Cathedral Park has been on my bucket list for a long time. I was supposed to visit the park in 2018, but my trip was cancelled due to a nearby forest fire. Fortunately, the fire never did reach the park, but I missed out on the opportunity. Even more unfortunately, another forest fire in 2023 (the Crater Creek fire) did breach the boundary of the park, doing a lot more damage to the area. The fire tore up the valley along Ashnola Road, burning everything in its wake and then continuing up towards the core area of the park.

Fortunately, the fire was contained before it burned everything, but a good chunk of the east part of the park was decimated, including 2 campgrounds and the access road. Parts of the core area of the park were saved, including the lodge (honestly, I think we have the lodge to thank that it didn’t all burn down, as I suspect they water bombed it). The park has been closed, but it was partially re-opened this summer. There used to be 3 campgrounds, but Lake-of-the-Woods and Pyramid Lake both burned down, leaving only the Quinescoe Campground.

The lodge did not burn down, but it’s not open due to the loss of the access road bridge. The road closure had a big impact on park usage in 2025. While it is possible to hike into the park, the access trail is 15km long and climbs 1400m in elevation, so it’s a big hike. Historically, most people have paid to use the lodge shuttle to access the park, even if they were camping, in order to avoid the challenging access trail. It appears that the bridge repair is almost complete, so I suspect the road will re-open in 2026, but for 2025, hiking was the only way to access the park.

When I saw the re-opening announcement, I impulsively booked permits for the Labour Day long weekend. Carolyn and I has planned to spend the weekend together and I thought Cathedral would be a nice option. In the past, it’s been hard to get permits for Cathedral because of its popularity, but with the road closure in 2025, it wasn’t a problem. Carolyn wasn’t really sold on the idea, but when she learned park usage was low due to the closed road – and that there were 5 lakes in the core park area – she quickly got on board with the idea. We decided to meet at the trailhead on Thursday night before the long weekend to spend 3 nights camping at Quinescoe Lake. 

If you’ve been following along my previous posts, you’ll know that I was already on a road trip with Seth, so we all met up at the Lakeview Trailhead on Thursday evening. Accessing the park is a bit tricky as it’s not close to any cities. From Vancouver, it’s a 5-hour drive through Manning Park until you reach Keremeos. From there, you take Ashnola Road to the Park entrance. Ashnola Road is a gravel road, so it’s a bit slow going, but it’s in good shape and you can drive it in any vehicle. It was humbling to see all the damage from the forest fire on the way. Everything along the road has burned down, leaving many rec sites exposed. It’s a very fresh burn scar and it’s honestly hard to witness. 

Once you reach the park entrance, there are two rec sites along the road, one is at the Lakeview Trailhead, and the other is a few kilometres away, called Buckhorn. We camped at Lakeview since that’s where we were leaving Carolyn’s car, but it only has a single walk-in site and no outhouse, so I wouldn’t recommend it. We ended up camping in the parking lot since we were the only ones there. I didn’t drive down to Buckhorn, but from the map, it looks like a more traditional rec site and I would recommend that one if you’re doing a similar trip.

There are actually 3 trails that hike into the core area of the park, but the Ewart Creek trail on the east side of the park is still closed because it completely burned. The most common access to the park (for the limited number of people who actually hike in) is the Lakeview Trail, which runs parallel to the backcountry road. In any other scenario, we would have hiked in and out on that trail. But because Seth was still with us and heading back to Vancouver the next day, we had the unique opportunity to do a thru hike. There’s a third trail, the Centennial Trail, that you can access from the west side of the park. At 16.5km and 1200m gain, it’s slightly longer and has slightly less gain than the Lakeview Trail. It’s another hour of driving to get to the trailhead, but Seth was nice enough to drop us off. So we left Carolyn’s car at Lakeview, with the intent to finish the trail there. 

