George Evanoff
The Mountain Knows No Expert

Established in 2000, named after George Evanoff [d. 1988], member of the Prince George Land and Resource Management Plan table and active in a variety of outdoors organizations, who died 24 October 1998 as the result of a grizzly attack while hiking in the McGregor Range.

The park is situated in the Hart Ranges of the Canadian Rockies. This park protects one of the most remarkable caves, the nationally significant Fang Cave complex, which includes the ninth longest cave in Canada. Other caves include the Tooth Decave and Window on the West.

The 1,473 hectare park also provides a scenic, easily accessible destination for backcountry recreation. It includes picturesque alpine bowls, three small alpine lakes, and distinctive limestone pinnacles and ridges. Two separate trails, the Fang Trail and Torpy Trail, provide access to small alpine basins, with a connection over Fang Mountain. The Torpy Trail continues outside the park to Torpy Mountain.

A wide, meandering river system containing floodplain wetlands, numerous oxbow lakes, sandbars, back channels, levees, along the glacier-fed North Thompson River. This 515 hectare park protects a wide meandering river system with a high level of diversity.

North Thompson Oxbows East Park was established in 1996 to protect a stretch of wide meandering river system with a high level of diversity in a very productive part of the upper North Thompson River lowlands. This 293 hectare park protects small patches of old growth hybrid spruce and subalpine fir.

Holliday Creek Arch Protected Area was established in 2001 through the efforts of the Robson Valley Land and Resource Management Plan and the Protected Areas Strategy. This small, 395 hectare protected area showcases a magnificent natural stone arch, a very rare feature of provincial significance. In excess of 80 metres wide and 18 metres high, this arch spans a steep, rocky gully. Mountain goats frequent this area, providing visitors an opportunity to view one of the most interesting geological features in the province, and a chance to see mountain goats in their natural habitat.

For almost three decades it has been a designated Ecological Reserve, but it now enjoys status as a Class “A” provincial park. The park has no road access, but it can be reached via an 8 km hiking trail from Highway 16.

BC Parks posted a warning in 2020 that the trail up to the Holliday Creek Arch is in very bad shape with windfall, washouts and several areas where detours are required. Travel is not recommended unless you are prepared for these conditions.

This 1,011 hectare park, establised in 2000, protects interior cedar hemlock forests on a valley slope above the Upper Fraser Trench, leading to alpine/sub-alpine area at the top of Erg Mountain. Erg Mountain has historically been a hiking destination, and offers an excellent viewpoint of the upper Fraser Valley and surrounding mountains. On a good day, Mount Sir Alexander in Kakwa Provincial Park is clearly visible. Extensive alpine ridge-top hiking outside of the park is accessible from the peak of Erg Mountain (not an official name).

Named for reasons known to themselves by Canadian Pacific Railway surveyors Edward Worrell Jarvis [1846–1894] and Charles Francis Hanington [1848–1930] during their February 1875 crossing of what is now known as Jarvis Pass in search of a route across the Rocky Mountains.

Smoky Peak resembles Mount Ida. One rises in striking grandeur to guard the western side of the pare, while the other guards the east. They both present the came aspect, solitary, with their white summits in the clouds, glaciers covering their sides to the line of vegetation, and then the blue and green of the forest covering, they are indeed grand sights and worthy of an artist’s brush.

— Hannington 1875

A few words in conclusion. Members of the Alpine Club of Canada seemed to have noticed this mountain [Mount Sir Alexander] during their summer camp of 1913 near Mt. Robson, for the accounts read that “many fine snow mountains appear, one of enormous size, some eighty miles away, which rivals Mt. Robson.” Apparently this is the mountain they refer to, for the distance they estimated is almost exactly correct. Later on in our trip I heard of trappers who spoke of an enormous mountain at the head of the north fork of the Fraser River. Apparently it was known to the Indians too, but the only other white man whom I have been able to find who has seen it at close range was a Mr. Jones (whose initials forget), whom I saw in Edmonton on my return. He had spent four years surveying for suitable pass for the Grand Trunk Ry., and about ten years ago first saw the mountain. When I asked his opinion as to its height, he said that as he was looking for low passes and not high mountains he did not measure it accurately, but he knew it was at least 12,000 feet, and that was the figure we found on his map. Previous to his trip a man named Jarvis had crossed from the Fraser waters to the Porcupine through this valley up which we had come, and to the knife-like mountain he had given the name of “Mount Ida.”

— Fay 1915

Mount Ida, too, was clearly visible, with a great stretch of ice and snow extending between it and its giant neighbor.

— Jobe 1916

The writer is unable to say who first saw this mountain. Mackenzie certainly did not. E. W. Jarvis, an intrepid explorer for the proposed Canadian Pacific Railroad, passed within ten miles of it in February 1875 when he discovered the pass which bears his name just north of Mt. Sir Alexander. But there are only one or two locations on his route from which the mountain can be seen, and as he made the trip in the dead of winter it is quite probable that the peak was wrapped in clouds, as it is a large part of the time, and that he had no knowledge of its presence. This conclusion is borne out by the fact that he described the next highest mountain in the region, a very conspicuous peak eight miles northeast of Mt. Sir Alexander, and named it, for reasons best known to himself, “Mt. Ida”. This name happily has not been changed.

— Vreeland 1930

Outflow of Ptarmigan Creek.

Sunbeam Creek Ecological Reserve was established in 1972 to protect a variety of alpine communities representative of the western edge of the Rocky Mountains.

The 511-hectare reserve encompasses McBride Peak and adjacent summits to the northeast and northwest. These mountains form the western-most flank of the Park Range, immediately adjacent to the Rocky Mountain trench. Mountains in the reserve have generally rounded summits, having been overtopped by a dome of Pleistocene ice which reached the 2450 m elevation. They therefore lack the matterhorn-like peaks of higher mountains further east in the Park Ranges which protruded above the regional ice sheet, e.g. Mount Robson. Local alpine glaciers and stream erosion during the past ten thousand years have dissected the rounded summits to some extent, producing U-shaped valleys separated by relatively sharp crests. Surficial materials are largely morainal and colluvial. Freeze-thaw action has resulted in characteristic alpine features like solifluction lobes and frost-shattered rock. The climate is cold and windy. Glaciers do not presently exist, but snow patches are present on north-facing slopes for most of the summer. Drainage is via Sunbeam Creek and McKale River into the Fraser River.

Slopes in the reserve face all directions and terrain varies from moist stream- bottoms to alpine crests, therefore, a variety of alpine plant communities are present. To date, however, these have been only superficially described. A few scattered whitebark pine and subalpine fir trees, largely in a krummholz form, occur on slopes along stream valleys in the lowest parts of the reserve (1830- 1950 m). These areas may have affinities with the Engelmann Spruce-Subalpine Fir Zone, but are extremely limited in extent. The bulk of the reserve is in the Interior Mountain-heather Alpine zone.

Extensive well-drained slopes above the treeline are dominated by pink, yellow and white mountain-heather and white mountain-avens. White rhododendron, oval-leaved blueberry, Sitka valerian and Indian hellebore are common at lower elevations. Moss campion, glaucous gentian, and a variety of grasses, sedges and lichens are present.

The alpine area is used for recreation because of easy access and the location of the reserve in the middle of a well known hiking route.

There is a communications tower on site, which was there before the reserve was designated.