Revelstoke is a scenic mountain town in Beautiful British Columbia. It's located in the Selkirk mountains, halfway between Vancouver and Calgary. While not as popular as Banff in the Rockies or Whistler in the Coast Mountains, Revelstoke is a gem in the center of it all.
Since Revelstoke is a National Park, you need a pass to enter it. They have a very popular road, called "Meadows in the Sky Parkway" which makes getting up most of the way fairly simple. The road is popular on weekends and finding parking isn't easy.
Once you are near the top, you park your car and walk the remaining, and what a site to behold. Unfortunately it was smokey when we went so the views aren't as fantastic as they could be. Canada suffered from a bad fire season but we didn't let it ruin our summer and went hiking every weekend. Which is why I haven't been posting much.
This statue pays homage to the First Nations in the Region. British Columbia has more natives than anywhere else in Canada. The weather is more temperate and there is an abundance of salmon in the rivers. Revelstoke also happens to be in a spot that is one of the only inland temperate rainforest in the world, so it's a unique place.
The parking lot is at 1935m or 26 km up the road. It's cheating taking the car but hiking up almost 1500 m from the town would take all day. The best views and hikes are start from the upper parking lot anyways.
Can't see much of the town below. Or the Ski Hill off in the distance. Areas near Revelstoke get 18 feet or almost 6 metres of snow per year and the ski hill has 1700 meters of vertical making it the most in North America. The last few times I've been here was in the winter just for that. In the summer they have gravity powered roller coasters, mountain biking and gondolas for exploring but we decided to hike the National Park instead.
Remnants of snow can be found even on a mid July weekend in the crevices and cracks on top of the mountain. It wasn't cold in the middle of the day, but only a Canadian would be out in T-shirt.
This is a little Grey Jay. We didn't see much wildlife on our trip to Revelstoke despite it being almost a six hour drive. The birds were very camera friendly but wildlife is not the greatest to shoot on a cellphone camera.
One of the biggest draws asides from the views are the fields filled with alpine flowers. The meadows are beautiful and would only blossom for a month or two each summer. We could hike for hours with views like this.
There's alpine flowers for those who don't even want to leave the car. Along the way up the road there were numerous stops and trails to explore but we were only in town for the weekend.
The top of the mountain is always where it's at. This isn't the highest peak on the mountain, those are quite a hike away and require better gear. The system of ponds and brooks in the area was more than enough to explore and it's not like we are strangers to mountains.
Hope you enjoyed the photography and reading about Mount Revelstoke National Park. We truly are spoiled to have such an abundance of nature in Western Canada. It will take decades to explore it all.
All photos taken with an S20 phone and are unfiltered
