West Koot Route: A Condensed History

If there's one rule we have on bike tour, it's Always Stop For Historical Markers. And Usually Stop for Smalltown Museums When There's Time. So now here's your extremely condensed history of the Kootenay starting when white people start settling. 

Like just about every single Western town, most of the places out here started as mining camps. In this region people were looking for gold and galena (made of lead and silver). Travis and I were watching Deadwood right before we left on tour, and these mining towns fit the TV description perfectly. One town had 45 saloons and one prostitute for every three men. Once the railroads were built, all the mine towns were connected by train and steamships that ran across the large lakes separating the towns. 

Luckily the town of Kaslo has a restored steamship turned museum, and Travis made sure we took the tour. Once families and farmers started settling in towns, the ships became vital to shipping produce and goods as well as transporting folks from town to town because there weren't any roads. 

As with any boom town, when the mining dried up, many of the towns did too. Some were destroyed by fires and floods, and by the Depression the region was dotted with ghost towns. In a sad and surprising turn of events, 7000 Japanese Canadians were shipped to internment camps in these ghost towns during World War II. Through forced labor they built settlements in fields housing thousands of people, and lived there throughout the war. Many of them had been born in Canada. After the war they were again moved east for labor and some were even forced to move back to Japan. Now all that's left of the internment camps are the fields and historical markers. 

One marker explained the importance of the produce that the Doukhobors brought to the Japanese before their first winter. The 

Doukhobors were Russian immigrants who moved to the region after religious persecution for being staunch pacifists. They lived communally in large settlements apart from Canadian society. Some friends we met said when they were growing up they remember old ladies coming into town  to shop who only spoke Russian. Eventually the Canadian government forced them to assimilate by breaking their communes up into individual settlements and taking Doukhobor children away from their parents to government boarding schools. Radical factions of the Doukhobors turned violent, bombing and burning police stations and government buildings. This continued into the 1960s! In the 1980s there was finally a reconciliation period and Doukhobor towns continue on till this day.

This last piece of history kind of brings us up to the present. During the Vietnam War, hundreds of American draft dodgers moved to this region, and people began homesteading in a back to the land movement. Like other hippie towns (ahem Gainesville), marijuana production provided the financial capital to kickstart business growth. Despite economic downturn in the 80s, Nelson and other Kootenay towns were able to revitalize their downtowns, and the area has evolved a rural tourist economy that reminds me of the Asheville area of North Carolina. Despite that, it's still very hard to find work here, and many people commute to work in oil and gas in Alberta. Travis has been daydreaming of moving here but after hearing that I think he's back to reality and realizes that the grass isn't always greener. 

West Koot Route: Natural History

In our adventure through the Kootenay loop thus far, we've biked up one side and down the other of Kootenay Lake, camped at the foot of Kokanee Glacier, crossed over a mountain pass near Kaslo, and descended into another valley that holds Slocan Lake. Thanks to some excellent ranger programs at the Kokanee Creek campground, I've accumulated enough natural history knowledge to give you a less disjointed idea of what it's like here. 

This is an inland rainforest, most of the time. Meaning: the drought in California is advancing, affecting all of the states and provinces North and East. Temperatures this summer are about 20 degrees higher than normal, which drastically affects fire conditions and glacial outflows. We just avoided a giant wildfire that was creeping up on the city of Nelson, and smoke from that fire has created a haze clouding the never ending views of the valleys.

Travis is reading a book called "The Big Burn," about a 1910 firestorm that consumed 300 acres in Montana and Canada, which was the impetus for not only the creation of the field of forestry, but also sparked the nation's first real conservation movement AND no-burn policies. Well, that Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires mentality is really biting everyone in the ass right now. There is a fire ban in all of British Columbia right now because everyone is terrified that one stray flame could turn this whole tinderbox of a valley into a wildfire. 

Additionally, there was hardly any snow in this region over the winter. When we hiked up to Kokanee Lake, we were told that last year parts of the lake remained locked under four feet of solid ice, even into August. This year the whole lake is melted, and the Kokanee Glacier ice cap is getting smaller and smaller. That glacier melt is responsible for feeding all the rivers that this ecosystem depends on.

