BC Spaces Page Link
Parks
History
Tourism
Environmental Education
Take Action
Take articles
menu spacer menu btn menu btn menu btn menu btn menu btn menu btn menu btn menu btn

Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park is a beautiful and important link between Canada's Waterton National Park to the east and the United States' Glacier National Park to the south. Together, these parks protect the Crown of the Continent area of the Rocky Mountains and preserve an area large enough to provide habitat to a healthy population of grizzly bears. A visit to 10,921 ha (27,000 acre) Akamina-Kishinena is well worth it; the scenic park is an excellent place for hiking, offering trails to suit a whole range of experience levels.


"Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park is a beautiful and important link between Canada's Waterton National Park to the east and the United States' Glacier National Park to the south."


location

Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park is located in the extreme southeast corner of British Columbia. There is forest road access to the western edge of the park in BC, but many visitors prefer to enter by trail from Waterton Lakes National Park over the Continental Divide through Akamina Pass from the east. To get to the Akamina Pass trailhead, turn south off Highway 3 onto Highway 6, at Pincher Creek.

After 48 km (30 mi) visitors will reach the access gate for Waterton National Park. Just beyond the gate, turn onto the Cameron Lake park road and drive 16 km (10 mi) further to reach the trailhead. The boundary of Akamina-Kishinena is 30 minutes and 1.5 km (1 mi) away, most of it uphill. The park border also represents the end of Alberta and the beginning of British Columbia.

Click on the map to view an enlargement

recreation

By far the park's most popular recreational features, and the one that attracts most of Akamina-Kishinena's visitors, are its extensive trails. These trails are used primarily for hiking, although mountain biking is permitted on some. Most popular hikes include:

  • Akamina Pass:
    This hike, which follows a road built in the 1920s, cuts across the whole park, from Akamina Pass, through Kishinena Creek and all the way to the Flathead River valley. This route is commonly used for cycling day trips from Waterton Lakes National Park.
  • Forum Lake & Falls:
    This short trail leaves from the Ranger Station and leads the 2 km (1.2 mi) to Forum Lakes, passing the Forum Falls 200 m (0.12 mi) from the trailhead. It takes approximately 45 minutes to reach the lake, and the trail gains 200 m (656 ft) in altitude over the 2 km.
  • Wall Lake:
    Another trail that leads from the Ranger Station, this time leading 200 m (0.12 mi) to Akamina Road and 2 km (1.2 mi) to Wall Lake, with a 50 m (165 ft) elevation gain.

Backcountry camping is permitted throughout the park, but no developed facilities are provided. Forum and Wall Lakes in Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park are well known for their cutthroat trout fishing opportunities. Visitors are reminded that they must have a valid fishing licence in order to angle in British Columbia.


"Forum and Wall Lakes in Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park are well known for their cutthroat trout fishing opportunities."



wildlife

Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park is an ecologically significant protected area, containing important habitat for a variety of plants and animals, some of which are rare and unusual. For example, the Yellowstone moose and pigmy poppy found in the park exist nowhere else in British Columbia.

The park is also significant because it, combined with adjoining Waterton National Park in Alberta and Glacier National Park in the United States, creates an area that is large enough to support a large grizzly bear population. The Akamina-Kishinena-Waterton-Glacier grizzly population is in fact one of the only remaining self-sufficient populations that exists in whole or in part in all of the United States.

The lakes of Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park, Forum and Wall, are home to a variety of life forms as well, including large and highly valued cutthroat trout.


"Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park is an ecologically significant protected area, containing important habitat for a variety of plants and animals, some of which are rare and unusual."


history

Akamina-Kishinena is an important protected area because it contains some of the Canadian Rockies' oldest rock formations, some up to 1 and a half billion years old. Composed mostly of limestone that would have once been the floor and tidal flats of a shallow ocean, the rocks that form the park's mountains are extensively interspersed with marine fossils. The Ktunaxa First Nation, who would travel through South Kootenay Pass to reach the buffalo hunting grounds and trading opportunities of the plains, were the first people to use the Akamina-Kishinena area. Today, cairns (small piles of rocks) found throughout the park still mark the paths taken by the Ktunaxa.

More recently, in the 1890s, the park became the site of one of the first oil drilling sites in Western Canada. Settlers who followed the oil explorations left behind evidence of their presence in the form of sawmill sites and a ramshackle cabin that just barely still stands today.

Akamina-Kishinena was originally proposed as an extension to Waterton National Park in the early 1970s. Parks Canada came and looked at that time, but determined that, in their minds, the area was not of a calibre to justify an extension. Nevertheless, Akamina-Kishinena was first protected by the BC Government in the late 1980s as a Recreation Area, but was small in dimension. Many of the valley bottoms that had been originally included in the 1970s proposal had been hit by mountain pine beetle in the late 1970s and subject to very extensive clearcut logging, and were consequently left out of the Recreation Area.

Still, many people, such as Harvey Locke of the Alberta chapter of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), continued to believe that Akamina-Kishinena was in fact a very strong candidate for more extensive and protective status.

They came up with a concept which they called the "Crown of the Continent", which would have a heartland of protection formed by Waterton National Park, US Glacier National and Akamina-Kishinena. This core of the Crown of the Continent biosphere area would be surrounding by special management zones that would further protect it. The idea was advanced through the early 1990s by CPAWS BC and backed by CPAWS National, with George Smith taking the lead campaigning role.


"Akamina-Kishinena is an important protected area because it contains some of the Canadian Rockies' oldest rock formations, some up to 1 and a half billion years old."


In the course of the Commission on Resources and the Environment (CORE) landuse planning that took place in the 1990s it was agreed to upgrade Akamina-Kishinena Recreation Area to full Class A park status. At this time it was also decided to leave the boundaries where they were, despite some pressure to increase the size of the park. Recently there has been renewed effort by CPAWS to extend Akamina-Kishinena, in order to build out and complete the Waterton-Glacier complex. Also proposed is the establishment of a 60,000 hectare (150,000 acre) national park in the Flathead Valley. The campaign to extend protection in the area is ongoing, with the intention being to round out the preserved trans-national and trans-provincial ecosystem, thereby ensuring full security for adjacent Glacier and Waterton National Parks.


"They came up with a concept which they called the "Crown of the Continent", which would have a heartland of protection formed by Waterton National Park, US Glacier National and Akamina-Kishinena."


Return to the Kootenay Rockies Region

Become Involved!

Please
Report Problems
with this site
or any links.



   Home | About | Explore BC's Parks | BC's Wildlife | History of Conservation | BC's History of Conservation | Wilderness Tourism: Zonation System, Special Management Zones, Jobs and the Environment | Environmental Education: Learning About Nature, Education Resources | Take Action: What You Can Do, Contribute | Articles: Archive, News Links, Documents | Contact | Links