Aug 5 – Little Mountain and Raven Trails

I wimped out a bit today. I had planned to hike a trail called the Enderby Cliffs, called by one website as the “iconic trail of the region”. Then I looked more closely at the description.

I knew we couldn’t get to the top at 6.5 km one way and 690 m or 2200 feet in elevation. There were two viewpoint lower down but they weren’t at the cliffs and you still had to climb about 200 m even to the first one. Also, the view was just down onto the farms around Enderby.

So, given that the temperature was in the mid 30’s with no wind, we picked two much easier and shorter trails.

Little Mountain Park is a set of looping hiking and mountain biking trails just southeast of Salmon Arm. We drove most of the way up and then did a short loop that climbed to the summit.

 

Most of the trail was in the shady, cool forest.

The section near the summit was very exposed and hot. We could look down on Salmon Arm the city and Salmon Arm the lake.

Heading back around the loop we were in the trees again but there were lots of mosquitoes, however this time they attacked me and left Jennie alone.

We headed down to the lakeshore to hike the Raven Trail. I had thought that it might be cooler down there but without any wind, not so much. The shady sections were bearable but we baked in the sun.

The trail runs east along the shore from downtown. On the first part, with the shade, we couldn’t see much of the lake.

This is a bird watching trail so there were a couple of boardwalks out into the marsh.

There was a nice bench for our lunch, out at the end of this first one, but it was too hot to sit for any length of time

We could see where our campground was located across the water, and the highway hill that creates so much noise.

We found a shady picnic table to have our lunch. The quiet sounds of nature were twice interrupted by these monsters going by right next to the path.

The next section was really exposed.

The other viewing platform looked a bit rickety.

Jennie decided to rest in the shade.

Looking back towards her.

The only birds I could see were Canada Geese but I heard the songs of some others.

A photosphere.

We had only gone about 1 km and the trail continues for another 2 but we were hot enough so we turned around.

We passed by this duck sitting on a log next to the trail.

It seemed unconcerned even though a couple of dogs had gone by, just in front of us.

Then home to air conditioning.

On to Revelstoke tomorrow.