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MABEL LAKE

59 km, mostly paved

This route takes Highway 6 through the Coldstream Valley to Lumby, then turns north to the moist forests of Mabel Lake.

START: Junction of Highway 97 and Highway 6 in Vernon.

FOLLOW HIGHWAY 6 east through downtown Vernon, with Polson Park on the south. Vernon Creek flows west through the park, carrying water from Kalamalka Lake to Okanagan Lake. Even though this stretch of the route is very urbanized, you can spot wildlife around you. A Swainson’s hawk once nested in a big pine on the hill overlooking Polson Place Mall, and a pair of great horned owls took over the site. The hawks have likely moved out of the area as their grassland habitat is swallowed up by suburban developments, but the more adaptable owls are likely still nesting in the neighbourhood. Watch for the hawks perched on power poles as you leave town—they’re scanning the remnant patches of grassland for small rodents and large insects. The Swainson’s hawk can be recognized by the dark grey hood that covers its head and chest.

About 7 kilometres from Vernon, the highway crosses a set of railway tracks and enters the Coldstream Valley. Just past the tracks, the highway crosses Coldstream Creek, which is flows west from the Lavington area to drain into Kalamalka Lake. The ranch buildings at the railway crossing are those of the Coldstream Ranch, one of the oldest ranches still operating in the area. From 1891 to 1920 the ranch was owned by Lord Aberdeen, who was instrumental in demonstrating the viability of the fruit industry in the Okanagan. Lord Aberdeen also served as the Governor General of Canada from 1893 to 1898.

The Coldstream Valley is a classic example of the effect of sun exposure on plant communities. The steep, south-facing slopes on the north side of the valley are dominated by bunchgrasses at low to moderate elevations, while those facing north on the south side of the valley are cloaked in a thick forest of Douglas-fir. Along the creek itself are stands of mature cottonwoods that require the moist soils provided by the high water table. About 12 kilometres from Vernon, you pass the village of Lavington and begin to hug the north side of the valley. The highway crosses Coldstream Creek for the last time, where the creek flows out of Noble Canyon to the north. This crossing marks the divide between the Okanagan and Shuswap watersheds; from here to Lumby you will follow Duteau Creek. The grassy slopes north of the highway continue, interspersed with open ponderosa pine woodlands. To the southeast you can see a prominent butte named the Camel’s Hump, an ancient volcano worn down by the Pleistocene glaciers to its present elevation of just 1,331 metres.

Lumby is a forestry town with a long history of logging and milling. One of the most important local products is wooden poles for power and telephone lines throughout North America. Most of these poles are made from the trunks of western redcedar trees taken from the moist forests east and north of town. Follow the signs for Mabel Lake as you enter Lumby; you’ll have to turn north on Park Avenue, then left on Shuswap Avenue, to get onto the Mabel Lake Road. Lumby sits at the confluence of several creeks; they all join with Bessette Creek, which parallels the road north out of town. The road travels through scattered, rural home sites in a forest dominated by Douglas-fir, lodgepole pine, and Engelmann spruce. This forest is decidedly moister than the south-facing slope Highway 6 had traversed into Lumby. About 6 kilometres from downtown Lumby, the road turns east and crosses Bessette Creek, travelling on a broad, high bench. About 4.5 kilometres from the creek crossing, you will see Rawlings Lake Road coming in from the south; birders may want to take a short side trip here. Marsh-ringed Rawlings Lake is alive with a myriad of ducks, eared grebes, black terns, and yellow-headed blackbirds in summer. The lake is only about 2 kilometres off our route, but it lies a couple hundred metres off the road, so you need good binoculars for adequate viewing.

About 2 kilometres from the Rawlings Lake junction, the Mabel Lake Road begins to lose its farm fields and enters a forest of young white birch and western redcedar. It then drops off the bench to cross the Shuswap River just above Shuswap Falls. The original falls were 21 metres high but were turned into a hydroelectric dam in 1929. The dam diverted water through the generator turbines but did not create a reservoir to manage flows. In 1942 another dam was built upstream at Sugar Lake to increase the capacity of the Shuswap Falls generating plant. BC Hydro operates a public recreation site at Shuswap Falls with facilities for picnicking and swimming.

Once across the Shuswap River, keep left to continue to Mabel Lake. The road hugs the eastern side of the valley, going past farms and small ranches and impressive stands of black cottonwoods along the backwaters of the Shuswap River. Watch for wood ducks and other waterfowl in the oxbows. One of the major side channels is that of Ireland Creek, which flows out of the Squaw Valley, then meanders north for a couple of kilometres beside the Shus-wap River before joining it. This is an important rearing habitat for coho and chinook salmon; the fish spawn in the river in the fall, and the young fry emerge from the gravel in May. The young coho and some of the young chinook stay in the small channels for a year before maturing to the smolt stage and migrating downstream to the Pacific.

Some of the backwaters have rich cattail marshes loud with the songs of red-winged blackbirds in summer. Alder woodlands line the small channels. About 18 kilometres from Shuswap Falls, you reach the south end of Mabel Lake. The Shuswap River enters the lake here, then leaves it partway up the west side of the 35-kilometre-long lake, at the community of Kingfisher. From there it flows west to Enderby, then north into Shuswap Lake and on to the Pacific.

focus Coho Salmon

The coho salmon that spawn in the Shuswap River drainage have an interesting genetic history. At the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, the Fraser River was blocked by ice above Hell’s Gate, and the Shuswap and Thompson rivers drained to the Pacific via the Columbia River. Coho from the Columbia system recolonized the Thompson and Shus-wap rivers at this time, and the Thompson-Shuswap fish remained genetically related to the Columbia fish even after the Thompson began draining through the Fraser River. So today, the coho of the coastal Fraser system, below Hope, are quite different from the Interior coho that spawn above Hell’s Gate. The coho populations that once spawned in the Columbia watershed are now extirpated from Canada, so the only representatives of that distinct genetic stock are those from the Thompson, Shuswap, and upper Fraser drainages. These populations are at a very low ebb and have been assessed as endangered.