Hikin’ (and Fishin’) the Kootenays Part I

This is the 1st in a 2-part series on Kootenay's

A reluctant admission: British Columbia kicks Alberta’s butt.

After cresting Storm Mountain on Highway 93 from Banff National Park the descent into B.C. begins. The change is apparent: greater vistas, fewer people… and much better weather.

Soon the Rocky Mountain Trench appears, a formation that extends for two thousand kilometers southward toward old Mexico. To the east rise the mighty Rockies. West lies the Purcell Range. We are in the Kootenays, named after the Kootenai people who inhabited the region before white men appeared and put up cell phone towers.

Kimberley, a quiet Kootenay town in southeast B.C., has never really caught on as a tourist destination despite its remarkable amenities. We like it that way.

In summer the hiking trails are ours alone. Winter ski lift line-ups are rare and the endless, empty cross-country ski trails are world class.

During the last two decades we’ve wasted a glorious allotment of life’s brief flicker in this pristine region.

For a century Kimberley’s Sullivan mine, overlooking Northstar Mountain ski hill, supplied the world with a rich lode of zinc, silver and lead – and provided most of the town’s employment – before its ores waned and the shafts permanently closed ten years ago. The town entered an economic funk from which it has yet to recover.

Despite the slow pace, Kimberley is our beloved home away from home. Each August we host a gaggle of friends, anxiously fleeing Alberta’s fickle summer. Kimberley is warm – without the stifling heat of the Okanagan – and offers soft summer evenings free of the mosquito hordes biting voraciously on the eastern side of the Rockies.

We golf, pedal around, raft white waters and hang poolside for afternoon appetizers – catching up while winding down.

On top of our love-to-do list is hiking. Traversing high mountain trails in the Kootenays has evolved into a passion that we’ll never outgrow. I’ve even convinced some of my fat friends to get up off their floating toy and join us for a long steep wilderness climb, past fireweed blooming amongst the charred remains of lodgepole pine, around anemones resembling Dr. Seuss characters, heads poking comically sunward; where dense forests of larch and Engelmann spruce inevitably give way to stunning vistas from the high, barren alpine onto a hectic world far below.

Technology is reduced to a hiking stick. As we scramble up scree, the sharp sentinel warning call of a pica or a hoary marmot replaces the irritation of a cell-phone’s ring.

(Actually we’ve noticed excellent cell phone coverage on these mountain summits, three or four hours by foot from the nearest roadway; better service than on much of Highway 2 in Alberta. Go figure. Last year I was scaling a car-sized boulder high above Hourglass Lake in the Purcells, carefully planning each footfall to avoid the 300-meter vertical plunge offered by one misplaced step. The phone went off. I braced myself against the rock face, buffeted by a crisp, high-altitude wind and answered. An earnest voice offered an invitation to a political fund-raiser that evening in Red Deer. “Nope, we won’t be able to make it,” I announced gleefully before carefully re-pocketing the gadget in a fashion designed to ensure I didn’t tumble off the cliff faster and farther than a cabinet minister who has backed the wrong horse in a leadership race).

But I digress.

The unquestionable social highlight of the August holiday is our annual “shoot out”. Armed with festive hearts (and local swill) we contest for best live musical performance; each man, woman and child vying for the evening’s honour. Some songs are performed quietly, sotto voce without accompaniment; many include guitar, ukulele or harmonica as a sidekick. But attending every piece is the raucous percussion of background laughter.

The perennial winner is “Croc Hikin’ Willie” with his stunning a cappella version of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Young Willie is a hiking legend, nearly as famous in these parts as Jackrabbit Johansen whose visage hangs nearby in the warming shack of the cross-country ski trails.

Then there’s fishing…

Gerry