Kootenay Road Trip 2020 Scenes: Slocan-Evans Creek Trail

One of Slocan’s claims to fame is its status as the Gateway to Valhalla Provincial Park. The park encompasses most of the Valhalla Range of the Selkirk Mountains and follows 30 kilometres of the west shore of Slocan Lake. Most of Valhalla’s trails are accessible only by water or driving up forest service roads — and most are listed as moderate to difficult. The exception (though still rated moderate) is the Slocan-Evans Creek trail, which starts right in Slocan City and winds along the edge of Slocan Lake.

We tackled the Slocan-Evans Creek trail on a smoky Sunday morning. To this point on our trip we had completely avoided the smoke pouring into BC from wildfires to the south, but on this morning the wind turned and the air became thick. We resolved to hike at a moderate pace to avoid breathing the foul air too deeply.

For the most part, the trail was pleasant and wooded, with great views of the lake below. The area was noted as “prime Grizzly Bear habitat” but we saw no bears and no sign any had been there recently. Humans were also scarce — we saw a total of three the whole time we were on the trail. The biggest challenge was a wide boulder field that in some places demanded four points of contact — no small feat when one is carrying a camera! The boulders were ridiculously attractive, though, covered in orange moss and spilling down the steep hillside like a river of flowing stones.

Although enjoyable, we ended up cutting the hike short because of the smoky air. We tried to convince ourselves it was just mist (which it looks like in this photo), but our lungs told us otherwise. Still, we hiked for more than three hours, had a nice picnic on a beach and were happy to have made the effort.

Slocan-Evans Trails Sept 2020

Slocan-Evans Trail Sept 2020

Slocan-Evans Trail Sept 2020

Slocan-Evans Trail Sept 2020

Slocan-Evans Trail Sept 2020

Slocan-Evans Trail Sept 2020

Slocan-Evans Trail Sept 2020

Slocan-Evans Trail Sept 2020

Slocan-Evans Trail Sept 2020

Kootenay Road Trip 2020 Scenes: Slocan Waterfront, Evening

In September and early October 2020, Team Timid Turtle (Paul and Diana) took an epic four-week road trip through the Kootenay region of British Columbia. This is one in a series of illustrated updates on the trip.

Home base for the first week of our Kootenay road trip was the Springer Creek RV Park and Campground in Slocan. We booked the campsite knowing nothing about it or about Slocan but interested to learn.

We discovered that while Slocan is often referred to as “Slocan City” it has not been a city since 1958. Like many settlements in the valley, The Village of Slocan was established to support silver mining. It boomed for years, then became quiet as the mines closed. In the 1940s it hosted internment camps for forcibly relocated Japanese-Canadians (as recounted in yesterday's post on New Denver) and was home to a sawmill owned by a procession of companies until it was closed and demolished in 2013. Since the sawmill — the village’s largest employer — closed, the population has dwindled to fewer than 300 souls and today the moniker “Slocan City” is used only to differentiate it from other, nearby communities such as Slocan Park and South Slocan.

Although fallen on hard times, there is hope for Slocan. The community has some exceptional amenities that could serve as the launching pad for a bright future in tourism: its recently redeveloped beach, boat launch and waterfront on Slocan Lake, the northern trailhead for the Slocan Valley Rail Trail, its status as the Gateway to Valhalla Provincial Park and, yes, the municipally owned RV park we enjoyed visiting. Even better, the municipality recently announced plans to buy the abandoned sawmill site and consult residents about its future use.

Relaxing on the waterfront on a warm, late-summer evening, it was hard not to be optimistic about Slocan’s future and hard to imagine a more picturesque location

Kootenay Road Trip 2020 Scenes: New Denver Canoe

In September and early October 2020, Team Timid Turtle (Paul and Diana) took an epic four-week road trip through the Kootenay region of British Columbia. This is one in a series of illustrated updates on the trip.

One of our first stops in the Kootenays was the Village of New Denver. Once a bustling mining town, today New Denver is quiet and pretty, straddling Carpenter Creek on the northeast shore of Slocan Lake. It is the ideal place for a quiet canoe ride on a warm evening in late summer.

As the site of an internment camp for Canadians of Japanese descent during and after the Second World War, New Denver’s past fired my imagination more than its present.

Visiting New Denver’s Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre, a National Historical Site of Canada, we learned that in 1942, more than 22,000 Japanese-Canadians from British Columbia’s West Coast were labelled enemy aliens, forced to surrender all property and belongings to the government and relocated to camps in BC’s Interior.

Even after the war ended those interned were not allowed to return to BC’s coast for several years; some were further displaced to eastern Canada while others were deported to Japan (though most had been born in Canada and many did not speak Japanese). None of their property — homes, businesses, fishing boats, vehicles and more — was returned. The government sold it cheaply, saying it was done to pay for the cost of the internment camps.

Walking beside the lake in the still-warm light, following the gentle rhythm of the paddles below, we pondered the beauty of the New Denver before us and the sobering reality of what happened there and in other Slocan Valley communities nearly 80 years before.