It was calling for a very hot weekend, so we got an early start. It’s a pretty steady incline for the first 8km of the trail. You get a reprieve when you reach the alpine, followed by another climb up to the Rim Trail, before you head down to the Quinescoe Lake Campground. We kept a steady pace on the initial uphill hike, which was forested, but after a few kms, we entered a burn scar. Because we knew the lodge hadn’t burned down, we thought the damage from the Crater Creek fire had been limited to the east half of the park, so we were disappointed to see the burned trunk. It looked like the damage along the Centennial Trail may have been from another fire, because it didn’t seem as recent, but I couldn’t confirm online.

In any case, it was exposed and hot along the trail, with no tree cover. We were wrong in assuming we’d have shade in the morning, so we ended up slogging through the first 8kms. Eventually we reached a plateau and found a small section of unburned forest where we were able to enjoy lunch. We both brought our helinox camping chairs, so we had a really nice break in the shade before setting off again. Fortunately, it got cloudier in the afternoon, so we had some relief from the heat by the time we reached the alpine. We hiked through nice meadows before starting the ascent up to the top of the Rim Trail.

The Rim Trail is one of many defining features in the park. There’s a cluster of lakes that are surrounded by a towering alpine ridge. It’s a very rocky park and it’s aptly named “Cathedral” because of all the stone monuments found along the Rim Trail, which encircles the core area in a 16km loop. We had to hike up to the ridge to connect with the Rim Trail at Scout Mountain before heading down to the lakes. It’s very exposed along the ridge and some dark clouds rolled in while we were hiking up to the pass. We were a little bit concerned about possible thundershowers while we were exposed, but fortunately the rain held off until we got to camp.

As we started hiking down, we could see a few larch trees that hadn’t burned, but we very quickly entered a complete burn zone. It was very eerie and sad to experience. It felt like there was a heaviness over the park the entire time we were there to the extent that I felt like we were almost grieving with the park. There’s a thick layer of black ash over everything and it was really dusty to hike through the burn scar. There’s absolutely no shelter and the only sign of life was the fireweed that had started to pop up. I lament the fact that we’ll never get to experience the park pre-fire. There are still some sections of unburned larch forest that were beautiful to witness – I can only imagine what it was like before. 

It was a Friday night, so we didn’t expect the campsite to be very busy, but we were surprised to discover that we were the only people there, leaving 29 campsites empty. 2 girls did show up just before dark, so a total of 2 groups at this once popular site. More groups showed up on Saturday, but I think there were probably a total of only ~8 sites in use the entire long weekend.

We enjoyed the solitude on our first evening and went for a swim in the lake before watching the sunset. It’s an interesting campsite because, while bears are always a concern, mountain goats seem to be the bigger issue. Signs advise not to leave anything out that might entice the goats, and to only pee in the outhouse, as they are attracted to salt (so they will lick your pee off the ground). There are cages where you can put things you don’t want the goats to get, and of course, still a traditional bear hang (don’t use the goat cages for food!). We did see a mama and baby goat hanging around the campsite, which made a reappearance every day that we were there, as well as a few deer. 

Carolyn had a very rough first night in the tent. Immediately after lying down, she commented that her sleeping pad had a leak. She found it very quickly and patched it up with tenacious tape, only to lie down again and immediately put another hole in it. We found a very sharp rock under the tent that had clearly put both holes in her pad. She patched that one up with tape too, but it caused her trouble all night. She’d get an hour of sleep, only for the tape to give out. We dug out some duct tape to try and fix it up and she had so many layers of tape on it. We didn’t want to waste our patch kit on a mediocre fix in the dark, so she suffered through the night on minimal sleep. The next day we fixed it with the patch kit, and fortunately, that solved the problem.

We got up early again to hike the Rim Trail. There’s lot of ways to customize this hike as there are several connector trails that come down at each lake. But I recommend just doing the whole thing because the connector trails are very steep and exposed. The highlight of the park is seeing Smokey the Bear (pictured above) and the Giant Cleft (pictured below), so we decided to do the trail clockwise to hit these highlights first. We ended up hiking the entire day without seeing a single other person, so it was a pretty special experience.

