Adams Lake Cable Ferry

The province keeps three highway cameras on the Adams Lake ferry: one on the West Ferry Lineup, one on the West Ferry Landing, one on the East Ferry Landing. The vessel they watch is a cable ferry, ADAMS LAKE II, running across Adams Lake to the community on its east side. The landing is 20 km north of Highway 1, on the stretch between Chase and Sorrento, about 80 km northeast of Kamloops and 50 km northwest of Salmon Arm.

Six minutes to the east shore

The crossing takes 6 minutes. The ferry holds 10 vehicles and 48 passengers, subject to the vessel’s approved load capacity, which tops out at 34,000 kg. There is no timetable. The boat sails on demand, 24 hours a day, from 5 a.m. to 3 a.m. Between 3 and 5 a.m. it runs for emergencies only. The crossing is free; all of British Columbia’s inland ferries are free to users.

WaterBridge Ferries Inc., an outfit out of Nakusp, runs the boat under private contract with the provincial Ministry of Transportation and Transit. The same company works ferries on the Arrow Lakes and Francois Lake. On the province’s inland ferry map, Adams Lake is route 9, one of the cable ferries, with Nikwikwaia Creek marked near the crossing.

The present boat was designed by Capilano Maritime Design Ltd. of North Vancouver for the ministry and fabricated by Waterbridge Steel Inc. of Nakusp. It came out of a $27.9-million contract the province awarded Waterbridge Steel in 2016 to design and build four new cable ferries for inland routes. Capilano called ADAMS LAKE II “the first cable ferry” of the set, and it went into service in spring 2017, ahead of GLADE II on the Kootenay River in 2018 and HARROP II in 2019. The province said the new vessels were larger than the ferries they replaced, built to take commercial vehicles at full highway loads, and that while docked during off-peak hours they would draw power from on-board batteries, cutting noise at the terminals and greenhouse gas emissions.

Adam, Eve, and the many bark canoes

The lake takes its name from a man. BC Geographical Names records that the lake is named for the chief of a people called the Sl-hes-tal-ten, who lived in the country around it. His name was Sel-howt-ken. In January 1849 the Jesuit Father Nobili baptised him “Adam,” and the lake was called Adams Lake from that time. Father Nobili, it is said, was the first missionary to visit that part of the country. The account was furnished by L. O’Brien and J.F. Smith of Kamloops and written down in 1925 by James Robert Anderson, who had known Nobili at Fort Alexandria about 1845 to 1848.

A later compiler added that the chief’s wife, “not to be outdone,” got the name of Eve, “though probably not from the priest.” On 23 July 1865 the surveyor Walter Moberley wrote in his journal that he had “made the acquaintance of Adam and Eve, an Indian and his wife.” The Kamloops Museum’s 1978 place-names book gives a different version of the naming: fur traders renamed the chief of the Upper Lake Adam, and praised him as a fine man and an assiduous hunter. The Hudson’s Bay Company journal last mentions him in April 1862, and he probably died in that year’s smallpox epidemic.

The geologist George Dawson recorded the Indigenous name for the head of the lake as “Shtle-al-lun,” meaning “many bark canoes.” The name Adams Lake was officially adopted on 30 June 1912.

A barricade, a barge, and a cable

The ferry is younger than most of the families who use it. On August 14, 1995, the Prince George Citizen reported that about 50 families with recreational lots on the eastern side of Adams Lake had been forced to use a ferry since a barricade went up on the only road access, which ran through the Adams Lake reserve. That summer a dozen residents of Adams Lake, Penticton and Douglas Lake, all places with roadblocks, met in a Kelowna restaurant to press the provincial and federal governments to resume treaty negotiations. Greg Hollingsworth, who organized the meeting, asked of the federal Aboriginal Affairs minister: “Why is he leaving Adams Lake homeowners in the lurch?”

The first service was a tug and barge. In 1996 Transportation and Highways Minister Lois Boone announced its replacement. “We will be moving quickly to install a cable ferry at Adams Lake to replace the existing tug and barge service,” she said. The cable ferry would allow service 18 hours a day, seven days a week. Boone thanked the residents of Adams Lake for their patience, the Adams Lake Indian Band for helping to facilitate the new service, and George Abbott, MLA for Shuswap. She said the ministry was working toward a protocol agreement with the Adams Lake, Neskonlith and Little Shuswap Indian bands. The project was estimated at $280,000, to be managed by the ministry’s Marine Branch once the Department of Fisheries and Oceans approved it. The ministry expected operating savings to exceed construction costs within the first year. The 18 hours of 1996 have since grown to the present 22, with the boat on call through the remaining two.

The night of the Lower East Adams Lake fire

The Lower East Adams Lake wildfire was likely sparked by lightning on July 12, 2023. For weeks it burned on a steep, inaccessible slope and was held from the air. On Wednesday, August 2, a “drastic wind shift,” in the words of Forrest Tower of the BC Wildfire Service, pushed it toward the community of Dorian Bay. The Columbia Shuswap Regional District ordered residents of nearly 100 properties out late that day and put 75 more on alert.

Connie Berkley, who owns the Adams Lake Store across the lake from the evacuation area, told the Canadian Press there was one road in and out, including a cable ferry with limited capacity. Residents were waiting to be taken across that afternoon “when all hell broke loose,” she said. Afterward, she said, only fire crews were being ferried over.

Marinus Goossen, a marine manager with WaterBridge Ferries, said the ferry worked through the night taking evacuees out and fire crews in. “When I arrived on scene at just before midnight, there was an immense amount of traffic and concerned people and trying to figure out what their next steps were and where they were going,” he said. “There are a lot of unhappy people, but in any crisis situation there’s going to be unhappy people because people don’t like to be displaced, and I don’t blame them.” At last report, no buildings had been lost.

The next autumn the boat ran at half its usual sailings. Beginning September 28, 2024, ferry workers in the BC General Employees’ Union stopped taking overtime as they bargained for a new contract, and for more than two weeks sailings at Adams Lake and on Upper Arrow Lake were cut by 50 percent. A tentative agreement was reached on a Friday in late October, and full service returned. “Through job action they demonstrated to WaterBridge just how vital these ferries are to their communities,” said BCGEU president Paul Finch.