• Launching: Various beach launching spots, and a boat ramp
• Parking: day use parking lots
• Difficulty – easy in the morning, fairly warm waters, but southerly wind picks up mid day and can be fairly substantial. Swimmer’s itch at shallower areas.
• Boat traffic – motor boats up to 10hp is allowed
• View – nice views of surrounding mountains, various islands and coves provide variety and points of interest
• Facilities – parking lot, pit toilet, pebble beach, picnic tables
• Overall score – 7/10

Hicks Lake in Sasquatch Provincial Park is a small but beautiful lake, about 6km to circumnavigate. It’s conveniently attached to Hicks Lake Campground but also has a sizable day use area and boat ramp. Campers in the other campgrounds in the provincial park are known to drive to Hicks Lake to enjoy the cleaner water and larger lake here.

Johnny and I took advantage of our camping trip here and paddled the lake at 5:30am. The water was completely still and mirror-like early in the morning, and we had the lake to ourselves.

It didn’t take long to reach the end of the lake, and we noted that there were a fair number of mosquitoes on the lake.

The northern end of the lake near the campgrounds were more interesting, with several small islands and coves to explore.

We stopped at one of the islands with a sandy beach. I noticed an almost perfectly circular arrangement of goose poop. I wondered whether it’s natural or someone arranged it, and I didn’t know which is weirder.

We came out again for a paddle later that morning and the lake was completely different. The winds have started, with it came small chops. People are also out in force.

The coves up north are sheltered from the mid-day southerly winds that the rest of the lake is exposed to. Beginners would find the winds pretty daunting, but due to the small size of the lake, intermediate paddlers should have no trouble navigating the small chops.