The sun was shining when I got up this morning. I checked the hourly forecast, and we were going to have excellent conditions until 1:00pm.
I called Bonnie early in the morning, and (as always!) she was willing to tag along with me. We arrived at the parking lot at 10:45. The parking lot is at the intersection of Hollywood Road South and Belgo and East Kelowna Roads. There is a large parking lot, and well maintained restrooms in the parking lot.
The trail is well marked, wide and in good condition. Good footwear is essential if you are hiking all the way to Gallagher's Canyon and Layer Cake Mountain, at the end of this trail.
Off we went. Beautiful this time of year. The trees are colorful- and there are many great viewpoints along the way. The creek is still running very strong and although not as high or as fast as the spring run off, the volume of water in the creek bed is amazing to me. Where does it come from?! There are rapids in certain parts of the creek and mini-waterfalls.
There are numerous bridges that span the creek.
The trail is pretty flat, until you get to the end of the bridge where the 'old trail' was. This 'old trail' was fenced off and closed due to a steep cliff where large rocks have fallen and covered the trail. It was considered too dangerous to keep open (more on this later!).
The trail is well developed, and the municipality continues to upgrade it. Bonnie, Tia and I found this rest area that is still being worked on. We will have to come back again next summer so we can find out what this rest stop looks like when it is completed.
We are now at the part of the trail where there is a long, steep climb out of the canyon, up to the canyon ridge, which runs along Gallagher's Canyon and Pinnacle Golf courses.
We have just climbed a very steep set of stairs. Beautiful colors. If you look at the lower part of the photo, you can see the 'old trail' that was closed off. We had seen a deer walking along this trail as we ascended the steep climb. In the distance, in the right middle top part of the photo, you can see the ridge line of the canyon. This is where Hole #7 of The Pinnacle Course is located (the steep par 3- all downhill). We climbed to the top of the ridge, to the high mesa in the left center of the photo, which is where we ended our hike and started back.
On the way back both Bonnie and I looked at each other, when we got to the steep climb that replaced the 'old trail' that used to run along the creek. We both agreed that we had enough of climbing steep hills, and we decided to be 'rebels' and ignore the 'trail closed- do not enter' signs, to see what all the fuss was about! The 'do not enter' trail was at least FLAT!
This is WHY the trail was closed! Bonnie is making a feeble attempt at protecting herself from falling rock. We were not deterred! There was about 200 feet of the creek that was full of boulders that had come down the cliff that is above where Bonnie is standing. We had to climb over the boulders you can see in the photo but managed to get to the other side of this cliff and the trail without getting hurt or hit by falling rocks! It was not easy getting to the other side, but other than wet feet, we were unscathed.
PLEASE do not even think about taking this abandoned trail in the Spring when the creek would be running at about the level of Bonnie's waist! This time of year is the only really safe time to take this route.
A very satisfying hike. It was cool and crisp- with some sunshine. Good exercise- and will definitely do it again. We met some hikers on the trail that told us about some other hikes that can be done from the golf course end of the trail, including a hike down to the creek where there are caves, rock ovens and a water fall and amazing rock formations (Layer Cake Mountain area).
The hike took us two hours. I took my trusty pedometer and here are our readings:
Steps: 11,599 (at least for me! add another 4,000 for Bonnie!)(another 10000 for Tia)
Distance: 9 kms (5.5 miles)
Calories burned: 702
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