At Chichester Pond.

(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)

Kelowna can be a very noisy place in summer — roaring motorcycles, speedboats on Okanagan Lake and blaring music from so many backyards.

So, for those who love the water, getting away to a quiet pond can relax and refresh the soul.

One of many hidden gems in the city is Chichester Pond in Rutland. It’s especially hidden if one looks up the official street address – 250 Sumac Road.

This is a road that cannot be directly accessed from Rutland Road, it’s eastern terminus, since there’s only a footpath there. It has to be accessed off Rutland Road to Hillaby Avenue or off McCurdy Road via Euclid Road.

Driving west on Sumac Road there’s a field with a gravel pathway on the right. The only indication there’s a pond there is a small blue and white “Adopt a Pond” sign next to a mailbox with the name Chichester Wetland printed on it.

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Follow the path for less than 50 metres, however, and you’re in a totally different world with a walkway between trees and two ponds with a stream running out of the west end and a plethora of wildlife.

OK, so on the spring day I visited, the pond was murky brown with debris and detritus floating in it, but it’s also home to painted turtles sunbathing on logs, ducks and other birds.

On the other side of the ponds, the trail continues past grassy fields filled with wildflowers.

The main park entrance, however, is from Chichester Court, off Hillaby Avenue. It’s a small cul-de-sac with a proper entrance sign, a bench and a pathway around the end of the pond.

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There were lots of ducks in the water there but no turtles readily visible.

The City of Kelowna website says this is a 4.43 hectare park with dogs allowed on-leash.

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“This hidden gem is situated within the heart of the Rutland Community and is a great example of a small remnant wetland,” it says. “Wetlands are extremely rare in the arid Okanagan environment, comprising only about .02 percent of the land base.

A great attraction of this pond is that it’s far enough away from major streets to hear the birds chirping rather than traffic roaring.

MUNSON POND

This is a markedly different pond experience with a very different history.

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Munson Pond is most easily accessed from Munson Road, reached by turning west off Benvoulin Road just north of KLO Road.

There’s a small parking lot with a viewing platform that has explanatory signs. It has a one kilometre gravel pathway around what is more of a small lake than a pond.

It can also be accessed by pathways that connect the two driving portions of Burtch Road. But that western end is also the location of some highly visible homes and too near KLO Road for the birdsongs to drown out all the traffic noise.

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The pond was originally part of land settled by the Munson family in the late 1890s, the signs say.

In the 1960s it was leased to J.W. Bedford Ltd. and mined as a gravel pit for about five years. The gravel had too much clay in it to be of really good quality and, as they dug further down, it started to fill with groundwater that had to be pumped out.

In the 1990s the City of Kelowna bought the pond and land around it. In 2014 it joined with the Central Okanagan Land Trust to naturalize the area.

The City of Kelowna website says the pond itself is 3.8 acres and the total park is 9.8 hectares.

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“Ecologically, the pond is a beautiful water body surrounded by a mature remnant cottonwood forest that is valued for its bird watching opportunities, waterfowl habitat and habitat for small amphibians, reptiles and mammals,” the website says. “At one time this black cottonwood/water birch ecological community covered much of the Okanagan lowlands but have been displaced by agriculture, urban development, and the channelization of streams and rivers. It is now a red listed (endangered) ecological community and ranked by the B.C. Conservation Data Centre as one of the rarest in B.C.”

Because of that ecological sensitivity, no dogs are allowed.

SIBELL MAUDE-ROXBY WETLAND

Watch your head!

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Back to the more natural (even though it was reconstructed to a natural state in the 1980s) environment in a lakefront setting is the Sibell Maude-Roxby Wetland.

It is one of the last remaining marsh habitats on the Okanagan Lake shoreline, according to signs posted at its entrance.

That entrance is from Francis Avenue, a short street leading west from Abbott Street just south of Kelowna General Hospital.

It’s one of many road-end beachfronts in the city which means it requires a short walk northward from the beach on Mud Bay to the boardwalk entrance where there is extensive signage about the wetland.

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On a calm summer day it would be subject to the roar of motor boats but on a windy June morning the only real sound was the pounding of the waves and the chirping of birds.

The boardwalk surrounds the wetland, which shows only a little open water with lots of marsh vegetation. There are viewing platforms on the edge of the lake.

There’s also the occasional tree trunk growing perilously over the boardwalk that can easily be bumped into if you’re focused on the marsh rather than where you’re walking.

In the 1940s the wetlands were twice their present size when Victor and Sibell Maude-Roxby bought the surrounding land.

Sibell was an active naturalist and tried to get the wetland preserved during her lifetime but it wasn’t until two years after her death in 1986 that the restoration began with the help of the Central Okanagan Heritage Society and the Central Okanagan Naturalist Club, the signs say.

The boardwalk wasn’t built until 2018.

The wetland was formed by a creek that carried debris into the area. That creek disappeared long ago as homes were built in the area.

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It borders on Mud Bay where material is deposited by north flowing and south flowing lake currents.

“Mud Bay has no other equivalent in the Central Okanagan and is an important feeding ground for shorebirds,” the city website says. “The future of this site is currently under threat from foreshore erosion which is caused by wave and wake action.”

A study of the site in 2018 indicated that it was at risk of being eroded away completely over time.

No dogs are allowed.

ROTARY MARSH

Built by the Rotary Club of Kelowna, it’s just north of Tugboat Beach and easily accessed either from the beach or Sunset Drive. It’s at the mouth of Brandt’s Creek, which flows through the Glenmore Valley although it is buried underground in places.

Image Credit: Google Maps

“Brandts Creek was in bad shape in 1992 when Rotarians John Woodworth and Art Hughes-Games conceived a plan to help the creek, the lake and give the City of Kelowna a beautiful asset,” the Rotary club’s website says. “For many years, Brandts creek had carried industrial waste, agricultural run-off and all of the debris from the streets of Kelowna that the storm sewers delivered to the creek.

“The concept was to create a marshland in the bay where the creek enters Okanagan Lake with two objectives. The first was to use 'settling ponds' within the marshland to filter out that debris before the water entered the lake. The second was to create a teaching facility to show how important marshlands are to the environment.”

While it’s hard to envision now, heavy equipment and massive amounts of fill were brought in when construction of the marsh was approved in 1994.

“Literally thousands of indigenous trees, shrubs and plants along with over two hundred pounds of wildflower seed were planted to produce what we have today,” the website says.

Image Credit: Google Maps

The marsh is traversed by a boardwalk from the beach to Sunset Drive and includes a large viewing platform.

No dogs are allowed.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Rob Munro or call 250-808-0143 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

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