Blue River to Mahood Lake

From Blue River we headed to Clearwater and the Wells Gray Provincial Park which is famous for its waterfalls.

Travelling up the Clearwater Valley road the first waterfall we stopped at was Spahats Falls. These falls drop 73mtrs, 20mtrs higher that those at Niagra but only 9mtrs wide. The water pours out of a cleft in the rock.

The water then passes through the gorge that was carved out by the water.

The next set of falls further up the road was Dawson Falls. The water here only drops 18mtrs but they are a bit wider at 107mtrs.

The best falls were saved to last. Helmcken Falls drop 141mtrs and are 23mtrs wide. They are the 4^th highest falls in Canada. The water has carved out a huge cavern under the lip of the falls.

There is an interesting video of Canadian Will Gadd and Brit Tim Emmett who climbed the falls in the winter. He rated the climb as ‘the worlds hardest mixed route climb’.
CLICK HERE to watch the video.

There are quite a few other falls in the park but most are not accessible by road.

We had a potential problem coming up as 24^th to the 29^th May was “Canadian RVing and Camping Week 2016” and we were concerned that the campsites would be fully booked. To avoid this we had booked 3 nights at Mahood Lake campsite the other side of the park but we needed somewhere to stay after visiting the waterfalls so we had called in at the North Thompson River Provincial Park and there were plenty of spaces.

To get to Mahood Lake from Clearwater we had a couple of choices; a 64km unsealed road or a 200km road that was sealed most of the way via a place called 100 Mile House. We asked in the tourist information centre about the state of the short route and was advised that the first section of the road had been graded recently and ‘should be OK but look out for logging trucks’. The next morning we set out on the short route. It was an ‘interesting’ trip as it had rained overnight and the road surface was slippery clay and there were quite a few logging trucks using the road which had churned it up a bit. It took us just under 2 hours to get to our campsite.

The campsite was good and was quite busy. It is set alongside the lake which had a sandy beach and is popular with families and fishermen.

The weather wasn’t too good as we had a lot of rain. We managed to walk a couple of trails in between showers and visited the Canim and Mahood Falls which are between Canim Lake and Mahood Lake. The first set of falls on the trail was Mahood falls where the water drops 15mtrs into a steep rocky canyon.

A little way further along the trail was the Canim Falls. The water here drops 20mtrs onto volcanic rocks below.

The brink of the Canim Falls.

This is a Canadian Robin

Our neighbours in the campsite kindly invited us to share their fire. They had lived on Vancouver Island and told us of several places we should visit there. Thanks guys.

Cathy, Murray, Wes, Ali and Sue (and Abbey the dog)