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SUMMERLAND TO PRINCETON VIA OSPREY LAKE

94 km (36 km gravel, 58 km paved)

This can be taken as a slower, quieter route from Summerland to Princeton if you are headed west or simply the first half of a loop day trip. It is mostly a good gravel road through the Trout Creek valley, then paved from Osprey Lake to Princeton.

START: Intersection of Highway 97 and Rosedale Avenue in Summerland.

FOLLOW ROSEDALE AVENUE south from the highway for about a kilometre; it then turns west and becomes Prairie Valley Road. The road travels through suburban housing for another kilometre, then skirts the lower slopes of a steep, grassy ridge. The ridge is dotted with ponderosa pines, the common pine species at these lower elevations, easily distinguished by its long needles and reddish, jigsaw-puzzle bark. Once around the southern side of the ridge, the road enters the main part of Prairie Valley. This was one of the first parts of Summerland to be settled, since Prairie Creek was a consistent water source amid relatively flat land suitable for orchards. Indeed, when the Canadian Pacific Railway came through in the early 1900s, Prairie Valley was often called “Millionaire’s Row” because many wealthy investors bought land here.

The valley is still filled with orchards and vineyards, and large, mature apple trees populate quite a few acres, a rare sight in these days of high-density dwarf-tree plantings and conversions to vineyards. Near the west end of the valley, turn right on Doherty Avenue, then left again to follow the main road. That will bring you to a major T-junction; keep right here, following the small sign indicating the way to Princeton. The road leaves the lush green orchards behind and enters a woodland of young ponderosa pines.

Like much of the Okanagan landscape, the bench you are driving on is an artifact of the last days of the Pleistocene Epoch, when the ice sheets were melting in place and vast quantities of sand, gravel, and rubble flowed into the valleys. Drainage patterns changed dramatically as ice dams melted away. A lobe of the valley glacier extended up Prairie Valley, pushing glacial debris ahead of itself to form distinctive ridges just south of this road. Here, also, sand and gravel was deposited by meltwater streams against the large, stagnant glacier in the valley bottom to form kame terraces. Elsewhere, the roaring meltwaters poured into Glacial Lake Penticton, creating sandy deltas that now lie high above the present level of Okanagan Lake. These sand and gravel deposits are now extensively mined for use in road construction and concrete production.

About 10 kilometres from the highway, the road comes close to Trout Creek for the first time, its course marked by stands of large black cottonwoods. These riparian woodlands are important habitat for many wildlife species, offering water, shade, and food during the hot summer and hollow trees for roosting and nesting throughout the year. Between the road and the creek is the abandoned Kettle Valley Railway grade, now a hiking and biking trail. The railway follows the same route as the road all the way to Princeton.

At the next junction keep going straight (don’t turn right), and you’ll be on Princeton–Summerland Road. The road climbs out of the Trout Creek valley bottom to emerge on an expansive, south-facing slope covered with bluebunch wheatgrass. The treeless grasslands give this slope its local name: the Bald Range. The first open stretch has a lot of rabbitbrush—low, grey shrubs that glow with yellow flowers in late summer. In spring the grass is spangled with wildflowers—bright yellow balsamroot in May and sky-blue lupines and indigo larkspur in early June. The pavement ends here, but the road continues as a wide, well-maintained gravel road before becoming paved again at Osprey Lake.

Gullies in the hillside are marked by aspen copses and chokecherry tangles where water is channelled after rainfalls. Other shrubs in these grasslands—the wax currant with its translucent red berries and the saskatoons with their fat, dark purple berries— provide more fruit for bears and birds alike. The currants are also important in early spring—their cream flowers are one of the earliest blooms in these hills, and the local hummingbirds time their arrival to coincide with the currant blossoms. The saskatoons ripen in early July, and the chokecherries turn a rich black-red in August, feeding flocks of migrant robins, thrushes, tanagers, and other birds.

Watch for mountain bluebirds flitting over the grass. The males are a glowing sky-blue all over, whereas the females are grey but show blue flashes in their wings and tail when they fly. They nest in woodpecker holes in the aspens, as well as in any of the nest boxes scattered along this road. The boxes also provide homes for tree swallows, house wrens, deer mice, chipmunks, and other cavity-nesting species.

The road keeps a steady traverse of the mountainside at about 900 metres elevation. As you get closer to the creek, the road follows a bench densely forested with young lodgepole pine and older ponderosa pines. The sandy forest floor is carpeted with silvery mats of pussytoes—their grey colour comes from the densely haired leaves, designed to reduce water loss. The road begins a short descent to the creek about 10 kilometres past the end of the pavement; the rocky hillside here is brightened by the pale purple penstemons clustered on the rocks in early summer.

