Mini work holiday – The Kootenay’s!

For Ellen’s work, she was luckily assigned to a project near a small town in BC called Kaslo. Ellen spent an initial 2 weeks out there, spamming me with a load of mountain and wildlife pictures which made me super jealous! Luckily, Ellen had to go out there for one more week in middle of June so I decided to go with and work from Kaslo for the week! The upside of COVID is some of us can work remotely from anywhere.

We left Vancouver on a standard rainy day and drove the 8 hours through to Kaslo. The scenery changed from Urban density, to mountains, to desert, to desert mountains, to lakes, and back to snow capped mountains. We stopped a few times at lookouts along the way. Below is a shot of a hydro dam near Nelson. This produces all the electricity required for the town of Nelson, approx. population 10,000.

The cabin we stayed in was very cool, the owner built it himself and it is very open and lets a lot of natural light in. To top it off, it has awesome views!

Ellen gave me the grand tour of the town of Kaslo, which took a whole 10 minutes and then we got some yummy poutine for dinner! #health

For the work week I treated myself to early morning walks along the river trail and even had a go at mountain bike riding. Damn it is hard! For the week I was kept up in the cabin working on the computer while Ellen & Dave were out on site enjoying the fresh air and wildlife spotting.

One day at work Ellen was lucky enough to have spotted a moose having a swim in the lake near her site. Apparently the lake is contaminated, but the moose seemed to be having a good time.

Every afternoon Ellen and I would make the most of the long days and go for a drive in the beast of a 4×4 up to the tops of mountains, or to lakes and waterfalls. A few snaps of our adventures each afternoon are below.

Fletcher Falls

This place is a 10 minute drive from Kaslo – only a very easy walk in and whammy – a big, fat, raging waterfall. We actually didn’t get a photo of it, but there is a video in the link at the end. We spent an hour down here walking around the trails along the foreshore to the lake, Ellen had her chips handy of course!

Mount Buchanan

Ellen showed off her newly acquired 4×4 driving skills and took us all the way to the top of Mount Buchanan! The local mountain which has epic views and no need to hike! We were wondering why so many people who have 4x4s are a little bit heavy, they don’t hike to the top of mountains and drive instead. We spent the better part of 2 hours on the mountain watching the sun set, with a beer and poutine. We met a nice couple who were camping up the top! Very jealous.

Bear lake and off-roading

Ellen, full of confidence, decided to take us to bear lake on a tiny little trail! Our 4×4 was wayyy to wide for this trail, so she had to reverse all the way back out over 400m. Photo below.

We also went for a hike to find a bear den. We found it! It was a giant big hole under a tree – Ellen was too much of a scaredy cat to get in it.

On Thursday night, we didn’t have a lot planned so we decided to get a couple of drinks, including chips (salt & pepper) and head up to Mount Buchanan again to watch the sunset. It was turning out to be a ripper sunset, very clear night with no wind, and, we had the whole place to ourselves. Ellen was getting cold so decided to do some stair runs up and down the lookout tower at the top. On her third rep as she got to the bottom I asked Ellen to marry me! I think she was a bit puffed because it took her a second to respond, and I must admit, I panicked on the inside for a split second – but all is well, she said YES! Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

The next day was Friday, I worked a half day and Ellen had the day off! At midday we took off from our little cabin to the Halfway Hot Springs where we intended on camping the night. It is just north of the town of Nakusp which was a 2 hour drive from Kaslo. Unfortunately, we arrived to find that the campsite and hot springs has been closed due to COVID. We were shattered – nonetheless, we drove south past New Denver trying to find a campsite that wasn’t full. We found an awesome waterfall on the side of the road on the way, so we pulled over to check it out.

It was tough finding a free campsite, we must have tried over 5 different campgrounds. Canadian’s sure do love their camping – but we found a little sneaky spot on a fire service road which overlooked the Slocan Lake. The best part about this place is it was free, and there was also no one else there! Seemed like no one really knows about this spot. For the afternoon Ellen went for a swim, we lit a fire, failed to cook popcorn and watched the sunset. Great Friday night! I opened up to Ellen about my poor ability to light, and maintain fires! I can never seem to get the started or continue to burn. Ellen has my back on this and now goes by the name “fire master” or “fire queen”. Lucky, or we would have both been sitting in the cold all night.

On Saturday we drove south to the town of Slocan to do the Gimli trek. Lucky we have this 4×4 truck – the road to the trailhead was very rough! But alas we made it. We were the only ones in the parking lot which is a little strange as we are used to the crowds in Vancouver, also, the sign at the trailhead said this is an important area for grizzly bears! Ahhh we made sure we had the bear spray handy.

The hike took us around 2 hours to get to the top, it was quite snowy once we got closer to the peak. What the heck, it is summer! The views were so nice at the top – thankfully the rain stayed away, and the clouds were high we could see some mountains in the distance. A friendly mountain goat also came over and said hello too us – apparently mountain goats like the salt in human urine, so they are attracted to hiking trails.

Once we were back down we started driving to our next campsite which was located just outside of Castlegar. We pulled over on the way to check out a raging river. Ellen decided it was a great idea to wander out over the river on fallen tree! I was not happy with this, she even made me take a photo and videos – bit rude! Heart rate was up for sure.

After we spent the night at Castlegar we woke early to drive the 7 hours back to Vancouver. We arrived safe and sound mid afternoon and then headed down to Kitsilano for another ripper sunset to top off our week! And what a week it was 🙂

More photos and videos are here.