Brief Overview

The Kimberley Nature Park is located on the eastern slopes of the Purcell Mountains at the edge of the Rocky Mountain Trench. The Park rises from an elevation of 975 metres (3200 feet) along the St. Mary's road in the south to a height of 1600 metres (5300 feet) on the shoulder of North Star Mountain. Two smaller hills, Bear and Myrtle Mountain complicate the topography in the centre of the Park and help shape its diversity.

The climate of the park is affected by 2 main regimes; the moisture laden Pacific air that moves eastward across the province dropping rain and snow on the western slopes of successive mountain ranges, and by the Rocky Mountain Trench air masses which bring arctic air from the north in winter and warm dry continental air from the south in summer. Located at a wind-gap created by the St. Mary's River valley, the Nature Park lies on a storm track that brings increased rainfall and a greater abundance of vegetation.

The diverse topography of the Park is a result of both bedrock geology and past glaciations. In parts of the area, bedrock rises right to the surface, while in other areas deep glacio-fluvial and glacio-lacustrine deposits shape the landscape.

The centre of the area is drained by a series of ponds and two small creeks flowing north-east toward Kimberley and southwest to the St. Mary River. Many of the creeks in the Park flow both above and below ground, disappearing into glacial sediments and reappearing on the surface sometimes kilometres away. Waters flowing underground out of Dipper Lake appear along the Creek Trail and descend about 300 metres then split and flow both east and west. The eastward flowing stream follows the Army Road for several kilometres then disappears into the ground. Eimer's Lake, one of the most interesting wet spots in the park (complete with a sphagnum bog), is fed by a small stream that emerges from the ground just a few metres from the lake. Some of the ponds and sloughs in the Park are wet year round, while others dry up by late summer.

The Nature Park contains several different kinds of forest, some of which are typical of the dry Interior Douglas Fir zone and other characteristic of the Interior Wet Belt. In the south, along Sunflower Hill, are dry sites dominated by ponderosa pine and bunchgrass, while cedar and other wet zone species are found on protected north facing slopes and in valley bottoms in Whitetail Valley, Horsebarn Valley, the Creek Trail, and at Eimers Lake. Engelman spruce-subalpine fir sites are present in some damp sheltered gulleys.

As with most forests in the B.C. Interior, fire has played an important role in shaping the ecosystem of the Nature Park. No detailed fire history of the Park has yet been compiled but we know that much of the area was burned in the major blazes of 1919. Some areas and individual trees escaped the burn and we have trees in the Park that are several hundreds of years old.

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