May Long Weekend BC style

On the May long weekend we headed to Fairmont British Columbia for some camping in the cramper and maybe soak in a few natural hotsprings. We headed out early afternoon on Friday and 4 hours later we pulled in to 1 of 2 campsites left at Alces Lake.



After a short nights sleep not thanks to rowdy neighbours we went to Lussier Hot spring which was minutes from our campsite. We hit that hotspring early in the morning to avoid the crowds that would rush here due to the long weekend. It was fairly quite except for a few other people. This was Mathieu's first natural hotspring experience and he was fairly satisfied. Afterwards we drove to Top of the world provincial park (red line on the picture). Our first objective was Ram Creek hotspring but we found out that the road was blocked. If you look at the map above you can apparently short cut from the red line to Ram creek hotspring via a logging road but that road is now not passable.

Once at top of the world park, which was a very bumpy 50km, we headed of for a hike. We quickly encountered snow and decided to take a brake on the nearby creek bank. We had lunch and played with Sky by tossing rocks in the creek, that game never gets old.

The next day, we drove the long way around and went to Ram Creek hotspring. We first hit Premier lake Park, which was quite the contrast from our Alces lake campground. This park was definatly premier camping, there was even pavement. We did a nice hike around the park which included three lakes, Yankee, Canuck and Turtle lake (green line). Caught 2 rainbow trouts, saw 12 or more turtles and took a swim with the dog. After all this fun we drove up to Ram Creek hotspring (pinkish line) which was a long and stressfull drive with the camper up a very long and steep logging road. The camper survived and we made it to the hotspring. That night we didn't bother going to a campground, we just pulled on camper off in a nice little meadow and called it home for the night.

The final day, we started back home with a quick stop to Fairmont hotspring. Fairmont hotspring is a resort hotspring with a pool that gets filled by the hotspring. In order to keep the pool hot, they have to keep pumping the hotspring water in and the excess water need to go somewhere. That somewhere is just on the side of the pool, out of the tourist view but a short walk gets you to this amazing little waterfall with a deep natural pool were you can bathe in hotspring water in a little more quiet setting. That was the highlight of the trip. After a nice dip, we hit the trail to go home and was greeted by a prairie snowstorm. Gotta love Alberta.

Oh, Stacey took some really cool pictures.

Later

Mathieu and Stacey