a nice site on Lake of the Woods, had a great dinner, and were asleep by 8:30pm!

DAY 2: We were up at 6am on Sunday to get an early start on our toughest day of hiking. Our destination was Grimface Peak, on the Rim Trail. We decided to access the Rim Trail by hiking along Ladyslipper Trail, past Ladyslipper Lake, and up to Stone City. It was a steep hike up through trees to the still partially frozen Ladyslipper Lake, at which point we began to encounter snow patches accross the trail. We alternated between walking on snow and trail until we got to the climb up to Stone City, which was a snow-free steep slope of scree (ahh, unintended alliteration).

As we climbed up towards the rim, we got a good view of Pyramid Mountain, the route we hiked in on, and Ladyslipper Lake. At the top, where our climb joined the Rim Trail, we saw a group of mountain goats. We kept our distance and hiked around them, and as we left, we noticed they were protecting a baby goat.

We made our way south along the rocky Rim Trail. We passed the "Smokey the Bear" rock formation, which is one of the most recognizable features in Cathedral Park. We got to Grimface around noon, and dropped most of our gear and hiking poles. Bob, Evan and Greta scrambled up to the top of Grimface. Jodi and I went a little ways up, but I found one section a bit tricky, so we turned back and had an extended lunch.

After lunch, we retraced our steps along the Rim Trail, but instead of descending Ladyslipper Trail (the way we came up), we decided to slide down some soft snow slopes to the south of Pyramid Mountain, in order to get down to Ladyslipper Lake. We started out standing up, but quickly found that sliding sitting down was much more fun! Once down at Ladyslipper Lake, we followed a partial trail around the lake, and then had a steep but relatively quick descent back to our campsite at Lake of the Woods. After a refreshing swim in the lake and a delicious dinner, and a few games of cards in the tent (to avoid the mosquitos), we were off to sleep early again.

DAY 3: We were up pretty early again on Day 3. Our goal was to hike the rest of the Rim Trail. Evan, Greta and Bob scrambled up Pyramid Mountain, while Jodi and I took the route up past Glacier Lake. The Glacier Lake route was very cool, with some small snowfields to cross and some very easy scrambling over boulders. We got to the top of the Rim on Glacier Trail, and saw Evan, Bob and Greta at the top of Pyramid. Jodi and I hiked north to Quiniscoe Mountain, where we waited for Evan, Greta and Bob. There was a great view of all the lakes from the summit (except for Ladyslipper), and LOTS of bugs. We could also see down to the lodge at Quiniscoe Lake.

When the other 3 showed up at Quiniscoe, we were tired of the bugs, so we pressed north again to Red Mountain, which wasn't much further. The hiking was over small boulders mostly. We ate lunch at Red while ominous clouds began to roll in. We saw a few lightning strikes in the far distance and decided that the rim was not the best place to be. We quickly hiked down from Red Mountain to Quiniscoe Lake and then our campsite at Lake of the Woods. We got there just in time - we had enough time for about 10min of swimming before the rain began to come down! We all ran to the tents and hid there for a few hours as the heavy, torrential rain came down. It didn't seem like it was going to let up, so Jodi and I braved it and cooked some dinner under some trees. Bob hid in the outhouse. We even got a few periods of hail!

Finally around 8pm, the rain let up and the sun came out. We were waterlogged but warm at least! We did get a fantastic sunset too.

DAY 4: We slept in a bit longer on Tuesday because all we planned to do was hike out. The sun and blue skies were back, so we dried a bit of our gear out as we packed up camp. We decided to hike down the road instead of Lakeview Trail, since it was much more direct. We started down around 10:15am, and were at the parking lot by 1pm without and breaks - pretty speedy! We had overcast skies for the hike down, so it wasn't too hot, but it was SUPER humid. We finished the trip by buying some fresh fruit and veggies on the roadside in Keremeos, and then driving back through Manning Park (3 huge hailstorms and lots of lightning) to have a celebratory dinner in Home restaurant in Hope. A great trip, and a great way to celebrate Canada Day!