E.C. Manning Provincial Park is my favourite park in BC, so I’ve written about it a lot. I first day hiked to 3 Brothers Mountain in 2016, after which I backpacked the entire Heather Trail from Blackwall Road to Cayuse Flats. In 2022, I camped for two nights at Buckhorn Campsite with my Girl Guides and in 2026, I returned to spend one night at Kicking Horse Campground with my friends.
These campsites used to be first-come, first-served, but the trail has gotten so popular in the last few years that BC Parks introduced a reservation system. I think this was a good decision, given how crowded it can get, but I do wish they didn’t release all the sites so far in advance. In this case, we did not pre-reserve our campsites, but when another trip got interrupted by wildfires, we were able to snag two sites at Kicking Horse Campground at the last minute.
3 Brothers Mountain is located on the first half of the Heather Trail. Most people only hike as far as 3 Brothers, but if you continue on, you’ll arrive at both Kicking Horse and Nicomen Lake. The trail officially ends at Nicomen Lake, where you can turn around and hike back, or if you have two cars, continue on to Grainger Creek and Cayuse Flats (which is what I did on my 2018 trip). The most popular option for overnight trips is to camp at Buckhorn and day hike to 3 Brothers. There’s an impressive display of wildflowers in late July and early August along this section of the trail.
The trailhead starts at the top of Blackwall Road, so hikers can skip most of the elevation gain in the car. If you just want to see the wildflowers, you can do a short loop hike on the Paintbrush Trail, or you can hike downhill to Buckhorn Camp, followed by a short uphill through the forest to reach some truly breaktaking sub-alpine meadows. Like I said, I first hiked this trail in 2016, but I keep returning every couple of years because it’s just so damn scenic!
On this visit, I hiked with my girlfriends, Adriana and Amy. We arrived at the trailhead in time to eat lunch and then started the 13km hike to Kicking Horse Camp. The first 5km are mostly in the trees, but even in the forest, there are tons of wildflowers to steal your attention. It didn’t take us long to get to Buckhorn Camp, which is a huge site with a gorgeous cooking shelter and lots of tent pads. It is a bit of a slog through the forest after Buckhorn, but it’s quickly forgotten when you reach the meadows.
The rest of the trail boasts fantastic views of the backcountry. You hike through meadow after meadow until you reach the junction for 3 Brothers Peak. The peak is the most challenging part of the hike, with a steep uphill to the ridge, after which you get to meander along the ridgeline to the summit. We opted to skip the summit on the way in, instead continuing all the way to camp, determined to return and hike to the top the following day.
It was my 4th time doing 3 Brothers, but it was only my second time continuing past the junction. In my opinion, some of the most scenic meadows on the trail are between the junction and Kicking Horse. The trail is fairly easy through this section and it was mostly downhill to camp, but it still took us a while to hike because we stopped so frequently for photos. We took a long break in one of the meadows before strolling into camp shortly after 6pm.
Compared to the rest of the hike, the campsite isn’t particularly scenic. The last time I camped there, there were no reservations and I ended up with a pretty terrible overflow campsite, so having the reservation helped a lot. We found a nice tent pad near one of the meadows to settle in for the evening. There is a small view of some of the surrounding mountains, but overall, most of the sites are in the trees. Buckhorn Campsite was definitely recently upgraded, but in my opinion, Kicking Horse could use a facelift. The outhouse was getting very full, but at least there was a bear cache. Unfortunately the water source isn’t great. It’s just a small creek and it gets fairly low in the summer. We were still able to get water, but the creek at Buckhorn is much nicer.
We had a fun evening hanging out and making dinner, but it was very buggy. I find the mosquitoes usually don’t like me that much and if I set up my thermacell they’ll usually leave me alone. But Amy was another case entirely. I’ve never seen someone attract so many mosquitoes as Amy. It felt like the thermacell wasn’t working at all, but whenever Amy would leave, the mosquitoes would too, so I think the lure of her blood was just so compelling that it overpowered the thermacell.
Amy and Adriana shared a tent, leaving me to sleep by myself. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but it did get very cold overnight and I could have used a second body in the tent, but Amy and Adriana were both cold too. When I camped at Kicking Horse overnight in 2018, our water froze, so I don’t think it matters what time of year you visit, it’s always cold there. We did experience a very weird phenomenon while camping here though. Overnight it seemed that all of the sound was reversed around the tents. When someone would get up, we would hear them on the opposite side of the tent to where they actually were. It was kind of freaky and we recently learned that Manning Park is supposedly haunted, so maybe this was related (ooo, spooky!).
We returned to summit 3 Brothers the following day. It was hot, so it was a bit of a slog getting back to the junction as there is limited shade along the trail and several uphill sections on the way back. But saving the summit for Sunday was a good idea. I think a lot of day hikers stay in the frontcountry sites on Friday and Saturday night and it felt much less busy on the trail on Sunday. We dumped a bunch of our gear at the junction to lighten our packs for the climb, but we made sure to take all of our food and smellies with us so as not to attract bears. A lot of people just leave their entire backpack at the junction. Please don’t do this as we don’t want to attract bears to the area.
It’s only ~1km to the summit, but it is steep and exposed, so it was a bit tiring. There’s a little bit of light scrambling through a few sections of rock, but it’s pretty easy and I would say it barely counts as scrambling. We had lunch at the summit, but the enjoyment was interrupted by the mosquitoes. Eventually Amy gave up and started hiking back down the ridge and me and Adriana were able to get a small respite.
The hike out was as enjoyable as the hike in. The sad aspect of the hike was that with the uninterrupted view of the mountains, we could see several wildfires burning nearby. I expected to see water bombers attending to the fires, but unfortunately we didn’t see any. When I got home, I looked up the fires to see where they were and determined that all of the fires that were visible were actually burning across the border in Washington State. At the time, Trump was going on about how Canada needs to control its wildfire smoke, so it was particularly galling to see so many fires being left to burn near the border. This was in mid-July and several of these fires did end up crossing the border where they burned through kilometres of Manning’s forest. It’s been heartbreaking for me to watch, especially since I love this park so much. I feel like I’ve been grieving trees all summer.
We returned to the car in the mid-afternoon and treated ourselves to burgers in Hope before returning home. Unfortunately, we hit the Sunday evening rush back to the city and sat for far too long on Highway 1, but it was always be worth it to explore the little piece of paradise that is the Heather Trail!
