Monashee Park Hike

Monashee Provincial Park; Spectrum Lake; Little Peter Lake; Peter Lake; Cariboo Mountain; Mt. Fosthall; Fawn Lake.
July 12,13,14th 2002 Jorma Jyrkkanen Home

Duration:

Two hours hiking to Spectrum Lake and about three hours to Little Peter Lake. The part to Spectrum is easy through forest but the part from Spectrum to the alpine through slide chutes and sub-alpine timber under the buttress of Slate Mountain is a difficult grind unless you are in superb condition. This brings you out at Little Peter Lake where trails take you due east to either Cariboo Mountain due or by swinging south, to Peter Lake and Fawn Lake. We were too early to do the swing south becoming mired in deep snow pack at the foot of Mt. Fosthall.

Access:

Drive east from Vernon to Frank’s General store and at this junction head north staying west of Sugar Lake and go past the lake at the north end. At 39 kms you will see a 'Monashee Provincial Park' sign and turn-off to the east. The sign says Spectrum Creek FSR with a logging radio frequency of 153.23. There is logging as far as the trailhead so watch out for trucks. Another 13 kms further you will find a parking lot and map of the Park. The brochures were all gone when we got there and the painted map was a poor representation of reality. There was no sign-in box.

Roadside vegetation comments from Frank’s General Store.

Daisy, thimbleberry, bracken, timothy, broom and fescue, cedar, spruce and fir, poplar, cottonwood and occasional birch. Others include soopoolalie and hawkweed. There is a reed marsh at the top end of Sugar Lake where one might see Yellow-headed blackbirds and Yellow-throated warblers earlier in the season. We saw occasional young White pine in the plantations. Sweet white clover was abundant along the road in places. Bees would love this.

At 40 kms from Frank's store we noted beetle-killed pines on the west slopes and dogbane started showing up along the roads. We moved up into cedar hemlock forest fringes of old growth with swordfern, bracken and horsetail understory. At 43.3 km we passed the access to Rainbow Falls where the old trailhead for the Park used to start. A trail still is present there. Lupine started showing up at 2500 ft elevation and white clover also.

The Route:

Parking lot to creek and then east to Spectrum Lake (Rainbow Lake –>older maps).

When we arrived at the parking lot [lat 50 30 13.8 x long 118 21 38.1 (deg/min/sec)], we saw a mink dashing off and a large vole and mouse in the lot itself. Only one other group of hikers in there and those folks were just coming out. Said they 'saw a brown snake and some birds and a Ptarmigan? We would have the campsite at Spectrum to ourselves and it was deluxe.'

We dropped down to the creek to a bridge crossing to the link-up with a trail running east and west. This area is old growth cedar hemlock with skunk cabbage and Devil’s club in abundance. there was the only fresh bear sign we saw besides on the road behind us. Most of the big furry critters were in the valley below. We then climbed uphill to join the old trail and at the junction proceeded east. This hike took us through a section of ICH rich in birch hardwoods and hemlock and pine including White pine (P. albicans). As we moved further along and gained elevation the mixed forest deciduous mix moved gradually to poplar.

We finally came to a fork indicating Spectrum Lake to the right and took this route. You come out shortly after dropping downhill a bit at an awesome campground and spectacular clear water lake framed by Slate Mountain on the left and part of the Massif of Mount Fosthall on the right and a significant headwall to the east.

Spectrum Lake at 1013 m elevation [lat 50 30 13.7 x long 118 17 41.3], has a Ranger station, two bear caches, out-houses, covered picnic areas, metal fire pits with firewood and running water. It is deluxe for a Park wilderness campsite. The cabin has a radio antenna. We sipped tea near our fire and made notes on botany and watched rainbow trout rising for flies. We were serenaded by local avifauna. A lone loon guarded an island on the lake, which probably harbored his sitting mate. A quiet and restful night with few insects dive-bombed by little bats, graced our stay here. I had a chance to catch up on coordinates and vegetation inventory.

The section from the parking lot bridge to here was used by moose for winter range according to the abundant winter droppings we passed. It is a south aspect slope with mixed forest ideal for wintering ungulates.

Vegetation seen along this section include but are not limited to cedar, hemlock, lodgepole pine, hybrid spruce, white pine, birch, poplar, cottonwood and fir. Understory vegetation included mountain ash, Squaw currant, Alaska and oval leaf huckleberry, soopoolallie, boxwood, Queen’s cup, twinflower, pyrola, bunchberry, dogbane, pipssissewa, goat’s beard, Devil’s club, skunk cabbage and various small flowers. A single white rein orchid graced the trail. Mushrooms were rusullas and boletas. Mice or shrews had been eating the colored tops of the rusulla. Feather mosses can be found in moister sites.

At the lakeshore we saw water parsnip and were treated to the aerobatics of bats at dusk. Robins and varied thrushes and lakeshore warblers shared their songs.

