Nakusp

We left Golden on Thursday 21^st August and drove out through Glacier National Park. Went up Rogers Pass (oo er missus) takes you through the 520 sq miles of wilderness and 420 glaciers. Known for it’s incredibly wet weather in summer it was not on our hit list so we drove through and admired the views.

Then into Mount Revelstoke National Park, where we stopped at Giant Cedars Boardwalk to make our lunch. Walked the 1/2 km boardwalk through the cedar forest past 500-year-old cedar trees. Beautiful.

Back on the road we passed Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk and decided that was one we could probably miss out!

We made one more stop at Blanket Creek Provincial Park where we had a paddle and the kids were delighted to find hundreds of tadpoles – the simple things eh?!

Once we got to Revelstoke we headed south on a beautiful road down past Upper Arrow Lake. A free ferry trip over the lake and we got to Nakusp.

The Hot springs and our campsite are 12km out of town up a mountain at 850m. Hmmmm – won’t be biking down into town then!!

The campsite is lovely with the 30 pitches all positioned up above the Kuskanax Creek. Beautiful crystal clear water which makes its way down in the Upper Arrow Lake at Nakusp.

We headed down the mountain again (in Frankie rather than on our bikes!) on Friday with the idea of going to the Horizons convention and hearing Petra and Anders presentation. The town is tiny, just one main street, but was totally over run with bikers. Sadly they had changed the itinerary so we arrived just as they finished their presentation. We all went out for lunch together which was lovely. We bade them farewell once again – who knows when and where we may see them next. They have totally inspired us and the kids are now addicted to the DVD’s of A Long Way Round. William is planning how he and John can ditch Charlie and me, (and Frankie of course) so they can continue the journey by motorbike!

We made 2 visits to the ‘healing waters’ of the hot springs. Not sure whether they have really healed us as such but they were very relaxing and just what we needed on Saturday after what turned out to be a mammoth hike.

We had chosen a hiking trail, which said it was moderately hard taking you 8km to a lake. “A great low elevation hike” it said. Ahem!! Also warned that it led through “prime bear habitat” so we splashed out on a can of bear spray to add to our arsenal. At $40 a can I sincerely hope we won’t have to use it too often. Considered a ‘weapon’ you have to sign a waiver to say you won’t use it on humans – a nice lady in the shop suggested it was inappropriate say to use it on one’s husband in an argument. Good to know! They also suggest ‘noise makers’ like bells or whistles so you don’t surprise the bears by just appearing in their territory. Despite having 2 extreme ‘noise makers’ in the kids we also took and used our whistles.

So we headed out from the campsite on the trail over the suspension bridge, which crosses the creek and followed it up through a beautiful cedar forest. The forest floor was covered as far as the eye could see in a blanket of moss. It was like being in the middle of a Tolkien scene.

However it was uphill. The entire way. We saw only 2 other people on our 6 hour round trip and they were 2 crazy mountain bikers, coming down. Even they were exclaiming about how steep it was.

We passed the source of the Hot springs and saw the pipes that carry the water down into the pools at our campsite. The water temperature at source is 54 C but down in the pools it is cooled to 40 C.

About 4km in we came to a clearing and then we realised that we had only just got to the bit in the trail described thus “Halfway through the hike it starts to climb up the Kimbol Creek Valley. There are steep pitches (40%) in areas, so be careful.” We basically climbed up hill for 8km.

Both John and I confessed (afterwards) that we didn’t think we would make it the whole way without having to turn back due to the moaning from certain people who will remain nameless…

We made it. 3 hours up and only 2 hours back. We had a lovely peaceful picnic at Kimbol Lake with only chipmunks for company. And felt jolly pleased with ourselves.