Dates: Oct 10-12, 2015
With it being Thanksgiving weekend, we were both feeling especially full of thanks. We recently have adopted a tradition that our friend Kristen's family has, where they state a "hopeful" and a "thankful" at the end of each week. Although Will did try to pull a "I'm thankful you forgot to do hopeful's and thankful's last week, and hopeful you will forget again next week" once, he usually goes along with it! This weekend we felt especially thankful for each other, loving family members, amazing friendships, health, incredible scenery we are surrounded by and get to explore often, careers, passions, and new adventures!
On Saturday morning, we took off for Kokanee Mountain Zipline near Nelson, BC. Will worked with Todd Manton, co-owner/operator of this awesome adventure playground, in 2007 at a camp in Kananaskis. We'll be honest, when Todd told us about his ideas for a zipline near Nelson, we totally didn't believe him. However, when we started hearing things about this great place where you could zipline over canyons 300 ft below, we knew his dream had come true! We knew we had to get out to this place during the first year of operation, and just made it in time (they closed this weekend for the winter, but will re-open in the spring!). The course consists of 6 ziplines, with 3 of them going over a canyon. The longest one takes about a minute to cross and is over 2500 feet long. Although Will doesn't like heights, he felt fine the whole time. It was SO much fun, and the scenery wasn't bad either :) Flipping upside down and letting yourself reach your hands towards the ground was such an incredible feeling!
Will and I on two of the shorter zips
the first canyon crossing
there he goes!
so scenic!
Video I took on the first canyon crossing:
Video of Will coming across on the 5th zipline:
Video of Natasha coming across on the final zipline:
We loved the experience and would definitely recommend Kokanee Mountain Zipline to others!
After zip lining, we drove up to Kaslo area where we had rented this cabin (the reddish brown one on the left):
The second picture was our view from our front door.
The forest we walked through to get to the private beach at our cabin!
After a fun-filled Saturday, we decided to try for a hike on Sunday. Now, we had been wanting to hike Jumbo ever since we first heard of it nearly seven years ago. Things had never lined up for us to do this hike until now! Our friend Allie gave us a great hiking guide for the West Kootenays called, "Where Locals Hike in the West Kootenay" and we spent some time debating which was the best one for us to do this weekend. Although we were given the verbal warning that the road was a bit sketchy and we should have a full tire as a spare, the guide book gave us the confidence to give it a try. And we're so glad we did! It took us an hour and fifteen minutes to drive up to the trailhead from the main road, taking it slow over rocks, big dips and creeks. There was some rain and dark clouds along our drive, but we hoped for a few clear points in the day. The clouds were crazy- they danced between dark grey and bright blue our whole time along the trail. We were hit with rain, hail and snow, along with intense heat and beautiful sunshine. That's October hiking for ya! The trail was really well maintained, as was the hut at the top. It was steep in some sections, but we definitely noticed how much elevation we had gained on the way up more when we were heading down. While eating our lunch in the hut, we talked to people who had hiked up from the Invermere side and we compared the trails and they seemed very comparable. We opted to try to hike the trail up the hill behind the hut, despite the snow, and the view was well worth the slipping and sliding! After spending some time at the top, we headed back down, returning to the car five hours and 8.4 km after we left it.
along the drive up... some guiding signs, glacial waterfalls, and a little creek crossing
Will's "hopeful and thankful" along the trail was "I'm thankful Toby (our car) made it up here and hopeful Toby makes it back down" :)
Views along the hike up
First little patches of snow developed into quite a bit of snow quickly!
Headed to the hut!
I couldn't stop taking pictures at the top!
Jumbo hut and the hill we climbed behind it
View from the top of the hill behind the hut
bundled up to fend off the wind!
Total paradise!
Rainbow cross walk: reason #5000 I love Nelson!
Awesome Nelson trip!! You make me want to try that zipline - hope to next summer!
ReplyDeleteGreat pictures! I love Nelson too we could add our reasons up :) Thanks for sharing!
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