As I said before, this is a rainforest. In fact, it's the farthest inland rainforest in Canada. The whole ecosystem depends on water to support the keystone species, which is Kokanee salmon. Otters, eagles, bears, waterbirds, and even the trees themselves rely on these landlocked salmon for nourishment through their eggs, flesh, and nutrients that are deposited in the soil when they die in the rivers. 

We're also recognizing some of the same plants that we saw last year in Washington and Oregon, like berries, ferns, and giant conifers. The thimbleberries are our favorites to munch on, but we've also spotted wild raspberries and the grizzly bear's favorite-- huckleberries.

Just so you know, there have been no close calls with any grizzlies yet. Not that there aren't any grizzlies around here, mind you. We attended a thrilling bear lecture at a ranger program at Kokanee Creek, and learned about grizzly management and conservation. Humans have segmented grizzly populations into pockets throughout the Rockies, meaning that the bears aren't able to mingle and reproduce. When they do try and cross over roads and through towns, they get into trouble because of the temptations of garbage cans and fruit trees. Many bears are killed when they leave natural areas. The same thing is happening in Florida right now. Not only are our major interstates keeping bears from genetically variable procreation, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Service is dealing with suburban black bear conflicts by allowing bear hunts for the first time in decades. So everyone, if you share your neighborhood with bears, remove the temptations that attract them by locking your garbage and electric fencing your fruit trees and chickens! It will make life better for people and bears. 

Kootenay Lake

Canada is so nice y'all!!! 

We've been traveling in an area called the Kootenays, which includes some beautiful mountain ranges, a couple of giant dammed lakes, and forests that appear to be a mix of what we saw in the Colorado Rockies and the rainforests in Washington. 

We spent our first full day of cycling in Canada along Kootenay Lake, which proved to be more challenging than we expected. We had 60 miles mapped out for that day, but the up and down hills would have made that exhausting, and really against the spirit of vacation. Camping options were slim-- we passed a sad looking RV park and some motels, and since the road is sandwiched between mountains and cliffs that lead to the lake, there weren't a lot of places to pull over. UNTIL. 

Until I found the perfect spot! There was a big boulder formation that cascaded down toward the lake, but it appeared to be substantial enough to set up a tent. We climbed up and over the top and saw that if we scrambled down to the lake, there was a big flat rock right on the lake, and it was perfectly tent-sized. There was no one around for miles, and honestly I'm wondering how many times we'll manage to skinny dip this trip.

Adventures in the Kootenays continued the next morning as we boarded the free ferry that took us to the other side of the lake to Balfour. A man came up to us at the dock and suggested we camp in the free hike and bike campground just 10 km away, and from there we could hitchhike up the road to Kokanee Glacier and do some alpine hikes at the top the next day. I was extremely tired, so 10 km of riding sounded like a great plan to me. We battled mosquitoes in our creekside site all night but luckily napping and reading Dune was all I needed. 

This is How Bike Tour is Supposed to Be

This trip has just done a turnaround for everything that was making it... challenging. Magic ingredients: Rest day, saddle switcharoo, and blessedly cooler weather. The constant napping we accomplished yesterday was crucial, and turns out that riding a bicycle all day on a comfortable saddle in temperatures in the low 80s is actually very pleasurable. 

Today was also a landmark travel achievement for me. I pedaled through two states and then into another country! I've never even been to Idaho! It was lovely. The land is more lush and fertile, and steep mountains provide a backdrop to idyllic farms. 

Then the real kicker... we crossed into Canada! I've never even been to Canada!

The first thing we did was hop in the river just because we needed to experience our first international swim of our journey. 

Then got around too noticing what's different about Canada. They definitely spell Garden Centre wrong, their money looks funny and it's going to be really hard to figure out how many kilometers we're riding each day. But with the mountains popping up behind the town and both the wild and domestic cherry trees heavy with fruit, so far Creston, BC is turning out to be wonderful.

We're staying with our first Warm Showers hosts, Jan and Zach. Warm Showers is like Couchsurfing for bike tourists, and we'll probably be staying with a few hosts on this trip for lack of designated campgrounds. Tonight we pitched the tent in Jan and Zach's backyard under a giant weeping willow tree, getting ready for an early start tomorrow.