Yukon Ho!

May 31, 2006: Banff to Castlegar

June 7, 2006 on 8:46 pm | In Uncategorized |

Woke up a little late because it was exciting to be in beds and to be able to make our own breakfast and coffee.
Since we didn’t have too far to drive on Wednesday We van’d over to Sulpher Mountain around 10am and decided to climb it. An hour and 20 minutes later we were feeling pretty hardcore at the top because the hike took us 40 minutes less than the minimum expected climb time according to signs at the trail entrance.
We bonded with a few old ladies who were on the prowl for young guys and this marathon-running-dog-walker, then tried to get a free ride down on the cable cars (which you used to be able to do) but I guess they changed the rules so we had to pay for the ride down…well for two rides down anyway. We snuck Dave past the ticket wicket and straight onto the car.
After that we were pretty hungry but we were also pretty against paying Banff prices for food ($3 for a Pepsi) so we drove to Golden where…it was depressing. That’s all I have to say about Golden. A lof of people live in trailers and spend all afternoon in the slowest Tim Horton’s ever.
Revelstoke was way sweeter -it had a few brick roads downtown, there were a lot of cool houses, a river ran right alongside it and the whole place was just sunny and awesome and nice-looking.
After that we drove to Shelter Bay and caught the free ferry over to Nakusp where we snuck down to Halfway Hot Springs -this spring that’s hidden away at the bottom of this river valley that you can only get to by driving 10km down a pothole-covered gravel logging road. We parked the van at a little pullover point and hiked down this massive mossy hill with no trails. It took about an age or two to realize we were in the wrong spot, so we went back and forth and up and down all over the hill for a while longer before we finally found what we were looking for.
Right beside the freezing cold river there’s an awesome clearing where loggers and hippies joined forces to build a free camping area. There are firepits everywhere, there’s an outhouse and a little lean-to shack with a tarp and a bench, and then there are a couple hot spring tubs. One is a manmade wooden one lined with a clear tarp and full of spring water that’s piped in from a crevice a couple feet away. The other one is right in the riverbed and is full of cold river water and boiling spring water that comes out of the rocks. We sat in the riverbed one for about an hour and planned where on the banks we’re going to build our log cabins when we get rich.
We ended up downtown Nakusp around 930pm where our dinner choices were Chinese food at a Chinese restaurant, or pre-packaged sandwiches at the Food Mart convenience store. Because we are mad-resourceful came up with a third option, which was to buy overpriced bread, cheese and meat from Food Mart, so as to make our own sandwiches, which we did on the curb by the van where we ended up chatting with half of Nakusp.
Back on the road, after 4 dozen heart attacks over 6 dozen near-deer hitting’s, we were at Nancy Green Campgrounds near Castlegar.
Amy