Nakusp Recreation Areas

Nakusp Recreation Areas

After skiing in the Bugaboos started, some entrepreneurs wanted to build backcountry skiing

opportunities near Nakusp. One of the fellows was a commercial airline pilot I met on a plane to

Hawaii from Vancouver. When he left the airline, he retired in Nakusp. Being an energetic

fellow, he got involved with the hot springs and had his sights on skiing. His idea was to build a

motel in Nakusp. People who came to the area for helicopter skiing would stay at the motel. He

also wanted to find a hot spring enterprise.

I was asked to look over the hot spring proposals. The first one was what they called St. Leon

Hot Springs, and the project was very big. There was a natural spring on the hillside, off the

highway. It was kind of a clamshell natural setting. At the time, the bank was hollowed out and

people soaked in there. The former pilot thought something bigger could be made. He aimed to

pipe the water and store it in the basement of a lodge.

The warm water would be used to heat the lodge. But we analyzed the amount of water needed

and determined that there was not enough water to even think about using it that way. And there

also was not enough to make a hot spring setup where the water would be circulating. The little

clam was only three or four times the size of a bathtub, not big enough to do something

commercial. So anyway, we looked at that one and then another site. The second one almost cost

me my life.

The developers focused on another area called Halfway Creek. The fellows said they wanted to

have it looked at for water volume. They hired a helicopter, and I was encouraged to go along

with them to check out the volume of water. I'll never forget flying up with a helicopter and

landing on a hillside with both skids sitting on a log that leveled off the chopper.

But the chopper blade was swinging and cutting bushes at the top end. If the bush were any

bigger, the helicopter would have crashed. We hurriedly analyzed the flow of water. Then a blast

came over the radio. The helicopter pilot was told that a storm was coming in, and we had to fly

out of there right after landing in that ridiculous and hazardous situation.

We had to fly out into the fog bank that was coming in. We flew out with hardly any visibility. I

thought, “Son of a gun. I personally volunteered my time there. It was not even a paying thing.

Was I going to die doing something so unnecessary?” It was one of the things that I did as a

surveyor, trying to keep things going when I was interested in seeing things develop.