Here and There Slocan

Community greenhouse construction

2011-07-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

Bears and cherries

2011-07-28T08:26:00.000-07:00

Off and paddling

2011-07-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

The second team through CheckPoint 6 heads out on the lake for a 23 km paddle after spending the past 26 hours trekking and mountain-biking through the mountains from the north.

Raid the North Transition Area

2011-07-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

Bikes are left in the transition area by teams who have taken up the first paddling leg of the race. GPS navigation is not allowed so traditional compass and topo map navigation skills are required.

Raid the North

2011-07-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

An array of 39 canoes awaits the arrival of teams participating in Raid the North Extreme, a 6-day, 500 km adventure race.

More Lupins

2011-06-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

The lake is so high right now that the lupins have wet feet.

Secret Lupin Garden

2011-06-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

Little shop of horrors?

2011-06-25T21:47:00.000-07:00

This is the back window of the hardware store annex, the part of the business used for storage of little-used stock. What is going on in there?

Polar Pete

2011-06-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

???

I guess we'll know next Saturday.

Groceries

2011-06-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

The new grocery store is open, floors gleaming and shelves well-stocked.

Carpenter Creek

2011-06-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

That tiny white stripe, up close. Islands swamped by logs and rushing water, cold and clear and flecked with glacial silt.

Looking down Carpenter

2011-06-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

The tiny white stripe is Carpenter Creek, which runs into Slocan Lake from here.

Alamo

2011-06-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

The town once known as Alamo, BC, gateway to the boomtown of Sandon, once stood here on a railway siding.

First Friday Market of the Season

2011-06-03T15:45:00.001-07:00

Soccer

2011-05-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

Warming up for a soccer match at Centennial park, with lake, mountains and clouds in the background.

Kids on Parade

2011-05-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

Children on a float in the May Day Parade.

RCMP

2011-05-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

Leading the May Day parade in their red dress serge, the two officers who staff our local Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment.

Royalty

2011-05-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

An anachronism about which many have mixed feelings to say the least, but the May Queen Pagaent is a local institution that continues strong.

Bubble World

2011-05-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

Today at Centennial Park during the soccer game, kids of all ages on the sidelines were blowing and chasing bubbles. The day was dreary but you would never know it from the reflection of trees, houses, hills and sky in this bubble.

May Long Weekend

2011-05-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

A Better Bosun

2011-05-20T07:06:00.000-07:00

The restoration of the facade is almost complete. A great improvement from what was there last fall!

Kohan Pond

2011-05-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

Oregon Grape in bloom

2011-05-18T13:09:00.000-07:00

Cherry blossoms 3

2011-05-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

Waves

2011-05-16T10:49:00.000-07:00

Willow at the Kohan Garden

2011-05-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

Cherry blossoms 2

2011-05-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

Cherry blossoms 1

2011-05-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

Cherry tree reflected in a window at the hospital.

Unfurling leaves

2011-05-12T10:25:00.000-07:00

Car free

2011-05-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

Considering that our towns have no local public transit and only occasional (a couple of times a week) inter-village buses, an impressive number of people manage without cars.

Bosun progress

2011-04-28T14:59:00.000-07:00

Ahh, that's better. The blank flat facade of the Bosun Hall is getting a roof to cover the entry.

Almost a grocery store

2011-04-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

I like the way the roofline fits in with the tree behind it. Apparently the floor has had its 28 days to cure and they're moving in shelving and coolers. They expect to open by early June.

Please don't eat the crocuses!

2011-04-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

Fences are necessary protection for the crocuses from hungry deer.

Opinions, attitude, etc. etc.

2011-04-19T14:42:00.000-07:00

Construction on Main Street

2011-04-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

The new craft store is getting its porch built. Construction of the building began last fall.

The Esso

2011-04-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

One of the things I find endearing about small towns is how long the collective memory lasts. There's a crumbling corner in our town referred to as "the Esso." Years ago it was an Esso gas station but the gas station closed, though an auto service shop continued for some years in an adjacent building, eventually dwindling to hobby status for the owner and closing entirely more years ago than I can recall. The buildings have since housed a succession of failed businesses including a video rental place, convenience store, pizza joint, bakery and warehouse space for an African import business. But although it hasn't been an Esso in more than 20 years, maybe closer to 30, people around here still call this The Esso.

I think of it as a decoy that keeps the tourists from moving in wholesale. It's ugly as anything, and it graces the intersection of Main Street and the highway through town. I suspect a lot of people miss giving our town a second glance as a result of driving by this empty lot.

My Aunt's Place

2011-04-16T14:46:00.000-07:00

This is the formerly-crumbling building that used to house "My Aunt's Place," an ice cream store, gift shop, lottery ticket agent and a surprisingly terrific little yarn store. The owner retired several years ago and the building had sat dismal and empty ever since. It's the left-hand building in this photo. Now it is on its way to becoming something new. We're not sure what.

