The Route

We left northern Idaho and crossed into British Columbia on July 4th, following BC 95 through Cranbrook to Golden, where we stayed a few days to hike in nearby Yoho National Park. Golden is a great small town with just enough restaurants and shops to provide everything you need without being overrun by tourists like its neighbor to the east, Banff.

From Golden we drove through Yoho National Park to connect with the Icefields Parkway / BC 93 up to Jasper. The drive to Jasper and our short stopover there were unsettling as the forests around town and roughly 1/3 of the town’s buildings burned in wildfires in 2024. Back when we visited Jasper in 2019, we had marveled at the massive 200 yard wide fire break they’d mowed down in the forest around town, but it wasn’t enough to avoid destruction in 2024. Now rows and rows of FEMA-style trailers sit across the train tracks from downtown as temporary housing. Luckily, enough of town survived to continue serving visitors like us but it was a lot quieter than our prior visit.

From Jasper we headed east on Route 16, where we crossed into territory we’ve never visited before. After spending a night near McBride, we continued on to Prince George. Two town days for errands (groceries, laundry, etc.) in Prince George were more than enough. The city’s economy is dominated by large industrial businesses including several petroleum refineries and a large paper mill on the banks of the Fraser River that greets you on the way into town.

We left Prince George and headed north on BC 97, which becomes the Alaska Highway after passing through Dawson Creek, BC. Although mostly in Canda, the Alaska Highway was built by the US Army during World War II to provide a land route linking the lower 48 states with Alaska. It runs nearly 1,400 miles from Dawson Creek, BC through Whitehorse in Yukon Territory to Delta Junction, AK.

In central/northern BC route 97, lined with trees on both sides for hundreds of miles, feels like it runs through vast empty wilderness. However, every few miles large dirt roads perpendicularly meet the highway at intersections littered with signs providing instructions for truckers, radio frequencies and location names. Turns out, behind a relatively thin veil of trees, this area is covered with natural gas extraction and processing sites. (Seriously, checkout this gas and oilfield map of northeastern BC.)

Route 97 runs straight through Stone Mountain Provincial Park, where we spent several days hiking. The area is known for, well, stone mountains (of course) and stone sheep – similar to big horn sheep but a bit smaller. We saw a group of 7 sheep while hiking and several close up right by the road as we drove north through Muncho Lake Provincial Park.

After crossing briefly into the Yukon Territory we detoured off the Alaska Highway back south to the town of Atlin for our final stop in BC. Until a few days prior, we’d never even heard of Atlin but Andrea read about it in one of those free tourist guidebooks they hand out in hotels and visitors centers It had a few impressive looking hikes in our guide book too. There isn’t much to the town itself, but it turned out to be one of our favorite hiking spots.

The Hikes

Yoho National Park – Emerald Triangle: As the name suggests, this route makes a triangle starting/ending at Emerald lake. The trail ascends steeply from the lake to Burgess Pass then crosses beneath Mt Field and Wapta Mountain, with amazing views back down to Emerald Lake and the mountain range above it, including CarMar Peak, The President, and Angel Peak. This was one of our favorites for the whole trip.

Yoho National Park – Mount Niles: This begins as a hike along the Sherbrooke Lake trail then transitions to an off-trail route to the col west of Mt Niles and finishes with a bit of scrambling up the ridge to the summit. Later in the summer the scramble would be pretty mellow but there was still a lot of snow in early July so it was a bit tricker. The view of the Canadian Rockies and the Waputik icefield were excellent.

Yoho National Park – Iceline: While Brian hiked up Mount Niles, Andrea headed for the Iceline trail, one of the park’s more challenging but popular trails for viewing mountains and waterfalls.

McBride – Dore River Rd: We intended to take a hiking trail that started a few miles down Dore River Road, but were concerned about the road conditions so we just hiked the road for a few miles. We’d hoped to spot some wildlife but did not. It was a pretty walk through the forest along the river, though.

Chun T'oh Whudujut Provincial Park – Ancient Forest: This park protects a small grove of 1,000 year old western redcedar trees. It was established after a graduate student, Dave Radies, realized the age of the trees while studying lichen in the area in the 2000s and sought to stop commercial logging that was already planned for the forest. It became an official park in 2016. The hiking is relatively limited and mellow, but provides a nice loop through dense, moss-covered forest.

Stone Mountain Park – Summit Trail: This was the only day significantly impacted by wildfire smoke on the trip. The air was noticeably hazy and you could smell the smoke, which usually means the AQI was around 100. As a result, we only did a portion of this hike, but we got high up enough to get great views of Summit Lake and the surrounding peaks. On the way down we detoured off-trail into the valley below Mt St Paul hoping to find some wildlife but just enjoyed a pretty valley instead.

Stone Mountain Park – Flower Springs Lakes: We started this hike right from camp by following a dirt road that runs above Summit Lake to the trailhead a couple miles away. After visiting the Upper Flower Springs Lake we went off trail into the valley southwest of the lower lake where we got lucky and saw a group of 7 stone sheep. We sat atop a large boulder and watched them for about 20 minutes until they finally decided they’d had enough of us and headed up higher into the valley. Earlier in the day we saw two young caribou, the only caribou of the trip.

Atlin – Mount Sentinel: The trail begins by following McKee Creek, which has an active mine operating in the creek bed. Several pieces of heavy equipment (e.g. large backhoe) were throwing rocks around next to the first 2 miles of trail. After this inauspicious start, the trail improved dramatically when we reached the Eldorado Creek valley beneath Mount Sentinal – a beautiful alpine valley surrounded by Mount Sentinal and its impressive neighbors. We enjoyed an off-trail route up the northwest ridge of Mount Sentinal and some awesome views of the Coast mountain range and Atlin Lake. This trail was also the only time I seriously considered using bear spray. An aggressive dog that probably lived in an isolated house near the trailhead charged us on the way back down. He backed off after we yelled at him, but it was the only time I took the spray can out of my pack.