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MCLEAN CREEK AND EASTSIDE ROAD

17 km, all paved

This route provides a nice alternative to Highway 97 if you are travelling between Okanagan Falls and Penticton. The McLean Creek valley is an area of small farms and ranches tucked out of sight behind a low range of hills; the north part of the route travels along the eastern shore of Skaha Lake.

START: Intersection of 10th Avenue and Highway 97 (Main Street) in downtown Okanagan Falls; turn east at 10th Avenue.

AS YOU LEAVE town on 10th Avenue and the road turns into McLean Creek Road, apple and pear orchards quickly appear on the north side of the road, which climbs onto the rolling bench below the towering orange cliffs of Peach Bluff. This rock wall is home to a small number of bighorn sheep and a few species of birds restricted to rugged terrain. Canyon wrens sing their cascading, whistled songs from the cliffs, and chukars cackle from the talus slopes along the bottom of the hill. Occasionally peregrine falcons nest on the bluff ledges. The talus slopes are dotted with saskatoon bushes, and thick clusters of Oregon grape grow at their bases.

To the south you can see the industrial sprawl of the large Weyerhaeuser sawmill; this operation closed in late 2007 when lumber prices tumbled in North America. The road turns sharply north as it reaches the flat bench formed by gravel deposits from McLean and Shuttleworth creeks. The more adventurous can turn eastward at Allendale Lake Road, which joins our route just north of this sharp turn; this road bounces into the high country above Okanagan Falls to a small lake in subalpine forests at about 1,550 metres elevation.

Continue north on McLean Creek Road as it hugs the western edge of the bench. The hills are clad in young ponderosa pines with an understory of antelope brush, and a line of big old cottonwoods marks the path of McLean Creek, winding its way across the hay fields east of the road. As the road rounds the east side of the hill, the pines give way to Douglas-firs growing on the shadier north side, many of them bearing large “witches’ brooms” of dense twigs, the sign of dwarf mistletoe attack.

The road eventually makes a sharp S-bend across the narrowing valley, crossing McLean Creek and continuing northwest along the other side. The valley narrows still more as the road begins to descend; the creek is lined with water birch and old cottonwoods, a rare patch of mature riparian woodland. Riparian (from the Latin ripa, meaning riverbank) habitat is one of the most endangered in the valley, since housing developments and agricultural operations almost always occur first alongside creeks, rivers, and lakeshores.

The road levels out as McLean Creek nears Skaha Lake, and you soon reach the junction with Eastside Road. Turn right (north) towards Penticton; a left turn will take you back to Okanagan Falls. Within a few hundred metres, the road drops to lake level. You will start to see silt bluffs on the east side of the road. The whitish silt was deposited in the bottom of Glacial Lake Penticton when it was dammed by an ice plug south of Vaseux Lake at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch about 12,000 years ago. Watch for clusters of small holes burrowed into the silt; these are bank swallow nest holes.

About 3 kilometres north of the McLean Creek junction, you will begin to see exposures of rock marked with dark and light bands. This is gneiss, a metamorphic rock formed during the deep burial of continental shelf sediments almost 200 million years ago. The rock reemerged when the Okanagan Valley cracked open about 55 million years ago, and the fractured landscape on the northeast side of Skaha Lake is now one of the most popular rock-climbing sites in North America. It is also favoured by bighorn sheep, which use the rocks as escape terrain and graze on the native grasslands on the lower hills. Much of the hills above you have been set aside by the provincial government and various conservation agencies to protect the sheep and other species restricted to these dry, rocky habitats.

Look closely at the silty hillsides you pass on your way north. You should see white deposits of salt that have leached out of the soil by water flowing through the silt from above. The large clumps of coarse grass growing here are wild rye, a species that prefers these alkaline soils. The water flowing through the silt renders them somewhat unstable, and some houses along this road have had to be abandoned because of slumping slopes above.

As you enter the city of Penticton and begin to drive through housing developments, you’ll see rocky outcrops along the east side of the road. Watch these closely for spectacular clumps of brittle prickly pear cactus. These low mats produce big, yellow flower clusters in June. Each flower lasts for only a day.