A great year for hiking the West Kootenay! We had warm, dry weather in October that extended alpine hiking season into an extra glorious, golden month.
New Trails Added
Just 2 new trails were added to the site, as I’ve been focused on hiking favourite trails closer to home. With a baby on board and the price of gas these days, it’s been much simpler to revisit trails then venture into the unknown. I’ve made countless updates to existing trail write-ups with access road conditions and trail updates, but only got to 2 new places:
It’s so encouraging to see new beautiful trails being built close to communities with reliable access roads. Whitewater Ski Resort now has the brand new Summit Trail in addition to White Queen. It’s been great to have more accessible alpine routes, especially in areas where there is already human disruption like around the ski resort.
Donation
Once again, West Kootenay Hiking made a small amount of money through merch sales. This year the $110 in profit will be donated to the Creston Valley Trails Society.
What’s Next?
I’ve loved working on West Kootenay Hiking for the past 7 years. It’s been a volunteer project and I’m glad so many visitors and community members find it helpful! I am finding though that with so much on my plate these days, I need to turn it into more of a paid part-time job and less of a volunteer side-project, otherwise it is always on the back burner and I am not doing it justice!
So in 2023, I’ll be continuing to make updates and will hopefully add a couple more trails, but also explore a vision for to WKH where I can dedicated a few hours a week to site maintenance and replying to visitors and adding more articles to the blog.
With that in mind, one of my great joys from 2022 has been hiking with fellow mountain mamas and babies. The transition to motherhood is tough, but there is an inspiring community here of parents that stay outdoorsy and active and bring their babies along for the ride.
One of my new mama friends has designed a fleece sweater for pregnant, postpartum, and nursing parents. This is something I needed so badly over the last couple of years on my adventures, and I’m so excited for her new local company. I’m a proud backer of the kickstarter campaign, and I am also sharing an affiliate link here:
That’s all for now! Looking forward to another hiking season and more adventures!
-Abby
Thanks for your continued hard work Abby. Much appreciated. Ron Pelkey