Shuswap 2015

Trip Date: July 2015

After leaving Tofino and making our way across the Strait of Georgia from Nanaimo to Vancouver we followed the Trans-Canada Highway to Hope, BC, before exiting onto the Coquihalla Highway and heading north to Kelowna.  We arrived in the Shuswap about mid-afternoon while temperatures soared to +40° Celsius.

A beautiful sunset over the lake

It was so bright it looked like the sky was on fire!

Sunset colours slowly fading to grey

Since the summer of 2002, Christine's family has been renting a cabin on the shores of Shuswap Lake.  Previously I wrote a cumulative post about our experiences in the Shuswap that you can visit right here.  It has become an annual tradition and one that's only been missed twice in those thirteen years; once due to extreme flooding in British Columbia in 2012 and last year when Sarah, Christine, and I were in Africa (please see previous posts titled, Amsterdam, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zanzibar for additional information about that trip).  

Rome found her spot on an inflatable air mattress close to the bon fire

Pretty tuckered out after a big day in the sunshine

Christine's parents were the only ones at the cabin when we arrived, as her siblings, Sarah and Adam, as well as Dan and Nath would be joining us the following day.  We enjoyed a leisurely day of swimming, boating, paddleboarding, and trying not to get completely roasted in the late afternoon sun!  

Jerry looking like an old pro on the paddleboard

Rome and Christine relaxing outside the cabin

The rest of the week we did much of the same; boating, wakeboarding, kneeboarding, waterskiing, stand-up paddleboarding, swimming, and a lot of relaxing.  It was too damn hot to do much of anything else...not that I'm complaining!

Sarah wakeboarding

Carving on the kneeboard

My turn on the wakeboard

Attempting to clear the wake

This is what happens when you try to stand-up on the kneeboard!

Christine outside the wake

Wakeboarding

Dan hadn't been wakeboarding in over 15 years, but you wouldn't know it!

Even though she got up on skis, Nath's favourite activity had to have been the tube!

One afternoon as I was jet-skiing around Copper Island I noticed a few red smudges that I hadn't seen before.  I knew that the steep cliffs on Copper Island were home to ancient First Nation pictographs, but on previous trips I had searched high and low for them without much luck.  To see what I did find please visit my previous post titled, First Nation Rock Art.  It became obvious that I had missed these on our previous trips, so I wanted to get a closer look.  I enlisted Christine to drop me off near Copper Island so I could swim to shore and climb up to the pictographs.  There wasn't much left of the artwork, just a few smudges, but they were definitely the remains of pictographs likely painted by the Shuswap People.

Could this be a representation of the sun?

This just looks like a number of red streaks on the rock face

The remains of a much larger panel of artwork.  Too bad it's so indecipherable today.

These smudges are adjacent to the ones in the previous picture

You can read more about the pictograph sites I have visited by visiting my Western Canadian Rock Art section on the Bradshaw Foundation's webpage.

Christine on the jet ski below Copper Island's cliffs

A Bald Eagle sitting on a nest on the opposite side of the island

Bald Eagle

Full moon over the water

This is the best photo I got of the full moon and it doesn't even come close to doing it justice!

One afternoon while I was out paddleboarding I noticed a lot of fish all congregating around a buoy that was anchored off-shore.  I thought it would be neat if I could catch them on camera, so I rigged my GoPro onto the bottom of my SUP and positioned it facing the bottom of the lake.  Here's how it all turned out...

A compilation of GoPro footage from underneath my SUP

A family of Common Merganser's swimming near the cabin

Family photo on the beach...with one noticeable absence!

It was great being back in the Shuswap after a year's hiatus.  Can't wait to see what next year's trip will bring!