A River Never Sleeps

The Jamieson Creek logging road forks off the Westsyde Road just north of Kamloops, and no sooner have the suburbs and dry grasslands vanished behind you than you’re swallowed by a cool, green forest.

You climb steadily, and Jamieson Creek reminds you of how quickly you’re going up, with its tumultuous dash to get down to the hot valley below. The creek is icy cold, even on a bright, hot day. Occasionally logging trucks rumble past, the drivers gearing down and squeezing as much out of the narrow road as they dare to let you pass.

Forty minutes after leaving Kamloops the road starts to level off a bit, and the country opens up. The rolling landscape of the Plateau is speckled with clear lakes, each of which comes wrapped in thick forest. Because of a succession of fires, most stands are only about 100 years old, but the forest looks and feels old. When a big mule deer buck vaults from a thicket of black huckleberry, to bounce down the dirt road in front of the truck, it’s sealed for the kids -- we’re in the wilderness now.

There are few places in British Columbia where you can leave a major city, like Kamloops, and in less than an hour be in a place that seems as pristine and wild as Bonaparte Plateau. In part that’s a testament to the great natural wealth that the Kamloops region is blessed with -- but it also has a lot to do with the foresight of the government officials who have moved to keep it that way.

A large part of the Bonaparte Plateau has been under a development moratorium since 1974, and right in the heart of this beautiful area is a new provincial park that covers nearly 12,000 hectares of forest, lake and stream.

Bonaparte Provincial Park contains more than 50 trout lakes and there are a lot more than that outside the park borders. As we headed north to find Bonaparte Lake itself, we turned down side roads to find one pretty little lake after another -- almost all of them marked by the rings of rising trout.

"There’s a tremendous number of rainbow lakes up in there," says provincial fisheries biologist, Brian Chan. "By far the majority are wild stocks -- and that’s just the way we want to keep it. Some of the lakes have big stock, but most are small, at least compared to the lower elevation lakes. But there definately are some lakes with big trout, if you don’t mind working to hike to them."

Although the environment ministry is looking at ways to enhance some of the lakes, and although there are a few lakes managed as special fisheries, the basic philosophy is to keep a check on the impact and let nature take its course. Only a handful of the lakes on the plateau grow big trout, but the majority are busy with small, feisty rainbows. The small trout lakes of the plateau won’t draw crowds of anglers the way the low, grassland lakes with their big Kamloops rainbows will, but they have a charm that will always attract people. Bonaparte Plateau is for those to whom the location is as important as the fish themselves.

The government appears to have realized this and it’s philosophy for the region could probably be summed up this way: respect it, protect it -- and let people enjoy it for what it is.

At Spruce Wilderness Lodge, on the windy East end of Bonaparte Lake, we were lulled to sleep at night by the sound of waves, crashing on the shore. At dawn we awoke to a hush, broken by the call of an owl. The sound fell out of the forest, traveled over the water and rebounded with a faint echo from across the bay. The owl answered, perhaps thinking it was being serenaded by another bird, far away.

Before the sun came up the cabin was cold, a reminder of how high we were, and somebody had to get up and start a fire. Blue smoke from the nearby cabins soon could be seen snaking slowly across the lake.

Bonaparte Lake is a big, blue wedge of cold water that lies across the northern top of the plateau. From its western end is born the Bonaparte River, which curls out towards Highway 97, near 70 Mile House, before turning south, passing through Cache Creek and dumping into the main stem of the Thompson at Ashcroft. A second river, the Deadman, cuts through the central part of the plateau. And almost everywhere small streams, rush and jump, joining one lake to another.

Bonaparte Lake grows big trout. They get big by feeding on kokanee. And people fish for them with deep running plugs and spoons.

"You don’t get many," said one angler who hadn’t had a hit in two days. "But when you get one, it is usually worth the wait."

Fly fishermen just shook their head in frustration when you asked them about Bonaparte Lake.

"Tried everything," said one resident expert. "They just ain’t interested."

But when one lake is troublesome, there’s always another nearby that’s not.

With kids in tow, we were advised to try some of the pocket lakes that are found in the folds of the forest just a short drive away.

If there is one thing that sticks with you, months after visiting the plateau, it is the sheer joy of finding a beautiful little lake -- and having it all to yourself, all day. On one lake after the next, we found our only company were the loons, the owls, the red-necked grebes, the grouse and the fly catchers, which buzzed and snapped after dragon flies and mosquitos. Here and there, a black bear left a print in the mud. Tad poles wriggled from beneath lilly pads and Pacific tree frogs creaked in the underbrush like broken branches. Big deer would appear out of nowhere, look at you in amazement, and vanish in a bound.

On one lake we let the wind drift the boat into the lily pads, while we dangled over the side, to watch big, black leaches undulate across the bottom. Then we nosed back into clear water, dropped a damselfly fly pattern of one line and a Doc Spratley off the other, and steered with the oars while the breeze pushed us along. Every few minutes one of the rods would bang against a gunwhale and the kids would jump. The trout were so pretty, polished and jeweled, that you didn’t want to kill any. But there were a lot, so we took a few. And the next morning, while the kids stayed in their sleeping bags, waiting for the wood stove to warm the cabin, the trout chattered in the frying pan. This was what Jamieson Creek had promised, and it had delivered.