Eucott Way-Too Hot Springs

Today started off like only a few others up here in paradise.   Beautiful sunrise, no wind, and warm.  Is 48 degrees warm?, up here it is...

An early morning meeting for Peter, then we hiked around town, past the run-down quay, past the ferry still docked at the pier, past City Hall, past the abandon 600-bed hotel, and up to the spillway at the dam above the old town.

What an interesting place.   Ocean Falls is an odd mix of old in good condition, old in bulldozed condition, and old in abandoned condition.

The abandoned hotel looks to be structurally in great shape, as does an abandoned apartment complex.   It would take a lot of elbow grease and vision, but these buildings could be resurrected.

If there was a way around the spillway that would bring back the salmon, then you'd have a fighting chance of building a real resort destination.   I could see something like Roche Harbor + fishing, hiking, mountain bike trails, etc.   If there are any foolish investors out there, please contact me.

We decided to push on to Eucott Bay, but we will come back to Ocean Falls next year.   With 27 miles between Ocean Falls and Eucott Bay, we departed at 1045 and arrived at 1441, 3.9 hours at 7.12 nautical mph.  That's pretty standard cruising speed for us.   The good news is that I only used 14.15 gal of diesel (3.6 gal/hr).   That is considered excellent fuel economy on a boat.   For sake of comparison, my truck that gets 12mpg at 60 miles an hour burns 5 gal/hr.   The truck does get further than the boat, but it isn't nearly as much fun!

Heading up Dean Channel towards Eucott Bay.

Eucott Bay is extremely shallow with a soft mud/silt/sand bottom.   I don' think I ran aground, but I'm sure I got close.   The depth sounder was reading 5.6' at one point and my draft is about 6.5', and we were at a +8' tide.  That means at lower low water, that spot would have been 1.5' above water.  Too close!   We will take this into consideration when we depart tomorrow morning.

The surrounding high mountains are glacier carved and resemble those around Yosemite Valley.   There is one peak that has been cleaved in half and resembles Half-Dome, but I don't have a good picture of that.

At the head of the bay is a natural hot spring.  Visions of basking in warm water flooded our heads.   We set off in Roe armed with bathing suits (no need to scare the local wildlife...).  

Did I mention that the bay is shallow?   We hopped-off Roe and walked 30' to shore in calf-deep cold seawater.

Now that's a look!

The hot springs should be named the "Extremely Hot Springs".  It was simply too hot to do much more than just touch the water; maybe 110-115 degrees.  We'd have been bouillabaisse if we'd gone in.

There is a pipe from the nearby steaming hot creek that bring water into this mostly natural basin (with some creative cement augmentation).   There is a stick in the end of the pipe to act as a flow regulator, but even with that stick crammed in, the water flow was too great, and the pool was too hot.   Just too much hot water in and not enough cooling to make the pool usable.

We did not partake...

Back to the boat to prepare for dinner.   Italian night!  That calls for an Italian wine - right???

I pulled out a 98-point-rated 2017 Barbanera Ser Passo Toscana Rosso.   This is another example of how my palate and that of wine reviewer, Luca Maroni, do not align.  To me, this wine is sweet, flabby, over extracted, and not well balanced.   This is a personal taste thing, our palates just don't align.   I tend to align more with James Suckling, the team at KL Wines, & Kermit Lynch.   YMMV.

Spicey Italian sausage, grape tomatoes, spinach-ricotta stuffed ravioli in a pomodoro sauce.   Under a layer of parmesan cheese of course!

Tomorrow, we are off to the place with the coolest sounding name up here: Bella Coola.   I did not make that name up!   I hope they have tee-shirts!