[Brianrietta]

Originally Posted by T4RAWR

didn't get to fish like i'd planned
but wound up bbqing, shooting and doin some 4x4ing

Sweet!

So a while ago I'd spoken with my mother about not having roadtripped anywhere in some time and so the other day she asked me whether I wanted to head out to the Southern Okanagan somewhere this weekend. I naturally said yes because I had a feeling I was going to get a chance to get her 14 JGC off pavement somewhere. After plans to meet with an old Kelowna roommate in Penticton for lunch Friday fell through we were no longer in any rush to get out there and ended up taking five hours just to go from Chilliwack to Princeton. First stop was at the Hope Slide lookout as I hadn't out as far as Sunshine Valley on the #3 in years and probably not at the lookout in 7+. The Hope Slide for those of you who aren't aware of it was the largest landslide ever recorded in Canada when in January 1965 the SW slope of Johnson Peak collapsed. 47 million or so cubic meters of debris came down killing 4 people on the highway while ending up to 85 meters deep and almost 3 kilometers wide.



Despite my woefully inappropriate hiking footwear, we scrambled all over the rocks there for a while and found what I assume must have been used to load trucks with rocks/gravel made around the slide area during the construction of the rebuilt section of the highway. If someone else has a better idea of what the structure was used for please let me know!







In amongst the rubble of the mountain the flowers really pop against the grey rocky backdrop. Does anyone know what this orange flower is? The flower head was no more than a loonie's size.





We carried on and upon reaching the boundaries of Manning Park I took the wheel. I took pretty much the first opportunity I had to head off up the side of a hill on an unkempt gravel road and some way up found a large clearing that had large areas covered in mulch and just past it what looked like old tent pads returning to nature. Must have been some sort of camp type area at some point in the past? In more recent times it's obviously somebody's backwoods bush party area as there was no shortage of pallets around the centerpiece of a rather immobilized truck:









On the drive up towards Blackwall Peak we came around a switchback with some cones out to find the following. Silly Hyundai, you're not a Jeep:



And/or Hyundai cannot into corners:







The views from the Cascade Lookout at the end of the paved road up are of course spectacular.



After that we carried on up another 8k or so of washboarded gravel to the beginning of the Heather Trail. We wandered around the trails around the parking area at the trailhead a bit although didn't get much for photos as the flies and mosquitos were hungry and we were the meal.





At that point we were pretty hungry so we carried on to Princeton and while not outdoors or 4x4 related I thought it was cool that the exact spot of the random road I turned down and parked on the side of to check my phone happened to be 1967 terminus of highway 5, back before the Coquihalla was punched through from Hope to Merritt.



This was unfortunately the best photo I could get of the old mines up on the hill behind Hedley and basically after Princeton I'd lost most of my will to take photos which didn't reappear until we went to the Osoyoos Desert Model Railroad which was fantastic but that's for another thread. I'm getting rambly so enough... anyways here are the last 3 photos: {Hedley mines; looking down the hill towards Osoyoos; overlooking Keremeos facing west down the highway}