The Kootenay Region of Southeastern British Columbia, the location of Mountain Trek Fitness Retreat & Health Spa at Ainsworth Hot Springs on Kootenay Lake.

British Columbia has been described as hundreds of Switzerlands rolled into one. The Kootenay region in the southeastern corner of the province, at the beginning of the Canadian Rockies, is the most beautiful.

Centered on a huge lake (Kootenay Lake) which is 90 miles long, skirted by fjord-like valleys carved over millenniums by creeks flowing from the 11, 000 foot peaks, the Kootenay region is a jigsaw of mountain peaks, alpine lakes and meadows, rivers, and green lush treed slopes. You feel at one with nature immediately.

This nature nurtured the original habitants, the Kutenai Indians. They considered this area sacred for thousands of years before the first white explorer "discovered" some of the economic opportunities of the area. The natural mineral hot springs at the present-day Ainsworth were a healing retreat for the natives who traveled during the summer season up the lake in unique sturgeon-nosed canoes from winter camps in Idaho. They foraged berries and herbs, and fished the abundant lake. Hundreds of arrowheads have been found on the shores of Kootenay Lake, and Indian pictographs are still legible on rock walls along the lake.

Early white settlers are documented in the area in 1825; journals describe the rugged and magnificent beauty, even then. In the 1880s, discoveries of lead, zinc and silver (called "galena") brought a rush of prospectors and settlers to the area. These intrepid beings were the precursors of our magnificent network of hiking trails! With pack horses and much physical stamina, prospectors explored and opened the mountains through an elaborate network of trails following rivers and creeks as well as animal routes. In todays dollars, these trails could not be constructed; however maintaining the existing network of trails has made this area a hiker’s paradise.

Mountain Trek’s location, at the town site of Ainsworth Hot Springs (unincorporated – as the highway sign denotes), is a peaceful shadow of the booming mining town 100 years ago. Hundreds of residents and transient prospectors, an infrastructure of hotels, stores, bars, and houses, and active mining in small sites on the hillside, have given way to a quiet mountainside village of 89 residents and summertime tourists who stop to have a soak at the hot spring pools.

The opportunity to see and touch some of the historic sites is abundant when hiking in the Kootenays; if artifacts are not your thing, then just resonating with the excitement of the first pioneers and enjoying the unending beauty will add to your hiking experience in a way that will stay with you a long time.

Follow these links for more images of our location:
Aerial Photo of Kootenay Lake, looking north
Satellite Photo of the West Kootenay region