May 21 – EC Manning Provincial Park

As you can see from the title we still didn’t get to see the tunnels. On our way back from the park, at around 3 pm, we again drove by the tunnels. It was even more crowded than yesterday with even the main road now having a lot of cars. We will try tomorrow morning.

EC Manning Provincial Park is above 50 km east of Hope and 1300 m higher in elevation. I wasn’t sure what we would be able to do this early in the year and it turned out that a lot of stuff was still snowed in.

Our first stop on the way was the lookout to the Hope Slide. A huge layer of an adjacent mountain came down in 1965 and covered 3 km of the highway. Here is the descriptive sign.

You can barely see Jennie down near the bottom of the next picture.

The photosphere.

Next stop was a very short trail in the park called Rhododendron Flats. Because of the elevation we didn’t expect much, even though they are in full bloom in Hope.

This is the best we saw.

We stopped at the Manning Park Lodge to see what was open. There is a drive up to a scenic lookout and then a bit farther to an alpine meadow that I was hoping to get at least part way up. Alas, it was still heavily snowed under.

There was a nearby, short (2.5 km) trail that was open. The Canyon Trail loops up and back along the canyon of a creek. It made for a pleasant walk in the woods.

On the ground, this moss looked disconcertingly like fur.

A bit of snow in the shade.

Over the bridge to loop back.

We drove up towards the local ski resort until the road was closed near a trailhead. There was a trail to some waterfalls but this is what it looked like.

We headed back down to the Lightning Lake Day Use area for lunch.

There are a large number of picnic tables behind us but we wanted to be close to the water.

The photosphere.

There is a trail that goes all the way around the lake. We walked a very small bit of it. We first went to the south east corner. As this hill faced north, it still had a lot of snow. The lake side path is on the right and Jennie is standing on the Frost Mtn trail.

Heading back past the picnic area, a lot of people were renting canoes.

This kid decided to jump into the water. He sure got out fast.

Some more mountains came into view as we went farther.

We only went a short way and then turned back to the car. After our slight detour to the tunnels we went home.