On a mid-March sunny day I hiked from the Tranquille – Criss Creek Road across the sidehill (above the tracks) and up a series of ridges through the sagebrush grasslands. Each of the many ridges that run down to the lakeshore are separated by gullies, but there is a bench area above the gullies that traverses over to Battle Bluff. …Continue reading…
On a sunny early March day we hiked from Tranquille on the Lake down the Thompson River to Cooney Bay. There is no trail, but there is a rough path along the wetlands to the shoreline of the river. We reached Cooney Bay in 1.7 km. Ice had jammed the shoreline driven down the lake by prevailing winds. It is …Continue reading…
Near the end of February, we hiked from Tranquille, around Cooney Bay, over the bluffs and out to the last point before Battle Bluff and back. the weather was clear and mild and there was no wind. It felt like the end of winter. The first part of Cooney Bay had some mud, but after that, the section to the …Continue reading…
In most years the Thompson River floods during freshet filling Tranquille Bay for easy launching and access to the floodlands. In 2019, however, the river has not flooded these lands extensively so launching is more difficult and some of the channels we can normally paddle have low water. On a day in mid-June I launched out of Cooney Bay. There …Continue reading…
Cooney Bay is a good launch spot for kayaking on Kamloops Lake at this time of the year. To get the 18 foot kayak down to the shoreline, i put a set of wheels on the back end and then pull it down the path to the water’s edge on the river. From this launch, it is a short paddle …Continue reading…
White pelicans have been spotted in the Tranquille Wildlife Protected area and in Cooney Bay over the past 3 years. These large birds migrate to the BC Interior over the spring-summer, then return to the southern U.S. for winter. A full grown pelican can stand 5 feet high and have a wingspan of up to 9 feet, the second largest …Continue reading…
Every year we paddle Kamloops Lake and are surprised to see so few boats. Its mostly a problem of access. Any boat can travel downstream from Kamloops, but motorized boats have to be careful of the sandbars all the way down. It is too far for canoes or kayaks to go all the way down or go back up, so …Continue reading…