If you wish to first read the text associated with this day click here.

For our second day of skiing, we visited Whitewater ski area near Nelson B.C.  The drive took somewhere between 1-1.5 hours from Rossland (center of map, left side) to the Whitewater ski area (blue insignia at center of the map).  The route we took from Rossland was eastward through Trail and Salmo.  From Salmo it was north to the Whitewater ski area.  After skiing at Whitewater, we traveled north through the town of Nelson, on through Balfour, and then visited the Ainsworth Hot Springs (look at top center of map).  The Ainsworth Hot Springs lie along the western edge of Kootenay Lake (the large blue body of water that you see in the top half of the map).  The lower right hand portion of the map also shows where Whitewater is located, relative to the northwestern U.S. and southeastern Canada.  This map image was obtained from the Whitewater home page, just click on the map and it will bring you to their web site for further information about this wonderful ski area.
 
 

Greg let us keep his car overnight after our first day of skiing, so we could hit town and buy our groceries for the week.  He was staying in town at the youth Hostel (which was reasonably priced at around $17 CDN a night) so we planned to pick him up in Rossland as we all made the trek to Whitewater.  The first picture is of Greg coming out of the Hostel (our gracious chauffeur for the day).  The next two pictures are shots up the road and across from the Hostel on the main street in Rossland.  As you can see, Rossland is just a basic town with no glitz or glamor.  There are restaurants, bars, grocery stores, coffee shops etc., basically everything you'd need for a standard ski trip.

Since Greg's ski rack only holds two pairs of skis, and there was no chance of squeezing any skis in the car with the six of us, we had to strap down four pairs of skis to the rack with webbing.  On the far side of the car you can see them all stacked up in bags.  Fortunately greg had some nice Thule webbing with clamps that really let you cinch stuff down tight.  We had no problems with flying skis during the drive.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A few minutes after leaving Rossland, we passed through the city of Trail (see map at top of this page for orientation).  From Rossland to Trail, you drop down in elevation and are eventually right along the Columbia river.  There are non industrial looking parts to the city (quite nice along the river), but these shots are the ones that struck me as we passed through.  There is a lot of mining / processing done in this part of Canada, and Trail seems to be involved in that industry.  From the City of Trail Web site, I learned that the City is the home of Cominco Ltd.'s Lead-Zinc Smelter complex, the largest one of its kind in the world.  The large industrial looking complex in the picture on the right is that facility and it employs nearly 2,000 people.  The picture on the left shows an interesting pipeline that crawled up the hillside in town.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure what its function is, but at night the pipeline was lit up and looked quite interesting.  I did a search and found that Cominco has an extensive web site, with more information than the average person would ever want to know about their mining and processing.  The link above is to their main web site, and you can also see what is going on specifically at their special smelting and refining complex in Trail. When we first arrived in Rossland, Greg mentioned that there was lead mining done in the area, and that we should "hold our breath" when passing through. ;)  He was of course just joking, but our shuttle driver Phil, who picked us up at the airport, said that he certainly wouldn't want to eat any fish that came out of the river below this point.  I'm not sure what the real story is, and if you do a search on the web for Cominco you will undoubtedly find the same environmentally-related articles that I saw, but at least I've passed on what I've heard.  For most of you, this type of information may not be that exciting, but if you are ever thinking of heading to the area, and are fascinated by things like this (like me), follow the links.  Won't you have some nice information to provide to your friends when YOU pass through Trail B.C. ;)
 

Enjoying your trip through the Kootenay region of British Columbia?  Sick of my rambling and want to get on to see the Whitewater ski area?  Well here we go...