Mt. Bowman is the premier hike in Marble Range Provincial Park.   Access from Clinton is via the Kelly Lake Road, then a right turn onto the Jesmond Road.   At 21 km north on the Jesmond Road, an unsigned side road winds to the trailhead area.   Alternately, there is an access route through the Circle H Mountain Lodge, requiring permission.   We drove to the trailhead in mid-September to climb to the summit.

 

 

The trailhead is unsigned, but an old double track starts on the north side of the stream that runs down the valley between Mount Bowman and Mad Dog Mountain.  The double track turns into a single track in about 10 minutes.

 

 

The route follows the stream east for 3.4 km on a good trail.   At a rough campsite next to the stream, the Mt. Bowman Trail turns to the left (north); the trail that goes straight goes to Wild Horse Ridge.  The Bowman Trail cimbs next to a tributary stream into a side valley.   The trail crosses a wet meadow then continues into dry meadows, following an open ridge.

 

The route up the open meadows is shown in this image.    Wild Horse Ridge stands behind, to the east.

 

The final part of the trail is just a rough route (some route-finding required) that winds steeply between limestone bluffs to the top.   The upper part of the mountain is a barren karst environment.

 

To the east is Wild Horse Ridge and Mt. Kerr, both fine hikes that take all day (our favorite).

 

From the summit of Mt. Bowman, ridges extend northwest to overlook Jesmond and the Big Bar area of the Fraser River.

 

 

To the north the Marble Range continues for another 15 km with a chain of limestone mountains.   Beyond the last peak the relatively flatter terrain of the Cariboo region extends northward.

 

Peeking under the cloud cover, we spotted Green Lake, 46 km to the east.

 

In the limestone bluffs there are a few caves.   This one drops vertically into the depths below.  I dropped into it a bit for a closer look, but it requires climbing and safety gear to explore further.   In late June on a previous hike there was still lots of snow below, in the darkness.

 

On the way back down, we wandered too far south and found ourselves at the top of cliffs, so we climbed back up a ways and then traversed over to the way we came up using a GPS track to link up to the right spot.  The best route to take is hard to spot even after doing this hike a number of times.   Once off the upper part of the mountain, the hike back to the trailhead is about 5.3 km taking just over an hour.

 

When we reached the trailhead the weather had improved and we looked back up to the summit of Mt. Bowman, only 2.6 km as the crow flies, but 6 km by trail.

 

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• Mt. Bowman