As you near the shady valley bottom along the creek, the forest is quickly dominated by Douglas-fir, and along the creek itself there is a dense growth of spruce, willow, birch, and a few large cottonwoods. Trout Creek may not seem ideal duck habitat, but two species like these mountain streams. Common mergansers are large ducks with narrow red bills designed to catch and hold slippery fish. The females nest in large hollow trees or crevices in streamside cliffs. Harlequin ducks are smaller and feed on the rich fauna of invertebrates that cling to the rocks in creeks such as this. They spend much of the year diving into the surf along the wave-washed rocky shores of the Pacific coast but return to the mountains in spring to nest. The males are blue-grey with dramatic patterns of white, black, and red stripes; the females are more somberly dressed in dark brown with two white face spots. As in other ducks, the female carries out all the nesting chores; the male returns to the coast in early summer after his mating duties are done.

There is a small forest recreation campsite at the creek, and just beyond the road the Kettle Valley Railway crosses the trail once again. As I write this in 2008, the Douglas-fir forests along Trout Creek are being affected by western spruce budworm—many trees have lost significant foliage. The western spruce budworm is somewhat misnamed, since it feeds primarily on the needles of Douglas-fir. The budworm cycle is one of the big natural cycles in the coniferous forests, and budworm populations have been low for the past decade or so but are now on the rise. One bird that has had an impact on the budworms is the evening grosbeak, a big, colourful finch found throughout the coniferous forests of Canada. Evening grosbeaks are named for their hefty beaks, which they use throughout the year to crack open heavy seeds. But in early summer they like to feed spruce budworm caterpillars to their young. From the 1960s through the early 1990s, the three budworm species found in Canada were all at the high end of their population cycle, and grosbeaks boomed in numbers and moved eastward across the country. From 1995 to 2005, their population plummeted along with the budworm population, but this spring the woods are full of grosbeaks once again.

The road crosses Trout Creek again only 2 kilometres on. The valley opens up here, and the creek flows a little less hurriedly through a dense growth of willows. Like many streams in British Columbia, Trout Creek has been impacted by logging activities near its banks, and forest managers and concerned citizen groups have undertaken several habitat restoration projects along this stretch to improve habitat in and near the stream. Logs have been strategically placed in the water to slow peak flows and create pools, and willow shoots have been planted along unvegetated banks to provide shade and reduce erosion. The log structures are simple revetments—a term initially used to describe fortifications that reduced the blast of explosives but now more commonly used for structures designed to absorb the impact of water, whether along a seashore or within a river.

The vegetation along the road shows signs of the cooler temperatures of higher altitude. Mature spruce line the creek, with a dense understory of red-osier dogwood. Red elderberry, a species associated more with coastal forests than woodlands of the dry Interior, appears on the roadside, replacing its dry-woodland, low-elevation cousin, the blue elderberry. But local conditions are variable; when the road traverses a dry, gravelly bench, the forest is a dense growth of young lodgepole pine, the only tree able to germinate in this well-drained soil.

After crossing a cattle guard, you enter land owned by the Trout Creek Ranch. Beyond the ranch buildings, the forest has more mature lodgepole pines; many of these larger pines have been recently killed by mountain pine beetle as that forest insect extends its massive epidemic across the British Columbia Interior. The beetles prefer larger pines, which try to fight back by expelling the beetles in pitch tubes extruded from the bark. But under the constant onslaught that has been underway for the past decade or so, the trees almost always lose. By the time you read this, the majority of the pines along this route, both lodgepole and ponderosa, may well be dead.

The understory of these dry forests is dominated by spreading juniper and the grey-leaved shrub soopolallie, also known as soapberry. Soopolallie was a major source of berries for local indigenous peoples. The berries can be whipped up into a frothy concoction, but they are intensely bitter and definitely an acquired taste. Bears love them as well and will eat thousands of berries each day to put on weight for their winter sleep.

About 40 kilometres from the highway, the road passes the Thirsk Reservoir, the major water source for the Summerland area. The local water supply has been problematic in recent years, and in some dry summers, the lower stretches of the creek essentially dried up because of the demand for domestic and agricultural supply. In 2008 the Thirsk Dam was raised and strengthened to almost double the water supply and allow a more reliable flow of water in the creek during dry summers. About 5 kilometres beyond the reservoir, the road crosses Trout Creek for the last time as it comes out of the plateau to the north from its beginnings in Headwater Lakes above Peachland.

You now enter the Hayes Creek watershed, which flows through three lakes in this pass—Osprey, Link, and Chain—and down to the south to empty into the Similkameen River east of Princeton. The three lakes are a popular summer fishing destination and are surrounded by cabins and homes. The road is paved from here to Princeton. The road approaches only one of these lakes, Chain, closely.

