NATURE 

Overview

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The Kimberley Nature Park comprises just over 800 hectares of forested land 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 along the St. Mary Lake road in the south to a height of 1,600 metres on the shoulder of North Star Mountain. Two smaller hills, Bear Hill and Myrtle Mountain, complicate the topography in the centre of the park and help shape its diversity. In parts of the park bedrock rises right to the surface, while in other areas deep layers of sand, gravel and water-rounded cobbles deposited at the end of the last ice age shape its contours. Learn more about the geology of the park on the Geology page.

 

The climate of the park is affected by two main regimes. Moisture-laden Pacific air moves eastward across the province, dropping rain and snow on the western slopes of successive mountain ranges, and Rocky Mountain Trench air masses bring Arctic air from the north in winter and warm, dry, continental air from the south in summer.

 

Water flows into the park from the heights of North Star Mountain, and the area is drained by a series of ponds and two small creeks flowing northeast toward Kimberley and southwest to the St. Mary River. The creeks in the park flow both above and below ground, disappearing into glacial sediments or cracks in the bedrock and reappearing on the surface as springs sometimes kilometres away. Some of the ponds and sloughs in the park are full of water year-round, while others dry up completely by late summer.

 

Although our inventory of the park's flora and fauna is not yet complete, we do know the park is home to over 500 species of plants, fungi and lichens, 29 species of mammals, 97 species of birds and nine species of reptiles and amphibians. View the most recent version of our species inventory here.