Tom on display

2011-04-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

Turkeys

2011-04-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

Wild turkeys. These two toms and their wives, scratching nearby.

Bosun Hall facelift, continued

2011-04-13T14:38:00.000-07:00

Sun, melting and steam

2011-04-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

The whole canyon fills with steam when the sun starts really melting the snow.

Facelift

2011-04-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

The Bosun Hall is getting a long overdue facelift.

Leftovers

2011-04-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

An entire winter's worth of parking lot plowings, minus 95% of the snow. Ewww.

State of the Season

2011-04-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

Even on the lakefront there's plenty of snow left.

Laundry and snowbank

2011-03-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

The snowbanks are almost as high as the laundry lines, but spring is in the air.

Valhalla View

2011-02-22T20:57:00.000-08:00

Service Station

2011-02-21T14:08:00.000-08:00

Whether you need gasoline, antifreeze, new tires, a new timing belt, your headlights pointed or your brake discs replaced, our town's service station will look after you. They also have host one of two remaining payphones (beside tires). Payphones are quickly going extinct across Canada with the advent of cell phones.

Wells in the snow

2011-02-20T14:02:00.000-08:00

The dark wood of the bushes reflects light and melts the snow.

Foul weather blowing in

2011-02-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

Weather comes from the west here. Which means we see storms coming "from the Valhallas," meaning from the Valhalla mountain range on the west side of the lake. When the Valhallas start to disappear in clouds of precipitation you have just a few minutes to take cover.

Pebble beach

2011-02-18T13:52:00.000-08:00

Ghost town?

2011-02-17T13:59:00.000-08:00

Boarded up, papered over, wrapped up ... It all looks fairly dismal, but good things are coming. Economic activity is highly seasonal here. Winter is the best time to renovate, build, move, re-stock, re-organize, re-launch. On the left is the craft store that began construction in November.

Public pier view

2011-02-16T13:46:00.000-08:00

Public Pier

2011-02-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

Unused through the winter, the public pier was covered in deep snow. Now milder temperatures and the lake's perpetual heat-sink effect are causing the snow to melt in patches.

Dark sky and maple tree

2011-02-14T13:43:00.000-08:00

Snow heap

2011-02-13T13:42:00.000-08:00

Tall dirty heap of snow behind the community gymnasium / fitness centre.

Pet icicle

2011-02-12T18:12:00.000-08:00

We get quite fond of certain icicles. This one at our favourite café is our current pet. It's well over a metre long and has grown a little every time we check on it.

Ski Hill Perspective

2011-02-11T16:05:00.000-08:00

Putting perspective not on the size of the hill, or the view of the base area, but on the size of the operation. On a beautiful day in February with fabulous snow conditions and finger-and-toe-friendly temperatures, you can count nine cars in the parking lot, and the only four skiers you can see in this photo are the four I brought with me.

Ski Hill View

2011-02-10T15:15:00.000-08:00

Looking down on Summit Lake, which marks the northern end of the Slocan Valley, from part way down the southernmost easy ski run.

Pathway

2011-02-09T22:05:00.001-08:00

Digging out

2011-02-08T11:01:00.000-08:00

... with a two-stage snowblower, the best option around here.

Neck deep

2011-02-07T21:35:00.001-08:00

This poor pear tree is up to its neck in snow. And still more falls.

Houselet

2011-02-06T13:54:00.000-08:00

This tiny ramshackle house is right in the middle of the "core commercial district." It's for sale. Anyone want to move here and start an intimate little year-round locavore restaurant? There's a dearth of eating-out opportunities from October to April.

Kind of pretty

2011-02-05T14:12:00.000-08:00

I think it's kind of pretty what happens to the butt end of vehicles that drive along the highway after a heavy snowfall. Apparently you can be fined by police for not keeping your license plate clear, but honestly, you'd be stopping every five minutes to do so. No one worries about it, and we only have one police officer here.

Pull over!

2011-02-04T22:11:00.000-08:00

The heavy snow is taking its toll on the limbs of some of the trees around town. I was driving down 5th Ave. today when I saw a tree driving towards me, sideways. I had to duck into a side street to avoid a possible sweeping.

The beach

2011-02-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

Roofing and porch

2011-02-02T22:31:00.000-08:00

The hardware store has roofing and the porch is going on.

Hardware

2011-02-01T14:28:00.000-08:00

A display case of hardware from the early days of our town, on the wall outside the current-day hardware store.

Waiting

2011-01-31T13:23:00.000-08:00

Another storefront, opposite the vacant ones in yesterday's post. This one isn't vacant, though, just on a winter hiatus. A pottery shop and café will open in the spring. The building recently endured an extensive renovation and nice, historically-sensitive facade upgrade.

