July 21 – Back to Nimpo Lake and Hotnarko Falls

Yesterday it seemed a shame to waste a day indoors since we worked so hard to get to Bella Coola but there were low clouds, it was quite cool and it rained on and off all day.

Of the hikes I had planed to do, two turned out to be to the base of the falls we could see on the mountain across from us and another was up another 4wd recommended road, 25 km this time instead of 17 km like the last one. I guess we could have rented a Jeep. I really need to start looking at the “how to get there” parts of the hike description.

We made it back up The Hill today. Compared to our 4wd adventure on Tuesday we were really flying. Then we could barely manage 5 –10 kph. Today, most of the way the RV could chug up at between 15-20 kph. On the really steep 15% grade section the best it could do was 10 kph but it kept moving and this was towing the car. I watched the coolant and transmission temperatures all the way up and they hardly moved at all.

The narrow sections worried me because I didn’t want to meet anyone.

We did meet a few cars but always at the wide sections. We even saw a couple of other Class A motorhomes making the plunge, one near the bottom and one just after the top.

Almost there. This is just before the second to last hairpin.

We are back at the Vagabond Rv Park. This is a great park and the owner is especially helpful. I asked if I could wash all the dust off the RV and car so he turned on his irrigation pump at the lake so I could use as much water as I needed.

The only problem is that here and in the whole area, the bugs are really bad. Even I have a problem being outside without dosing myself in DEET, which does at least keep them from landing. The owner said that they are extra bad this year for some reason.

After we got setup and had lunch I wanted to go to the waterfall we had thought about going to after our flightseeing trip. To get to Hotnarko Falls we first go back up the highway a bit and then take about 20 km of dirt roads but in this case all but the last few km were 70 kph dirt roads. 

There seem to be a lot of free roaming horses here. We passed one herd by the side of the road and later this family insisted on standing right in the middle of the road. The young one and the mother slowly moved to the side but the dad stood there stamping his hooves. We very slowly drove up to him and then went very quickly by. We didn’t want a kick.

From the Google satellite view the falls come into the side of a deep canyon, which seems to turn into a much larger one farther downstream. I don’t know what the name of the river is. I do remember seeing the canyon as we flew over it on last Saturday.

The falls are right next to the road and there are short trails in on either side of the creek that feeds them.

Here is the wide view looking out of the side canyon to the main canyon. The falls are just to the left of us.

We can see a little way into the side canyon on the far wall that you can see on the Google view.

A photosphere.

You can’t really see the falls from this side so I hopped over the creek right at the top of the falls.

I never got what I would consider a good shot of the falls. There was really only one spot where you had an unobstructed view and the top of the cliff sloped away there so it was dangerous to get close to the edge.

In this case the photosphere doesn’t add much but I took it anyway.

I continued to walk along the canyon edge to the point you see in the picture below, to see if I could see father up and down the canyon.

I took this photosphere part way along. I don’t know why I didn’t take one at the point.

It was a bit of a scary walk as the path was right on the near vertical edge. This is looking back towards the falls.

I held my camera out over the edge.

Looking upstream form the point.

And downstream.

I would have liked to hike a bit farther up and down the canyon edge but the bugs were really bad and I was already tired from the RV drive so we headed home.