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Mount Revelstoke National Park
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Mount Revelstoke National Park is located adjacent to the city of Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada. The park is relatively small for a national park, covering 260 square kilometres. It is located in the Selkirk Mountains and was founded in 1914. Approximately 600,000 visitors enter Mount Revelstoke and nearby Glacier National Park each year.
park contains part of the world's only temperate inland rain forest. Steep, rugged mountains can be found in a warm, moist climate.
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Encyclopedia
Mount Revelstoke National Park is located adjacent to the city of Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada. The park is relatively small for a national park, covering 260 square kilometres. It is located in the Selkirk Mountains and was founded in 1914. Approximately 600,000 visitors enter Mount Revelstoke and nearby Glacier National Park each year.
Climate
The park contains part of the world's only temperate inland rain forest. Steep, rugged mountains can be found in a warm, moist climate. A variety of plant and animal life is typical with stands of old-growth Western Redcedar and Western Hemlock, a forest type which is rapidly declining outside of protected areas. The park's inland rainforest also has an isolated population of banana slugs which marks the eastern boundary of their distribution in North America.
The park also protects a small herd of the threatened mountain caribou and provides habitat for grizzly bear and mountain goat. The park is very different from the Rocky Mountains to the east and the Coast Mountains to the west.
Tourism
The park is famous for summer wildflower displays. Each year the meadows of the upper subalpine zone blossom into brilliant colour by the middle of August. It was the beauty of these meadows, so near to their town, that inspired a group of people in Revelstoke to lobby for the creation of the national park in 1914. The park's establishment is commemorated every year during the Celebrate the Summit weekend in August.
At the same time, skiing was booming as a popular activity. The Nels Nelsen ski jump in Mount Revelstoke National Park was one of the first in Canada and was internationally renowned as one of the finest natural jumps in the world. Several world ski-jumping records were set here. The Nels Nelsen historic area offers an interpretive trail and sweeping views of Revelstoke and the Columbia Mountains.
The Meadows-in-the-Sky Parkway is a paved mountain road open during the snow-free months. The parkway begins in the rainforests of the park’s southwest corner, winds upward through the sub-alpine forests and ends in the rolling sub-alpine wildflower meadows. The Monashee Mountains rise to the west, with the Selkirk range to the east.
Giant Cedars Boardwalk is a 500 m. (0.3 mi.) interpretive trail that twists through a stand of old-growth western red cedar and hemlock trees, some more than 800 years old. Exhibits along the way explore the secrets of this inland rainforest.
Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk is a 1.2 km. (0.75 mi.) interpretive trail that leads through valley bottom rainforest and fragile wetlands inhabited by muskrats, beavers, bears and the strange skunk cabbage plant. Exhibits also help to identify the many birds that migrate from South and Central America to the Skunk Cabbage area each year.
See also
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