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GREEN LAKE ROAD

13 km, all paved

This route takes you from Okanagan Falls south along the Okanagan River, then into the hills and past a series of small lakes to meet Fairview–White Lake Road (section 4) at Willowbrook.

START: Junction of Green Lake Road and Highway 97, just west of the bridge over the Okanagan River in Okanagan Falls; turn south onto Green Lake Road.

THERE NEVER WAS much of a waterfall at Okanagan Falls, just a rocky gap where Skaha Lake emptied into the Okanagan River. The Syilx name for this site was Kwak-ne-ta, or “little falls.” A small dam, built on the site of the falls in the 1950s, regulates the depth of Skaha Lake. The rocks here are volcanic, created as the Okanagan Valley cracked open about 55 million years ago. The falls acted as a barrier that slowed the sockeye salmon migrating north into Skaha Lake and were an important gathering place for Native peoples in the autumn as they harvested the bright red fish. According to local elders, the Native villages between Okanagan Falls and Vaseux Lake were once the largest in the south Okanagan.

The dam now completely blocks the movement of salmon into Skaha Lake. A ten-year study assessing the impact on the local kokanee population of reintroducing sockeye is nearly complete. The kokanee are a landlocked form of sockeye that live in the lake throughout their lives instead of migrating to the ocean. If the impacts are judged to be minimal, fisheries biologists will create a working fish ladder to allow the oceangoing sockeye to enter Skaha Lake and spawn in the creeks and river at Penticton.

Another attraction at the falls are the dippers. These small songbirds look like grey tennis balls as they bob up and down on the rocks in the river. They “dip” by diving into the strong current, foraging for insect larvae on the river bottom. Dippers traditionally nest on cliffs next to waterfalls; here they use the dam sluice gates to support their mossy nests. More arrive on the scene in winter, and you can sometimes see five or ten in the first few hundred metres of the river. A flock of goldeneyes joins the dippers from October through April, diving for aquatic invertebrates in the fast water. Both Barrow’s and common goldeneyes are in this flock; the black-and-white drakes are easily identified by their facial spots—a round spot on the common, a crescent on the Barrow’s.

Okanagan Falls Provincial Park, a small campsite just around the corner, is a nice spot to stop for a few minutes or a few days. One of the most impressive wildlife spectacles here happens at night. In summer the river below the outlet dam comes alive with flying insects—mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies emerging from their pupae, then dancing above the water to begin the mating cycle again. This cloud of insects attracts a cloud of insect-eating birds and bats as darkness falls. Hundreds of common nighthawks crisscross over the water, and dozens of tiny bats of several species flutter around.

The road winds south along the base of the steep mountainside, staying close to the river for the first 3 or 4 kilometres. The river was channelized in the 1950s to control water flow out of the valley; you can see a number of weirs across the river that drop the water level in a regular fashion. Large Douglas-firs grow out of rocky talus slopes; they survive by tapping into ground water that flows downhill over the bedrock. About 3 kilometres from the highway, the river channel bends away from the road. The large, wet meadow and marsh on the west side of the river is part of the Vaseux–Bighorn National Wildlife Area. Channels and ponds have been recently dug into the meadow to create moist woodland habitat for various endangered species, including the yellow-breasted chat. Over the next few decades, these areas will mature into a mosaic of rose thickets and birch woodlands similar to the small patches seen on the east side of the floodplain.

The road climbs very steeply around a couple of switchback corners to the vineyards of See Ya Later Ranch. This ranch was the site of some of the earliest commercial grape plantings in the Okanagan. Watch for western bluebirds around the vineyard, particularly in winter, when the indigo-coloured birds rely on the sweet leftover grapes for survival.

Around the next corner is Green Lake, which likely gets its colour from white calcium carbonate crystals suspended in its waters and collected on its bottom. This produces a colour similar to those seen in glacial lakes filled with fine glacial silt. Green Lake has no fish, but it attracts a variety of diving ducks in fall and spring migration that feed on a good supply of aquatic invertebrates.

Just past Green Lake the road swings westward, and you can see Sleeping Waters Lake in the woods to the south. This private lake has a population of tiger salamanders that are paedomor-phic— they remain in their gilled, larval-like form while growing and becoming sexually mature. These totally aquatic amphibians can become quite large and are the naturally dominant predator in many of the small lakes in the south Okanagan that lack water outlets and, therefore, have no fish. Unfortunately, trout have been introduced to many of these lakes for sportfishing, often after government biologists poisoned the lakes to remove both salamanders and the introduced nongame fish that would compete with the trout. These populations of tiger salamanders are therefore now very rare, and the species is listed as endangered in British Columbia.

The next lake in the neighbourhood is Mahoney Lake, a horseshoe-shaped body of water that, like many small lakes in this area, has no outlet. Although it is fed only by spring runoff from the surrounding hills and occasional summer rains, Mahoney Lake is deep—about 18 metres deep—and never dries up like White Lake (section 4). It lies over alkaline lava, and its waters, particularly those near the bottom, are very salty. The upper parts of its water column are clear and full of life—plankton thrive, and ducks flock to the lake to feed on the plankton. All of this seems typical of many lakes, but Mahoney is strikingly different from most of those small lakes and, indeed, most lakes in the world.

Mahoney Lake is strongly meromictic, meaning its waters don’t mix seasonally like those of most other lakes. This lack of mixing is likely caused by the high bluffs that protect the lake from prevailing winds from the north and, to a lesser extent, from the south. The water near the surface receives oxygen from the atmosphere, but almost none reaches the deeper waters, since the upper layers never mix with the lower ones. Between these two water layers—at a depth of about 6 metres—is a remarkable plate of sulphur bacteria that extends across the lake—a bright pink, porridge-like blanket that divides the sunlit, oxygenated waters above from the black, anaerobic world below. These bacteria use sulphur instead of oxygen to fuel their cellular energy circuits. Mahoney Lake is world famous among aquatic scientists because of this feature.

From Mahoney Lake, the road drops slightly into the Kearns Creek valley. Kearns Creek is fed by many springs, so parts of it have open water year-round. Marsh-loving birds such as Wilson’s snipe and Virginia rail can therefore be found here in winter, although they are absent from some of the larger marshes in the valley at that time. After travelling through the northern edge of the rural community of Willowbrook, Green Lake Road meets Fairview–White Lake Road (section 4). You can turn right here (north) to go to White Lake and on to Penticton or Keremeos, or turn south to Oliver.

western bluebird male

focus Bluebirds

The Okanagan is home to two species of bluebird: the western bluebird and the mountain bluebird. Western bluebirds are common in the open pine forests along Green Mountain Road; if you’d like to see mountain bluebirds, turn north at the end of the road and drive to the open grasslands of White Lake (section 4). The male western is a deep purplish-blue with a rusty breast; the male mountain is solid sky-blue. The greyer females are harder to tell apart, but the female western always has a trace of rust on the breast.

Both species declined in the mid-1900s as European starlings expanded across North America. These aggressive newcomers took over the old woodpecker holes and other tree cavities used by the nesting bluebirds. Bird lovers responded by erecting nest boxes for the bluebirds, with openings too small for the starlings. There are now thousands of boxes on fence posts and trees throughout the grasslands and open woodlands of North America; these “bluebird trails” are monitored and maintained by an army of enthusiastic volunteers. Both species of bluebirds may well be commoner now than ever, since significant habitat losses have been countered by the increase in nest sites.