Eastmere and Westmere Lakes

Eastmere Lake

Westmere Lake

Eastmere and Westmere Lakes

I took the North Prairie Road from Summerland and then the Summerland to Princeton Road for about forty kilometres and turned right on the Trout Creek Forest Service Road. At 2.2 kilometres I turned left and headed up the hill. The road proved fairly rough and loose in some sections, but I just slipped the Jeep into four-wheel drive to be on the safe side.

At about 2.3 kilometres the road splits: the right hand branch heads into Eastmere Lake, while the left hand road continues towards Westmere Lake. I hoped to make it to both lakes today after failing to make it to Barton Lake the previous Sunday. According to some ATVers I had found the trail, but ran out of time. My plan was to find an old road that showed between the lakes and see if there was a connecting trail.

As this was my first trip in I wasn’t sure which road to take so took the left and turn for 0.9 kilometres and then I believe took the right hand road. My notes were a little mixed up here, but just don‘t good down too far and you will be alright. This road was not too bad but ended up being blocked off with a notice restricting vehicular traffic.

Going over the berm, the old road and trail heads off to the right and has been decommissioned with lots of holes, which will make for an interesting hike carrying a canoe. Finally, after about 1.2 kilometres the trail splits and both branches lead to the lake, the left being about 100 metres and the right about 150 metres.
This is a reasonably sized lake but seems fairly shallow and reedy around the shore. Looks ideal for a belly boat and worthwhile going to the trouble of packing a canoe this far. When someone goes to the trouble to hike a canoe or boat into any lake to be left for later use, please treat it with respect and replace it on the shore where you found it.

I now back tracked to the first intersection and investigated this route. In less than half a kilometre the road became quite rough. I parked and again began to walk the last half kilometre to the lake. Shortly before the lake I took the left hand fork. It was a bit tough walking as there were a lot of windfalls. On the way out I met Ian Chapman from Kelowna who was coming in on an ATV and was using a chain saw to clear the windfalls. One good reason for allowing ATV’s on some trails.

Eastmere Lake is another good sized lake and appears to be deeper and perhaps a little easier to fish from the shore, but again is an excellent lake to fish for a belly boat or canoe. Ian informed me that these lakes held fish reaching 15 to 16 inches and they are regularly stocked. Unfortunately, I was short on time and the wind was too strong to get much fishing done from the shore.

Looking at the map I printed off from the Fish Wizard website, it looks reasonably accurate, but some of the roads shown are now fairly overgrown. I depend a lot on my GPS along with these maps. I did notice that it is a very short distance to Eastmere Lake from the Trail into Westmere Lake, but did not notice any reasonable trails connecting the two. At times, I was about a quarter of a kilometre from Eastmere Lake and thought it would be a good idea to blaze a trail through here making it easy to access both lakes from one starting point.