Easterly section up headwall to Little Peter lake:

A four hundred-foot uphill grunt along switchbacks gets you back to the east-west trail to Little Peter, Peter lake, and Fawn Lake trail and Mount Fosthall. You think it can’t get any worse than this but guess again. There is well over a thousand feet more of steep grunting ahead to get you over the headwall at 6000 feet. The panorama explodes when you get over the headwall and you are truly in magnificent Monashee sub-alpine complete with white and red heather and a ring of snow capped peaks. You drop 100 feet to Little Peter Lake at 1718 m (gps 5850 feet) [lat 50 30 31.8 x long 118 14 52.2]. A light pack is a blessing on this past section and it is marked as difficult in the map legend down below. They are right.

Vegetation in this part of the hike included wild ginger, spirea, anemone, azalea, hellebore, valerian, white and red heather, glacier lily, tiger lily, columbine, monkey flower, fireweed, huckleberry, subalpine fir and mountain hemlock, a few very old huge Douglas fir and massive cedars in patches to name a few.

Southerly section: From Little Peter Lake onwards to Big Peter and Fawn.

From Little Peter, swing southerly around the lake and pick up a trail dropping south past a roaring waterfall and cascade and then over a solid sawn plank bridge into a north aspect cold wet boreal forest dominated by mountain hemlock, sub-alpine fir and sub-boreal spruce. Here the ground cover was dominated by two varieties of sedge, one flowering through snow and also by anemone and other alpine beauties. We quickly came to deep snow pack but could walk on top of it for the most part. When it got too much we turned back after 1.45 kms because we hadn’t anticipated deep snow and had no gaiters.

We got to know the ground squirrels very well at Little Peter Lake and saw two hares and ungulate tracks and we both wondered how rainbow trout managed to hang on in Little Peter because of the volume of water flowing in and out. In the lake were caddis larvae covered with a mix of stones and sticks. I saw no fry and suspected cannibalism kept these in check. There was little cover for young fish in the lake. I suspected that cover was limiting rainbow numbers in Little Peter.

The ground squirrels had quite a colony at the lone tent pad, which was too small for my tent, and in the surrounding meadows, which they maintained with their grazing and defecation and digging. They also had a distinct peck-order with dominant and subordinate individuals clearly distinguishable. Other inhabitants really appreciated our presence as well and these belonged to diptera and hemiptera, tiny distant relatives of Countess Dracula.

The trail heading to Cariboo Mountain was hard to find because of run-off and we didn’t bother to get our feet wet to locate it but concluded that it must be there. After a quiet night except for some large mammalian creature squishing mud nearby and a periodic rain interspersed with thunder and lightening, we had a nourishing breakfast of raisins and porridge (gagga) and coffee and then packed up and headed out.

We left the alpine camp at 0820 hrs and were back to the parking lot by 1145 AM the same day after a long and fairly rapid hoot almost all downhill. On the way a spooked a small chipmunk into his hiding crevase and quietly leaned over the opening waiting for him to peek out. When he did, he literally flew through the air with fear on seeing my big mug. A few Alaska and oval leaf huckleberry plants treated us with their blue booty on the way back.

We passed three optimistic youths at 1140 near the parking lot, who were equipped with only day gear hoping to get to Big Peter Lake. I wished them luck and warned them of the snow pack. We thought they were leaving rather late in the day to be trying to get up and back from Peter Lake but then they might have been Tri-Geeks. What do we know anyway!?

General Comments

An excellent easy trip to Spectrum and difficult trudge beyond that. Once on top it is easy again and this trip provides a great general overview of the interior cedar hemlock forest ecosystem and higher up the sub-alpine ecosystem and many opportunities to interact with old growth. We saw cedars and Douglas fir in there that had to be over six hundred years old.

We went from the hot dry summer interior grasslands to alpine sub-boreal spruce zone still working through spring thaw. It was an ecological and botanical journey deluxe. It’s a great access for mountaineers looking to test their abilities on magnificent Mt Fosthall.

The trail could use more work on the steep headwall area and the trailhead to Cariboo Mountain should be better marked. Little Peter to Big Peter is not open til about mid to late July so this should be indicated below so people do not plan to go there but are turned back by deep snow.

Grizzly and black bear are shown for the area but I think most use the alpine in fall, not early summer. Cariboo are shown and I may have seen one set of winter droppings of these creatures. When driving out we had a black bear jump out on the road and I clocked him at almost 30 kms/hr for a short sprint.

There is plenty of clean looking and wonderful tasting water along the entire route and one just needs to fill their water bottles. If in doubt, filter.

Maps: BC MOELP 1/50000 scale ‘Gates Creek’ 82L/9 and 'Mount Fosthall' 82L/8 cover the area but do not show the trails for the printing that we had from the Library. Trail brochures were lacking at any field locations also, except for the wooden board maps. No sign-in sheets and no sign of the Ranger.

© 2002 Jorma Jyrkkanen