Badger Lake is located in the hills north of Kamloops, accessed by a longer dirt road.     We can drive the Knouff Lake Road and continue on along a bumpy backroad for another 10 km.    We can also use the Orchard Lake Road (Badger Creek FSR) from the Walterdale area (between Vinsula and Louis Creek).   On the latest trip to Badger Lake, I drove the Knouff Road to the boat launch, then returned down the Badger Creek FSR to Highway 5N.

A separate boat lunch area with lots of parking was built on a side road before the Badger Lake Recreation Site.   On this day, there were no vehicles and when I launched, there were no other boats on the lake.

I kayaked a counter-clockwise loop, going past the campgroud, up to the north end (by the dam), and down the western shore, turning into a long marshy channel to a small adjoining lake sometimes called Spooney Lake.

There is a small (somewhat hidden) channel which connects back out to the main lake, to allow a longer loop route with no retracing.     I finished the 5.2 km paddle by paddling back up the lake, past a small island to the boat launch.

Badger Lake is in my Top 10 list of paddling lakes in the greater Kamloops area, a spot I kayak every year.