Dawson, British Columbia,
Canada
July 05, 2019
After a nice easy night at Moose lake it was only a short drive to Tumbler Ridge the following morning. We rolled into the tiny sleepy town nice and early and ready to search for Dinosaurs. Tumbler Ridge was thrown into the Paleontology spotlight in 2000 when a couple of local kids discovered dinosaur footprints in a nearby river bed. Since then there have been several significant discoveries nearby which have firmly put Tumbler Ridge onto the Dino map. After a quick stop off at the visitor info centre to get our bearings and usual maps and leaflets we headed off to the museum housing the Dino exhibits. The museum was a lot smaller than we were expecting. It’s amazing how big you can make a place look with a wide angled lens, but it was interesting enough. Unfortunately the bigger Dinosaur fossils on display were recreations and not genuine. After speaking with the lady at the museum we discovered that they do have a full complete dinosaur skeleton that was found locally but they haven’t had enough funding yet to pay for it to be cleaned up and put on display. It’s certainly a shame and Tumbler Ridge would greatly benefit from it being available for display. The town has had it’s economic plights over the years since local mines etc have shut down and investment in something like this could really drive tourism and the economy in the small town. That said it has to be the smallest town we have came across so far that has a thriving Cannabis dispensary so who knows maybe things are starting to look up in Tumbler!
So after a swift educational tour of the museum we headed out of town to the site of the famous footprints. I was really looking forward to this. Yeah I know it’s a bit a geeky but hey dinosaurs are cool and the footprints looked great from the photos I have seen. We parked up at the car park at the start of the trail and meandered our way down a short 30 minute trek to the river bed. As we neared the river there was a sign highlighting that we were approaching the site and to be careful not to walk on the footprints so as not to erode them any further. We found a couple of decent prints and looked around for the rest as they didn’t quite seem the same as the impressive ones we had seen on the photos. We ventured off down another small trail to the right and came across a second sign. This is where things became a bit more clear and well, disappointing really. What you don’t read in any of the literature anywhere on the town or the museum website and also in person at the museum itself is that the original impressive footprints that the young kids found no longer exist. They were completely eroded away a few years back after a flash flood occurred. What a disappointment. We had made the effort to drive well out of our way to see this and the cheeky feckers duped us into coming by not mentioning this anywhere in their literature. Ah well you certainly can’t say that Tumbler Ridge council aren’t doing their best to drive some extra tourism through the town!
We were determined that our detour to Tumbler Ridge would not be a wasted trip out though. We had read about an impressive waterfall called Kinuseo falls about 70km South of the town and decided to check it out while we were in the area. Hopefully it hadn’t dried up a few years back and the town had forgot to make that public knowledge as well! We headed off down the highway for about 5 Km before turning off onto a forest service road. Now this forest service road was nowhere near as bad as some of the ones we have driven on looking for remote camping spots but it’s still a service road used by burly logging trucks all the same. No tarmac just bumpy loose rough gravel and potholes. A whopping 65 Km off bumpy loose rough gravel and potholes then another 65 Km on the way back. Quite the drive to get to a waterfall so we were hoping for something a little bit special in return for our efforts. We weren’t disappointed.
After an hour and half drive we rolled into the carpark at the falls to find that we were the only people there. To be fair I’m not surprised given how remote the place is. Canada is unbelievably vast and sometimes if you want to experience these things you have to have time and make the effort to go well out of your way to experience such things. We checked the map on the notice board and headed down to the first viewpoint which was only about a 100 yards away. As we arrived at a platform at the very top of the falls the noise was deafening. A roar of explosive water that rippled through your insides. The power was incredible, like nothing we have been to before. I have never been to such a powerful waterfall anywhere else. Millions of gallons roaring past us every second, it was brutal yet impressive. These falls are higher than Niagra and the river that feeds them is wide and deep.
From the first platform we headed down through wet dense forest in search of a lower viewpoint to take in and appreciate the full height of this watery beast. The trek down was bit tricky. I guess not too many people come here so the trail isn’t very well worn. Quite dense, muddy and slippy. We sang and clapped our hands all the way down. We hadn’t got round to buying bear bells so whenever we are off the beaten track we make as much noise as possible to let any nearby bears know that we are here. Bears are more scared of us than we are of them but the last thing you want is to startle one that doesn’t know your there. As long as they know you are about they will happily keep their distance and not bother you.
Once at the lower view point the falls were impressive. We were quite a distance away at this point and they still looked unbelievably massive. It hardly looked like water at times more like sugar cascading down rocks such was the white intensity and power behind it. The falls are about 60 metres high and the spray that was rising up from the bottom was going higher than the falls themselves. We hung around for quite a while taking the view in and enjoying the seclusion before slowly making our way back up through the sodden vegetation. It had been a good trip out despite the distance and another couple of hours later we had bounced our way back to Tumbler Ridge and civilization.
Time was starting to get on a bit once we hit the town and we knew there were no free camping spots nearby other than Moose lake where we had camped the previous night. We didn’t want to head back there as it would take us away from our next destination of Dawson Creek and the start of the Alaska highway. So we headed on up the highway towards Dawson keeping our eyes peeled for anywhere we could turn off to spend the night. Usually you come across a few possibilities however on this particular road there was absolutely nothing. Every single turn off was either a private forest road, owned by an energy company with big warnings against trespassing or it was farm land. There was literally nowhere we could have stayed so we drove and drove and drove as the sun set around us. We knew we could park up at the Walmart carpark in Dawson Creek and sure enough 3 hours later in the pitch black that’s exactly where we ended up. It had been a very long day and we were happy just to stop driving and get some well earned rest. It had been an interesting day out and we had certainly covered some miles in the Budster. It took all of about 2 minutes to get our airbed sorted and some food quickly heated on our stove and that was it, lights out and goodnight.
