Next Hike,

The next hike will be on Saturday, 14th March.

We meet at the Ballpark in Gillies Bay at 10.00am.

Last week we had more hikers than usual and drove a little longer than usual going about half way down the long road to Cook Bay on the west side of Texada. Parking was at the turnoff where an old logging road starts the climb uphill towards Angel Lake on the high Central Plateau area.  We were not going quite that far our destination being a large beaver pond situated to the south-west of Angel.  The road is in quite good shape with a reasonable walking surface most of the way and we   made good time reaching the beaver dam not much past 12:00 o'clock.  It was a lovely calm sunny day and and very pleasant to sit on some extra large conifers that the beaver had cut down a while ago.

My photo was taken from the lunch spot looking east with the northern part of the rugged Twin Peaks ridge towering above the forest. We have a trail that leads to the very top of that rocky bluff on the right of my picture — it has quite the view!  The many dead trees were killed years ago when the beaver first built their dam and raised the water level higher than the roots of those trees and effectively drowned them.  This stand of dead trees along the shoreline of a pond is a clear indication that beaver are or have been active in an area.

JD.

A view of the north end of Twin Peaks from a large beaver pond not far from Angel Lake.