Waterfalls, Sailboats and Log Booms

We did make it to Bear Creek for Sunday Hike #3 this sunny Easter Morning.  Despite living in Kelowna for 19 years, it was our first hike of this popular trail located 7 km from Highway 97 on Westside Road.

We chose to hike the Canyon Rim Trail.  It's the longest of the loops and does a pretty steady climb, follows the cliffs around the creek and then heads back down the hill to a lookout with a great view of Kelowna and the William R. Bennet Bridge.  From there it's a steep downhill back to the parking lot.

As I stopped to take this picture, out of the corner of one eye I saw the flap of a large wing.

"Was that a big raven?"  I asked my husband.

"A big raisin?'" he replied. (Lately hubby and I seem to have great difficulty hearing each other).

"Yes, a big raisin, like when God sent a plague of raisins upon the Egyptians during Passover."  (Actually I said Easter at first, but then corrected it to Passover because that seemed more accurate.)

He giggled and I discovered it's much more fun making jokes about our deteriorating hearing than arguing about which of us needs a hearing aid more.  And in case you were wondering, I Googled it and raisins are kosher for Passover.

In my experience, hikes with waterfalls tend to have the waterfall as the end point.  Not so in this case as the creek makes its way through a narrow canyon with a big drop fairly near the beginning of the trail.  I couldn't find any websites that gave the elevation of the falls.  From other photos I saw, there's a fairly heavy flow right now.

 The trail is well maintained, hard pack dirt with a few rocks and roots along the way.

There are a couple of flights of stairs (72 stairs on this down hill to the edge of the creek), and a number of bridges.

 There's plenty of evidence of the fire that burned through a portion of the park in 2011.

 The Easter holiday didn't keep the sailing club from their regular Sunday sail.

The Trail Peak website suggested the hike would take about two hours.  I'm not sure if they've made some recent improvements or not, but even with the stops to take photos and get the dogs a drink, we were back at our vehicle in about 1.25 hours.  

One last photo hop at a pullout along Westside Road.