Smithers, B.C : Back in the Mountains- with Sausages

Just a little glacier hanging out over town

Day 7 : June  Lake Telkwa to Smithers, 9 miles

Early this  morning we swapped lakefront for riverfront, moving only 9 miles up the road to the municipal campground at Smithers, the best town on the road so far.  So good it has two bike shops, two bookstores, three coffee shops and two sausage shops. 

Yes, not one but two sausage shops. Both featuring good cheeses and local, homemade sausages made from elk, deer, buffalo, beef, lamb and / or pork. It took about 25 minutes of pacing and deliberating but we ended up with a sampler of dry sausages from The Sausage Factory. 

Downtown Smithers

Even more impressive however, are the views and the hikes. Just south of town, visable over every street is Hudson Bay Mountain.  The Babine Mountain range rises to the North.  All the mountains are still snow covered, waterfalls are dropping off every cliff and the Buckley River is roaring. According to the helpful folks at the visitor center there were also lots of great hikes in those hills.

After walking Main Street, oogling all the sausages, checking out a few of the oudoor stores and enjoying a fine cup of dark roast at a street-side table we set out on our first one.

So far on our trip through British Columbia we'd stayed mostly along the river bottoms. Admittedly, most of those rivers have been huge, and the bottoms wide and wild. But they'd also been flat.  Immediately after turning left off the Yellowhead Highway, 4 km from town, the road began to rise steeply.  The trail, immediately off the trailhead was no different.  Two short kms later, all alongside a rushing whitewater creek we came to viewing platform at the base of two thunderous waterfalls.

Day 8 : Smithers, 0 miles

It's too nice here to move on just yet. Hiking along the Buckley River and then up alongside a side creek was a wonderful way to spend the day.

That and pondering why Smithers does not have a brewery. It's the perfect town for one, and it did have one. Plan B Brewery was voted best Northwest B.C. brewery in January 2013, and then closed. It's presence is sorely missed.