Mountian Footsteps Selected Hikes in the East Kootenay

Book Updates and Changes

The hiking guide book by Janice Strong is as accurate as possible at the time of writing in December 2008. However road access changes and the trails change by avalanches, washoutes and being overgrown, etc. This chart is to help hikers keep up to date with current conditions.

See Also the Road Access and trail conditions forum. Every summer I keep updates posted as they occur.


2009 Book Updates
Hike Number Hike or Road Name Description, Location, or GPS coordinates Other Details  
#74 Diana Lake

GPS correction for the turnoff highway #95 onto Kindersley Pinnacle FSRd. The junction given in the book is for a logging intersection farther up the road. The parking and the lake GPS are correct.

Kindersley Pinnacle FS Road N57022-E22697-NAD 83 JS
#57 Ghostrider on Mount Hosmer

GPS correction for the parking lot on Hartley Lake Road

N95907-E47349 JS
Meachen Creek Road 0 - 8 km

Many new logging branches. Stay to main road.

Excellenet condition to Hour Glass Lake trailhead JS
Meachen Creek Road 8.2 km

Stay to left fork uphill (don't descend on new logging road to the right)

Excellenet condition to Hour Glass Lake trailhead JS
#24 Haystack Lake and Upper Haystack Lake

Trail to Upper Haystack Lake is only new for 3.1 km. Then the trail is occasionally used and confusing.

3.1 km trail braids. Take a small trail uphill west toward the base of a white rock slide. Follow indistinct trail to a large grassy avalanche slope with good views of Haystack Lake and Haystack Mountain and the trail disappears.
Climb up the avalnche slope gaining elevation and find flagging tape leading to the continuation of the trail in the forest.

  JS
Templeton Lake Trail

Road is mostly overgrown with alders for the final 2-km of road.

Access trail for the first 400m is wet with runoff and one end of the bridge crossing the creek is now underwater, but well fordable.

   
New Hike repair and mark the trails up

Pyramid Creek and Alki-Murphy Creeks

A small, unnamed group of retired fellows has been working for the last two years to clean out, repair and mark the trails up Pyramid Creek and Alki-Murphy Creeks. With the approval and support of the MTCA, official signs posts have been erected at the trail head along the St Mary and at the actual start of the Alki-Murphy trail (one can now drive the 3.2 km from the St Mary Road to the trailhead). There are also directional signs in place at the first mine site on the Alki trail and additional signs will soon be installed at junctions / significant points on both the Pyramid Creek and Alki-Murphy Creek trails. Both trails/routes are now well marked with orange trail markers or blazes where we ran short of markers and we had cut out all the winter/spring blow down on all trails except for a section on the Murphy route.

We had hoped to have all the work finished in time to have the two rehabilitated trails included in your latest edition of Mountain Footsteps but given our small number and the time needed to have both trails officially listed as MTCA hiking trails, it was not to be. We did manage to get the magazine Go Kimberley publish an article on our work in their Spring 2010 issue (#10) which you could probably still find. We also provided GPS data to MTCA to include with maps for the trails.

I am attaching some info on the two trails which should be of interest to people looking for interesting,and challenging hikes into the alpine and over high (8000 ft) passes and with geat views as a reward.

St Mary Lake Road -
Dewar Creek FSR

DD

Contact Janice

for info from DD

Kimberley

bar

 

See aslo our backroad public forum to share our road access comments.

road altered sign

Backcountry Roads Also share your backcountry experiences of any kind with me! Save everyone the frustration of driving for hours on a backroad only to find the last bridge has been pulled or there is a huge impassible washout. Also tell us about the roads that are new, or rebuilt.

The East Kootenay stretches for 200 km north and south in the southeastern part of BC between the summits of the impressive Canadian Rockies and the height-of-land in the rugged Purcell Mountians. See Map


Kootenay Outdoors
Back Roads Forum

Post Your Road Conditons Comment!
Tell me what you found out on the remote backroads!

 

See Last Year's 2008 Road Forum with most of the work and road access completed or repaired.