Desjarlais Lake, Pierre Grey's Provincial Park

In early August, we took a trip to Hinton and Grande Cache, which gave us a chance to try some new lakes, including Desjarlais Lake in Pierre Grey's Provincial Park. Access from Hinton is about an hour north on Highway 40. There are five lakes in the park, three of which are easily accessible and none of which allow for gasoline-powered motors.

We had finite time to paddle so we chose Desjarlais Lake since it looked to be the biggest and most interesting. The easiest access was at the main boat launch (blue arrow above).

The launch is large and you can drop right by the water. There is a floating dock and a fish cleaning station. Pit toilets (which were lovely) are just up the hill 25 meters by the parking lot.

The bottom at the launch was gravel and the water was clean and people were swimming. To the right is a causeway out onto the ling spit of an island that breaks up the lake halfway down. There were lots of people fishing, both from the shore and from boats.

We paddled the southern bay and stopped for lunch on the water. The shoreline is basically fir trees down to the water. The bottom was mostly sandy or tan coloured silt. On the west end of the island, there was a large osprey nets wth three birds in it. You can see in the photo that the weather is starting to turn!

There was lots of sunshine but also periodical sun showers. The area around the island is quite shallow.

There were several spots like the ones below where underwater springs were pushing water into the lake.

We got soaked about half was to the north end so turned tail and came in. Overall, a nice paddle and a very quite lake with no motorized boats to content with.

Before we left, we also toured the other launches sides. Access to Moberly Lake (green arrow in map above) was easy with a concrete ramp and floating dock. You could park right just to the left of the launch in the photo below. The water was clean and beautiful and people were swimming.

The launch at MacDonald Lake (orange arrow in the map above) required a bit of a carry (maybe 20 meters) down a hill. 

At the bottom, it was a fairly easy grass launch and there was a floating dock. The water was again clear and beautiful. Not shown are a bunch of paddle boarders.

Overall, this was lovely park to visit and I would definitely go back to try the other lakes if I was in the area.