While passing Chain Lake, keep an eye out for ospreys, large, fish-eating hawks that build bulky stick nests on top of poles or dead trees. From the 1940s to 1980s, the world osprey population declined drastically from the effects of the pesticide DDT. This chemical interfered with the ability of female birds to produce normal eggshells, so the eggs they laid often broke before hatching. In British Columbia, population decline was compounded by campaigns in the 1940s to shoot ospreys and destroy their nests, because they were considered a pest species that competed for sport fish. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, the only places that ospreys nested in the Okanagan Valley were plateau lakes such as Osprey Lake. Fortunately, a ban on the use of DDT in the 1970s, combined with a halt to the open persecution of the birds, resulted in a dramatic increase in osprey numbers throughout the Okanagan Valley and the world in general.

The road follows the Hayes Creek valley in its slow descent to the southwest, passing pastures and travelling through diverse forests of black cottonwood, trembling aspen, lodgepole and ponderosa pine, white spruce, water birch, and Douglas-fir. About 22 kilometres past Chain Lake, Hayes Creek begins to enter a canyon, and the road swings up a hill to the west. It emerges to an open grassland dotted with ponderosa pine and aspen copses. As on the Bald Range, chokecherry bushes line gullies where a little more water is available each spring. About 5 kilometres into the grassland, the road passes Separation Lakes, a shallow body of water that is now even shallower as the local water table recedes downward. There are several “Separation” or “Separating” lakes in the British Columbia Interior, so named because they were used by ranchers in the fall to separate their cattle from the herds that roamed the public lands all summer. The lakeshores provide a handy barrier to keep the herd from retreating, as the cowboys and their cutting horses separate their cattle from the rest of the herd.

The barren shores of Separation Lakes are littered with large logs that obviously came from somewhere else. They apparently were cut in a logging operation in nearby Jura many years ago. The logs were hauled to the lake in winter in preparation for shipping on the Kettle Valley Railway, but a sale fell through, and many were left in the lake. They present a curious scene in this treeless landscape but almost surely provide valuable habitat for salamanders and other small aquatic animals.

Separation Lakes is a great place to watch birds—a tremendous variety of ducks and shorebirds use the lake from spring through fall, making it a favourite spot with local naturalists. About 2 kilometres farther on, the road passes a small wetland called Wayne Lake—its marshy shores provide good nesting habitat for American coots and ruddy ducks. The ruddy duck is hard to miss—the males have reddish bodies and white faces with big, sky-blue bills. They display to prospective mates by pumping their heads up and down, creating loud bubbling sounds as air is pushed out of their breast feathers.

Beyond Wayne Lake there is a good view down to the cattle ranches along Allison Creek below the road. You enter ponderosa pine forest once again, then reach the valley bottom and cross Allison Creek. Just west of the creek, a substantial patch of antelope brush grows along the roadside. In May these gangly shrubs are covered in light yellow blossoms; the rest of the year, they are best identified by their long branches covered with short, dark green leaves. Antelope brush is found in dry pine forests from here south to the high plateaus of Mexico; this is one of the only spots it grows in the Similkameen Valley.

The last few kilometres of the route takes you through the rural outskirts of Princeton. The terrain is full of kettles here— big hollows in the landscape formed when blocks of ice melted in a gravel-filled valley at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch. Some are filled with small lakes; others are now used as landfills. Turn right at Old Hedley Road, and you’ll soon be at the junction with Highway 5A. A right turn here will take you to Merritt and the Coquihalla Highway; a left turn will put you in Princeton and Highway 3. As you enter the town of Princeton itself, you cross the Tulameen River just above its confluence with the Similkameen River. The name Tulameen comes from tulmin, the Native word for red ochre. This colourful clay was dug out along the banks of the river a few kilometres upstream of the bridge and was used in painting pictographs on rocks and facial decorations. Princeton was once called Vermilion Forks because of this valuable trade commodity. At the junction with Highway 3, you can turn west to Manning Park and the coast or east to return to the Okanagan Valley.

black bear

focus Bears

The Bald Range is a good place to see bears in summer—I remember watching one particularly well-fed black bear lying on its back in one of these gullies, raking in the chokecherries with its paws. Black bears are the common bear species in the Okanagan, and local individuals can be any colour, from blonde through brown to jet black. Grizzly bears are much rarer here; only a handful survive on the plateaus surrounding the valley. Grizzlies can be identified by their big shoulder hump, broad, dish-shaped face, and (if you’re really close) finger-length claws. Both species are predominantly vegetarian, eating fresh grass and dandelions in spring and roots and berries in summer and fall. If summer weather results in a poor berry crop, large numbers of black bears descend into the valley, attracted by the bounty of peaches, plums, apples, and grapes. Some individuals have peculiar tastes—a grizzly visited Lang Vineyards in Naramata in 1998, digging up irrigation piping and chewing on the crunchy pvc tubes.