Mt. Niselbaum

With snow crashing everywhere and bad weather forecast, we ran for the border
and new adventures in British Columbia. We planned to stay. Visit Roger's Pass,
Banff, the Bugaboo's but decided to start in the Valhallas.

This area is less known and the locals, in the town of Slocan barely know the
mountains surrounding them. You could make a sitcom about the place, in the
Northern Exposure mode. Everyone does 2-3 jobs to make ends meet and everyone is
a character and everyone knows everyone. In fact, within 2 hours of us poking
about, everyone knew we were in town, many seeking out the strangers and
welcoming us. We followed the logger/baker guy to his house and he gave us a
map. "return it when you done" he says. The cafe was buzzing with folks trying
to guess, mostly wrongly, at what kind of information we might want. The river
guide tracked us down and told stories of climbing adventures yore, while his
wife rolled her eyes. They took bets on whether our Impala rent-a-car would make
it up the hill. (odds were about 3-1 against). The dirt roads were not marked
and we stopped everyone for directions, including the rangers we met on the side
of the road, taking a drink of water from the waterfall there. Treating water?
We don't treat no stinkin water!

We would make it up the hill in the Impala and the towns folks came to see the
car 4 days later ("that made it up the hill?). Four peaks in 4 days. We do the
hike in, set camp and climb Niselbaum, 3 pitches of 5.7 and an engaging backside
descent. My first international peak for me, eh? Goats were around, hot for our
urine and added to the black fly problem, as we enjoyed a lovely sunset.
Pictures eh?
https://picasaweb.google.com/aramv14/MtNiselbaum