A few weeks ago I met up with a few friends for a winter weekend away in the Okanagan. A phone call to Louise at Raven B&B at Idabel Lake was all it took to set something up. She has a guest house (it’s not really a B&B since she does not do a breakfast unless there is a special request – usually from Snowmobile groups or summer cycling groups travelling the Trans Canada Trail, which runs right by her place) Winter was setting in at the higher elevations and the lakes were freezing over, with an marked shortage of snow.

Temperatures had dipped to -20 degrees Celsius in the previous nights, so with caution, we tiptoed out onto her dugout which had frozen over. The ice was solid, so Louise and her husband began to flood the ice for their private skating rink. This requires drilling a hole in the ice and setting up a pump to spray a thin layer of water across the top to create a perfectly smooth surface. Since the dugout was sufficiently frozen, we decided to venture out onto the adjacent marshland and then eventually onto Idabel Lake. The surface was almost perfectly smooth, and with 4-5 inches of ice it made a perfect skating surface. Since we hadn’t thought to pack along our skates, we had to settle for sliding around in our boots. 

Our sliding took us past the popular Idabel Lake Resort which is situated right on the edge of the lake, facing west. The resort itself has numerous rooms, with balconies and hot-tubs, as well as several self-contained cabins perched up on the hillside, also facing west. We definitely plan to return to the resort in the future to have some drinks in a hot-tub after skating or cross-country skiing. What could be a better way to watch the sun set over a frozen lake on a cold winter evening than from a hot-tub? The remainder of the weekend was very relaxing, enjoying the fireplace  and some great food and drinks at the guest house.

Related Links

BC Resorts
BC B&B