We started by hiking to Pyramid Lake and then climbed up through the trees to Ladyslipper Lake. Everything is burned to Pyramid Lake, but there’s still a small larch forest between Pyramid and Ladyslipper. It was early when we arrived at Ladyslipper, but we wanted to swim in all 5 lakes, so we stopped for a quick skinny dip. Ladyslipper Lake is really beautiful and I recommend hiking there even if you’re not doing the Rim Trail. At the end of the trip, Carolyn decided Ladyslipper Lake was her favourite lake in the park, but it was second on my list. 

Once you leave Ladyslipper, be prepared to be in exposed terrain for the rest of the day. There’s a big climb after you leave the lake and the trail is not easy to follow (though it’s still hard to get lost). It’s obvious where you’re headed and it’s open terrain, so it’s a bit of a choose your own adventure up to the first plateau. You get a great view of the Giant Cleft as you hike up, and eventually the trail levels out briefly before you start a second steep climb to the top. This was probably the worst part of the hike, it’s a narrow exposed trail with lots of scree, so choose your path carefully. You’ll know you’re at the top when you see the junction and the sign for stone city.

It is a big day to do the entire Rim Trail. It took us almost 10 hours, but one of mine and Carolyn’s favourite things to do in the wilderness is film tiktok dances, so we stopped a lot to eat, film, and dance! Some people will just hike up to see the stone city and Smokey the Bear, returning the way they came. We had a quick break in the shade at the junction and then decided to do the 1km detour to see the rock features before lunch. I’m not really sure about the geological history of the park and how all of these stone formations came to be, but they have made it a special place for indigenous peoples and modern day visitors. 

The first highlight is the stone city, which is a compilation of large scattered rocks, after which you arrive at Smokey the Bear. You can climb up to the top of Smokey, which we did, and then continue onto the Giant Cleft. This is exactly what it sounds like – a big gap in the cliffside. More adventurous hikers will scramble up Grimface Mountain, but we opted to turn around after the Giant Cleft, returning to the junction to eat lunch.

The rest of the hike is pretty straightforward as you circle around the top of the rim, but it is still surprisingly challenging. Like any ridge walk, while the net gain around the rim is minimal, there is a lot of up and downhill from peak to peak. Our first ascent was up to the Devils Woodpile, next to Pyramid Mountain, which has a great view of Ladyslipper Lake. The terrain is still really interesting because there’s a lot of rock, but over time, its become arranged into what looks like big waves of rock. I don’t know how this happens, but guessed it might be related to snowmelt, creating riverlike features. If I have any geologist readers, I’d love an opinion!

Our next milestone was hiking down to a lookout over Glacier Lake, before hiking up to the top of Quinescoe Mountain. Like I said, the trail isn’t always easy to follow and we got off it a few times throughout the day, but it’s always very obvious where you’re going, so we didn’t worry. The climb up Quinescoe Mountain wasn’t too bad, but we had one more ascent left on Red Mountain. It looked like a shorter and easier climb than Quinescoe, so we weren’t too worried about it, but it ended up being the worst one of the day.

The trail was the hardest to follow as Red Mountain was one big boulder field. You have to hop your way around the giant rocks up to the top, and then once there, the descent is even worse. My GPS track looks like we more or less followed the trail back down the mountain, but it sure didn’t feel like it! It was very steep and I felt unsure of myself in several areas because the boulders were so large. I was concerned about taking a wrong step and kicking up loose rocks. Fortunately, we made it to the bottom almost without incident, except that Carolyn’s bottle of electrolytes opened in her bag and coated everything in sticky, sugary liquid. Not her finest moment!

Eventually we reconnected with the Centennial Trail to follow our path from yesterday. We saw a few more deer on the way down, but were happy when we finally stumbled back to the campsite. There were a few more groups when we arrived, but overall, not very busy. We went for another swim before making supper for the evening. Tune back in next week to hear about the second half of the trip!