Many thanks to Jeff (VE7EFF) who shares the following guest post:

2.5 km Trek into Wrinkly Face Provincial Park, BC, CA-4307

by Jeff (VE7EFF)

My goal this summer is to do more backpacked-in POTA activations. This is my 3rd POTA outing over the past week. Being in Canada, I don’t have much time left this season to do this before the weather turns too wet, cold or snowy for my liking.

I attempted to activate Wrinkly Face Provincial Park, CA-4307 last summer. However, I couldn’t get there because the FSR forestry service road was washed out about halfway to the park. My Subaru Forester is an amazing SUV on outback FSR roads, but this washout was too much to even attempt.

So, this year I decided to attempt to hike to the park on foot which turned out to be a 2.5 km trek with about 653 ft elevation gain. As always, my wife Alexis (VE7LXE) is my travel companion.

Our trailhead starts about an hour’s drive north of Kelowna, BC which is where we live. We park on the side of a gravel road near the trailhead. We will be following a 2.5 km segment of the Okanagan High Rim Trail, which will take us to our destination in the middle of Wrinkly Face Provincial Park.

We aren’t sure exactly where the trail starts from here. But just around the corner ahead of the car, is an adjoining FSR road. Here we find a sign and map of the Okanagan High Rim Trail (OHRT).

A closer look at the sign shows the OHRT trail starts near the sign. I have circled our starting point and ending point on the map photo, marked in yellow. (We ended up setting down about midway in Wrinkly Face Prov. Park.) So, off we go.

We found the trail!

Apparently, there was a heavy rain downpour early this morning. So, the trail is quite soggy and damp for most of the trek up. It’s also feeling quite cold this morning. We actually felt the need to put gloves on.

The beginning of the trail is a steady uphill trod. However, it also crosses a couple of FSR roads, which gives us some flat areas to walk on. While most of the trail is well marked with small markers, there were a few areas where we got off track for a short distance and had to backtrack. There are also free-range cows up here and they tend to create their own network of trails which often crisscross the OHRT trail, which causes periodic confusion as to which one for us to follow.

Thank goodness, I pre-plan these trips on my Garmin GPS and Google Maps to help with navigation.

I don’t think the OHRT trail is very heavily traveled. In some areas, the pathway is almost overgrown with vegetation.

Along with overgrown vegetation, fallen trees can also create an occasional obstacle. Often, the trail doesn’t amount to much more than a game trail.

Finally, some open views to the south! This could be a viable operating area. One problem though – we haven’t crossed the park boundary yet. Good news – the sky is starting to clear! Onwards and upwards…

Making good progress. We are now crossing into the park boundary.

Welcome to Wrinkly Face Provincial Park, CA-3407. You won’t find any parking stalls, camp sites, picnic tables, or outhouses here. But what I do hope to find here is… POTA heaven!

After trekking about halfway into the park, we finally came across an open meadow. Looks like this could be our POTA ops spot. In the far distance is a glimpse of Kelowna and part of Lake Okanagan.

It’s nice to finally offload our packs.

Time to start breaking-out my shack-in-the-pack. Continue reading Trekking into POTA Heaven: Wrinkly Face Provincial Park Activation →

Off The Beaten Path – Campbell-Brown Ecological Reserve, CA-3925

by Jeff (VE7EFF)

This is the 2nd backpacked-in POTA activation outing that my wife and I have done this summer. I’m the 2nd person to have ever activated the Campbell-Brown Ecological Reserve (CA-3925). Last year was the first time I activated this eco reserve and that was also my first ever backpacked-in POTA activation.

After studying my GPS and Google Maps/Satellite view of the area, my goal this time is to trek about twice as far and twice as high as last year’s outing. There are no documented trails here. Access is a mixture of old overgrown and abandoned forestry road (or fire break, not sure which) and some crisscrossing animal game trails. The actual mileage/Km’s isn’t really that far, but it’s all uphill and a mixture of bushwhacking and scaling slippery grassy slopes.

The reserve borders along the busy highway 97, between the cities of Vernon and Kelowna, BC. The area overlooks the beautiful Kalamalka Lake, as you will see in some of the photos. There’s no actual parking lot, just a small gravel pull-over spot just off the highway. There is no formal pathway into the reserve either, so we had to scale the gated fence to start our journey.

I’m a little bit familiar with the route we took last year, but I heavily rely on my Garmin 66sr GPS and Google Maps/Satellite view on my Pixel phone.

My wife Alexis (VE7LXE), accompanies me on all my POTA outings. She packs the food and water while I pack the ham gear and other outdoor essentials. We both carry IC-V80 VHF handhelds for comms in the event we ever get separated. And of course we always carry bear spray when doing backcountry treks.

We do have some relatively flat areas in sections, but there are also a lot of deadfall trees to either step over, climb over, or go around.

This grassy meadow is where I activated last year. Actually at the top end of the meadow. But today’s goal is to find another open grassy meadow higher up the mountain. Higher usually means better radio propagation, not to mention spectacular views.

Beyond the grassy meadow, we followed some semblance of a trail. But it wasn’t long before I realized that it wasn’t taking me where I really needed to go. So, according to my GPS and Google Satellite, we needed to head straight up-hill.