This past weekend, Sept long, we jumped in a truck with our friends, Trudy and Wes Dombroskie and headed off North. Our destination? Liard River Hot Springs and anything in-between!
It was a lot of driving to get there, we went the first day to Fort Nelson and that was our main base for the weekend. We got in early in the evening and went for dinner and then called it an early night. The next morning after a fantastic free continental breakfast we hit the Alaska Highway and went further North than any of us had every been before!
Right out of Fort Nelson the scenery turned to gorgeous foothills and then eventually mountains. It took us almost 4 hours to reach the hot springs but we were stopping all the time! We saw lots of wildlife on the trip: elk, goats, bears, a fox, ravens, and an owl. We were hoping the see a grizzly but that didn’t pan out, we saw 2 black bears instead.
All in all we had a great time and the springs were very nice, not at all commercialized like in Radium or Miette. Still natural and not concrete!
Here are some pictures from the trip! These ones were taken right outside of Fort Nelson, maybe 50kms away.
I was so excited that we got to stop at Muncho Lake! I had heard that it was gorgeous there and I was not let down. The water is jade green from the stone below leaching I think copper into it. It was so clear, clean and just as gorgeous green as you see in the pictures!
Liard River Hot Springs. It is a short 5 min walk through the woods to get to the springs but as you can see it is as natural as you can get! The only man made stuff are the walkways and a small waterfall you can see in the top right picture that also dams the hot springs to the top pool. There are 3 separate pools to these springs but you can only go into these two. The other one is apparently 34 feet deep and upwards of 70 degrees Celsius! I’m pretty sure I’m okay with not jumping in there!
Randy did the “Rite of passage” at the springs though. He was told about it by some guys at work. Apparently you take a small rock from near the man made waterfall and walk it to the other end and see if you can make it all the way to the end to place the rock on the ledge above the hot spring itself. Well he did it! He said the last couple of steps felt like boiling water pouring on his legs though! I couldn’t go in them as much as I wanted since I was pregnant and had to be careful so I stuck to the lower pool where the river starts and the water is like bath water temperature. It is so amazing that these sorts of things exist!
It was a fun trip, something I can see us doing again! We talked about some possibilities for the next trip but nothing solid of course. Randy and I will be grounded at home for most of next year with our new little one so sneaking off without kids will prove to be a bit more difficult!
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