Manning Provincial Park

Joe Meche is president of the North Cascades Audubon Society and also serves the chapter as newsletter editor and birding programs coordinator. He has been watching birds for more than 50 years and photographing birds and landscapes for more than 30 years.

Every year as the Independence Day revelry draws near, Cindy and I make plans for our annual pilgrimage to a place that promises quiet and a respite from the random noise-for-the-sake-of-noise that pervades under the pretext of commemoration. In the process, we’ve discovered a few good places to hide and, as you might expect, the best plan to escape the general mayhem stateside is to travel north — into Canada!

In our travels over the years, we’ve made a short list of possibilities where we often try to incorporate an overnight stay into our sojourn to maximize the relief. Bed and breakfast inns abound in the greater Vancouver area to facilitate our getaways but you still have the pleasure of dealing with more people and more traffic if you choose to stay closer to home.

We’ve tried a houseboat on the south arm of the Fraser River close enough for biking to the George Reifel bird sanctuary, and that worked well enough. But rising to the top of the list is our favorite place, and one that we recommend highly. This particular location offers a wide variety of activities that truly feed the soul in the quest for peace and quiet. About 16 miles east of Hope, B.C., and about two hours from Bellingham is a place that has a familiar feel to it — Manning Provincial Park (Manning Park).

The familiar feel comes from the fact that the drive is almost a mirror image of the drive over Highway 20 to eastern Washington, with one exception – this high road is open year round. As you near Hope, you have three options to continue into the heart of British Columbia. The Trans Canada Highway — Canada 1 — takes you north into the interior and east; Highway 5 is the always scenic and sometimes exhilarating Coquihalla Highway; and Highway 3 takes you to Princeton, Penticton and the Canadian Okanagan. If you stay on Highway 3, you’ll cross the park boundary in a short while.

The high point on the road through the park is Allison Pass, at 4,403 feet above sea level. We had a memorable full-moon drive from east to west over the pass years ago, when we were much younger and at the time were thought to have been kidnapped! (It’s a long story and one that I won’t burden you with here, but stop me on the street sometime and I’ll tell you all about it.)

This park was named for E.C. Manning, chief forester for British Columbia from 1935 to 1940, who was instrumental in promoting the idea of setting the area aside as a park for future generations. This provincial park — the equivalent of our state parks — was established in 1941 and covers 276 square miles of varied terrain. On the west side are typical Pacific Northwest coastal forests that lead up to spectacular mountain peaks and alpine meadows with an abundance of wildflowers in late spring and early summer.

Several rivers originate within the park boundaries and one of the more notable to us is the Skagit River, which follows Highway 3 to its confluence with the Sumallo River. The Skagit then flows through Skagit Valley Provincial Park, which abuts Manning Park. The river flows southward into the Ross Lake Recreation Area of the North Cascades National Park, before turning southwest and heading into Washington state, where its raw energy has been trapped by three dams above Newhalem.

Campgrounds are numerous throughout the park and range from the large, full-service campground at Lightning Lake to backpacking campgrounds. There truly is a campground for every desire, depending on how far you wish to hike in and how long you wish to stay. The extensive trail system in the park will take you to any and all of these places to get away from the crowds.

Hiking trails in Manning Park offer something for every level of experience and ability. One of the easiest and most accessible in the park is the Lightning Lakes Trail. There are four lakes on the Lightning Lakes chain – Lightning, Flash, Strike, and Thunder. Each lake has its own circuitous trail and if you wish to go deeper into the wilderness, you can hike all the way to Thunder Lake and beyond. You will see posted signs advising of the potential for encounters with bears, both grizzly and black. Between Strike and Thunder Lakes a couple of years ago, we found two trees which had the bark peeled off and claw marks clearly visible on the tree trunks. We understood.

Manning Park hosts a number of bird species that you might see only if you travel farther north. Two of the species — boreal chickadee and boreal owl — often draw bird watchers from the lower mainland and even a few from the Puget Sound area. There have been 206 bird species recorded in the park and the potential for nesting birds in spring and early summer is very high. Hikes along the Lightning Lakes trails will often reward the hiker with good views of nesting common loons, Townsend’s warblers, red-naped sapsuckers, and common goldeneyes.

About as far away from summer as you can get, and with all the news we heard about the lack of snow for the Winter Olympics, we decided in early February to pack our snowshoes and have a look for ourselves. We crossed the border at Sumas and took a drive up to Manning Park in search of the white stuff. As we traveled farther east into the mountains and gained elevation, the snow increased and was piled high around the main lodge at the turnoff to the Lightning Lakes. After a customary leg-stretching break at the lodge to check on conditions up the road, we headed for the main parking area at the trailhead.

There were as many as a dozen vehicles at the trailhead, but these were our kind of people. Those who weren’t on cross-country skis were on snowshoes, so we fit right in and headed into the wilderness. We had a wonderful trek through a winter wonderland. On the way back, we ran across a woman who was alone and apparently disoriented (lost) since she had no idea which way to go to return to the trailhead. We pointed her in the right direction and she was thankful that we came along when we did.

All four of the lakes were frozen over and covered with a deep layer of snow. Even though the snow was a bit on the crusty side, the going was smooth and invigorating. Snow has an amazing capacity to reshape places and things to make them almost unrecognizable. Two and three foot snowcaps on picnic tables and signposts make fascinating shapes. No matter how many times you do it, it’s always interesting to return to a favorite summer place in the winter to witness the obvious contrasts.

No matter what time of year or for whatever reason, you might feel the urge to get away for a while. It’s always good to rejuvenate the spirit and if the spirit doesn’t want to tackle the I-5 traffic or the old familiar byways to reach the mountains, consider the short drive and potential for all seasons in Manning Provincial Park. You’ll be glad you did. §