Christina

Day 49

East Kootenay's

Christina lake to Cranbrook in the East Kootenay's

After leaving Christina Lake , I followed BC-3 to BC-3B. 3B will rejoin BC-3 in about 68 km, on the other side of Fruitvale. This stretch is where I first encountered 10% grades. They could be tricky if I find any that are too long, as engine braking isn't enough on them and I have to use the brakes. The road from Rossland to Warfield is a 10% grade downhill and must drop a 300 meters in about 4 km. The uphill 10%'er aren't a problem, I have to gear down but the coach seems to take it in stride.

The town of Trail looks like an interesting place but I imagine that the snow gets pretty deep in this extremely narrow pass in the winter. I've still got at least one more pass, the Kootenay Pass , to get through before I arrive at Cranbrook .

Obviously I'm still in the mountains, this group is called the Valhalla Ranges and this particular range at Rossland is called the Bonnington Range . Kootenay Pass is in the Nelson Range , and I'll go through the Moyie Range in the Purcell Mountains before I get to Cranbrook . There are probably passes in all these ranges but they don't show up on my maps.

By the time I reach Cranbrook I'll be north of Montana but still in BC. It will be my last stop in BC. The attraction is the Fort Steele Town Provincial Park .

Arrived at Cranbrook , turns out none of the passes were anything to worry about.

Road Report: Highway is mostly 2 lanes with passing lanes on the hills. The road conditions are good to excellent with a couple of construction areas.

RV Park Report: The RV park is behind (and run by) a Motel 6. There is also an empty pool and a Chinese Buffet Restaurant. The park is a large grassy oval inside a chain link fence. The sites are large and each site has a picnic table. Sites range from no to full service. 30 amp is the max AC.

I ran across some kind of commercial operation going on in the RV park, over on one side is about 4 sites with what looks like large ovens on wheels and lots of packing boxes, OTR vehicles, and muddy trucks. A few questions revealed that these guys are mushroom pickers (Morels) and dryers. It seems that Morels pop up in forest land that has burned. They had some horrendous forest fires around here 2 years ago. That's about the right time for the Morels. I don't know how long they have been here but they are cranking out 50 -70 large cases a day. Interestingly only one of them has a decent RV. He has a 30 ft 5'er, the rest are using 20-24 ft travel trailers or cab-over campers that are really ragged.

I seemed to have timed my stop here just right. There is a “Jim Steele Days” (as in Fort Steele ) celebration this weekend. The parade was interesting but I didn't attend any of the other functions. In conjunction with the celebration there is a big Little League marathon with teams coming from all over. The park was full with ball players and their families. Luckily, they were so pooped from the daytime activities that they crashed early in the evenings. Other than that, I spent a day wandering around the historic town of Fort Steele and taking pictures.

As far as internet, I'm out of luck again. No place to hook up. I'll have to wait until I get to my next stop.

Weather Report: 3 days here and the weather was great, 20-24 ° C and no rain.

Next stop is “Head-Smashed-In” Buffalo Jump in Alberta , on the other side of the Canadian Rockies.