Empty

2011-01-30T22:23:00.000-08:00

Main Street is really just a couple of blocks long. With two new stores being built, and another building being repurposed and turned into a third new store, you might think we were riding the wave of a boom in business. Alas, it isn't so. There are plenty of empty storefronts.

Winter forest

2011-01-29T16:52:00.001-08:00

The deck

2011-01-28T15:04:00.000-08:00

Even the tree-sheltered part of the deck is pretty deep in snow. The chairs wait patiently for spring.

Cedars and sky

2011-01-27T18:01:00.000-08:00

Compost

2011-01-26T16:07:00.000-08:00

Composting is a way of life here. The path to the compost pile at our place is long, deep and snowy. When the snow gets "over the boots" (i.e. more than knee deep) like this no one is keen on making the required deposits.

Sunlight. Trees.

2011-01-25T15:35:00.000-08:00

The same trees as the other day, but different light. Whole different photo.

The new grocery store

2011-01-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

Three months ago the loggers were falling trees here and clearing the site. For a small town where the pace of life (and work) is typically pretty slow, construction has proceeded at an impressive rate.

Log cabin

2011-01-23T15:25:00.000-08:00

This is the first small cabin built, around 1970, by a US Vietnam draft dodger who moved to the wilderness and taught himself log-home building.

Horned icicle

2011-01-22T13:02:00.000-08:00

After 35 cm of snow yesterday, the temperature today hovers just below freezing.

Picture-postcard trees

2011-01-21T16:55:00.000-08:00

This is what snow-clad evergreens look like in my imagination. And in real life today, as it happens. It's snowing again to beat the band.

Picturesque returns

2011-01-20T23:14:00.000-08:00

Colder temperatures and fresh snow again. And briefly, but alas only briefly, blue sky.

Not picturesque in the slightest

2011-01-19T10:33:00.000-08:00

Slides

2011-01-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

It's the kind of weather that produces avalanches and slides: heavy snowfall, followed by warm temperatures. The highway beyond our house has been closed on and off for a few days now. This is a tiny slide, just a twenty metres in length, not reaching the roadway, near our house.

Melt and fog

2011-01-17T13:13:00.000-08:00

Slush

2011-01-16T17:49:00.000-08:00

Yes, roadways are a bit of a mess around here right now.

January thaw

2011-01-15T22:49:00.000-08:00

The outdoor skating rink has seen better days. Today it is more like a very cold wading pool.

Snow-clearing

2011-01-14T17:02:00.000-08:00

All through the night, all through the day and on through another dusk. As long as the snow keeps falling, the snow-clearing crew keeps working. This is the main highway through New Denver. Not much traffic at dusk on a snowy weekday afternoon.

Dark and light

2011-01-13T13:37:00.000-08:00

There's so much dark in the winter. The shadows of the mountains are long and broad and deep. But the direct sunlight, where and when you can see it, is almost blindingly bright. For all but an hour a day we live in the dark at the bottom of this photo. But we can see that there's sun out there somewhere, striking the tops of the taller south-facing mountains.

Snow bump

2011-01-12T13:33:00.000-08:00

It's a planter on a deck, actually.

Parking lot snow

2011-01-11T15:05:00.000-08:00

At the Health Care Centre parking lot they've almost run out of space under the apple tree to push the snow into. Poor tree.

Snow domes

2011-01-10T14:57:00.000-08:00

The Domes look even more alien with a fresh coat of snow.

Keep bears wild

2011-01-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

Keep bears wild. Use this bear-proof garbage bin.

The creek-side trail in the village also provides doggy-do bags.

Green spot

2011-01-08T17:09:00.000-08:00

While on a hike around town I looked hard for a spot of green. This was all I found anywhere, and I was actually surprised to find it. The wood chips were mounded up around the base of the tree as mulch, and the wind off the lake had blown away the covering of snow.

The lake that never freezes

2011-01-07T13:02:00.000-08:00

Even after days of sustained minus-ten weather, the lake is still liquid. It's up to 500 metres deep in places, and 30 km long. There's just too much water here for an ordinary Canadian winter to freeze it. Two or three times in the last century it has frozen. I don't suppose it will ever happen again.

Helipad

2011-01-06T13:13:00.000-08:00

The emergency helipad next to the health care facility.

A shaft of sun

2011-01-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

A shaft of late-afternoon sunlight catches a few nearer trees while the north-facing slope behind them remains in perpetual shadow.

Oxygen

2011-01-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

Behind the community gym, adjacent to the health care facility.

Hospital with a view

2011-01-03T12:56:00.000-08:00

The staff patio at the health care facility (lab, medical clinic, nursing home, emergency department, allied health professions). It's a tough view to beat.

More Kohan Lights

2011-01-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

Cold and lonely

2011-01-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

Wind sock

2010-12-31T12:50:00.000-08:00

Standing sentinel above the health care facility's emergency helipad.

Christmas lights

2010-12-30T22:11:00.000-08:00

at the Kohan community gardens.