Blah

Short Version:
Nothing interesting happens

Long Version:
Nothing much of interest happened after the Bugaboos.

Someone drove so fast on the waterlogged mud roads that we now have a brown van (up to the windows front and sides, and to the roof on the back). Pulse-rate high at the time, but not so much in the retelling.

The town of Radium Hot Springs was really pretty, with masses of petals everywhere we looked, but that's not really very interesting.

There was a tight and twisty canyon we drove through on our way into the Kootenays, just before we reached - and passed by - the Hot Springs from which the town takes its name. Hardly earth-shattering.

Two nights camped at Horseshoe Rapids, where the rockflour-laden Kootenay River bends so far back on itself that the neck of the spit of land is no more than 30m wide hardly calls for comment, and our ride at the Nipika Mountain Resort was kind of blah - the highlight was seeing the natural rock bridge across the Cross River, where the river powers down through a jagged crack in the earth, twenty metres deep and forty long*, with water-scooped hollows alongside rigidly parallel rock layers, and drops through an arch into a huge rock bowl. The water boils and churns magnificently even at this time of year, and the huge bolus of branches and whole trunks at the top end of the canyon - which looked nothing like, but reminded of, a stick jammed into a crocodile's maw to wedge its jaws open - spoke of the huge volumes of water which must blast through the narrow gap during spring thaw. I'll not waste your time describing it, or the series of waterfalls we viewed from both sides of the river, the deep canyon where we rode precariously along the lip, or the three bald eagles we saw twenty metres away from us on the far bank of the river.

Likewise, the disc golf was nothing to write home about, with the tree-filled fairways providing more humor than exquisite play. Come to think of it, that's pretty standard for the two of us.

The cold seemed pretty extreme to us, and we thought the dusting of new snow on the peaks around us was kind of exciting, but the locals we spoke to were all fairly blase about it, and even when it got colder it seemed we were the only ones who deemed the fact worthy of comment.

The riding around Invermere was gearing up to be blah too, especially once we found out from the local bike shop that of the two trails we'd been planning to ride, one was no longer in existence** and the other was really too difficult to access and not worth the effort. Sigh. We drove past the house with the fisheye windows to the trailhead for the one mapped and rideworthy trail. One of us decided to ride. The other decided a nap was in order.

Then things got fun.

My innocent "Excuse me, could you tell me where I go to access the trail from here?" became a "Yes, riding with you guys would be great!" became "No, she decided to leave me to it and have a nap," became "What on earth is he doing? Oh, he's telling Nene she has to come for a ride. She'll be pleased!"
I was in trouble for a while, despite not having been the one who dragged her from her warm stupor, but she was pleased, eventually, because the Johnson Trail (Hi Matt!), ridden with locals who knew which way to go at each junction (Hi Mark and Lori!), was great fun. The bizarre shapes of the sandstone canyon were cool, although each of us rode off the trail more than once while looking at the sights. Luckily neither of us went over the edge, cos it was a long way down! The trail itself was fast and flowing, with some awesome surprise! trees and rock-drops both up- and downwards.

The conversation at the trail breaks was fun too, and we learned that the trail the bike shop had told us was too hard and not worth the effort was not that hard a slog up, and well worth doing. But not this late in the day, and not in the next three days, as the weather was about to close in for a spell. Rats. We went south instead, past classic cars galore, to the next Hot Springs down the road, where we soaked and did some high-dive springboard showing off, and showered. For ages.

The excitement continued when we encountered the Canadian equivalent of the Amerikan ATF*** on our way to Larchwood Lake, which was full of RVs. We drove up a steep hill to a deserted meadow, parked the van, and Janine cooked eggy burritos while I attempted to do awesome wheelies on her bike. I fell off, and hurt my neck. Sucks to be me. And to be Nene, to be fair, cos she has to listen to me whining.







* = Similar to Maligne Canyon in the Jasper National Park only without all the obnoxious oldies. And the ravens.

** = More accurately, it still exists, but the land it crosses is now privately-owned

*** = Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.