Birdies and the Bugs
Welcome to Brisco. World Famous. And Not.
Tractors and Trailerhood — Spur Valley Golf Course and RV Park owners Audrey, Ron, and Brandon Csokonay, along with Comox the dog. The laidback nine-hole course is the closest thing the Brisco area has to a tourism megadevelopment. Mat Loyola Photo
Highway diversion in recent years has frequently sent cross-Canada traffic south from Golden into what for most of those drivers is terra incognita. Once you pass metropolises like Nicholson and Parson, it gets quiet. Very quiet. There are vanishingly few tourist facilities and no giant photos of realtors’ heads. All it has is surpassing beauty, with exemplary wetlands and the dramatic peaks of Bugaboo Provincial Park beyond.
A textbook slice of the Rocky Mountain Trench, the stretch starting 20 kilometres north of Radium is the kind of place that finds you, not the other way around. I know this because of how the sub-hamlet of Brisco lured my wife, and eventually me. In 1971, her Texas college sweetheart drew a high draft number and started thinking about fleeing to Canada. He spotted a note on some hippie bulletin board that read simply, “Cheap Land in British Columbia.” The Briscoite answering the phone said, “I’ll be out of town, but the cabin’s open, just make yourself comfortable and we’ll talk in the spring.” And with that cashless, trusting agreement she began a long relationship with one of the most little-known and vitally, old-timey spans of highway in southern B.C.
Today Brisco proper is, well, almost exactly as it was then: a general store, a few gas pumps, a tiny chapel, and little else. True, the formerly Albertan McKergow family bought the store four years ago and has spruced it up some. But, as ever, you can still buy liquor, ammo, and a single lag bolt if that’s all you require.
“We’ve added homemade snacks, and we’ll probably move more into ice cream and fireworks,” says owner Corey McKergow, noting that Albertans can’t buy the latter back home. “We’ve also changed the name. We’re now the Downtown Brisco Trading Post.” Fancy.
Just to the south, you’ll encounter the closest thing that the area has to a tourism megadevelopment: Spur Valley Golf Course and its related RV park. A family business now 40 years old, Brandon Csokonay is general manager. “Business is really good,” he reports happily. “Our RV park is fully booked for the season from Easter until Thanksgiving, and the waiting list for new seasonal renters is massive.” Tucked out of sight in a steep ravine, the campsites — known affectionately as the Trailerhood — are shielded from both storms and Highway 95, not that it’s ever that busy, absent closures on the Trans-Canada. Among the Albertans seeking summer weather perfection, Csokonay notes that many are from Banff and Canmore.
The golf course itself is a sporty, architecturally-designed nine-holer carved from mature forest, where the odd wolf and cougar have been known to wander through. Unsurprisingly, there are no plans to add another nine. “Spending just a couple hours on a golf course is the right amount for a lot of players,” Csokonay affirms. Time management is even more relevant to another ninehole option nearby — the cute little Hilltop Par 3 — which was recently gifted with Spur Valley’s old rental clubs. It’s lovely to play and even lovelier to finish, thanks to their locally-famous fruit pies baked fresh on premises.
Meanwhile, Spur Valley’s licensed clubhouse restaurant, The Cantina — run by a team of three Mexican chefs — is the nearest you will come to a bar on the entire 100-kilometre leg of the highway. “Unless you count the Edgewater Legion,” says Csokonay, although that’s not exactly a roadhouse.
As for world-class tourist attractions in the region, they absolutely do exist — but you’d never guess it by merely passing through. There is virtually no signage heralding the presence of the Columbia Wetlands, one of the continent’s longest and most ecologically di verse wetlands, and a birder’s paradise. Fortunately, it’s accessible enough: this is a rare section of the upper Columbia River where you can easily paddle upstream in either a canoe or even on a paddleboard.
Considerably less evident, though, is the presence of a bucket list mecca for the world’s most sophisticated alpine climbers. The only clue you’ll see are adventure rigs with Utah and California plates turning off in Brisco at a sign marked “Bugaboo Provincial Park 44 km.” The big draw is granite crack climbing to match vaunted Yosemite, but with an ultra-picturesque glacier setting unlike any other. The range was christened by Austrian-Canadian mountain guide Conrad Kain, who wrote after his 1916 first ascent of its signature spire, “We were nonplussed at the sight of a veritable bugaboo, which immediately suggested to our minds the appropriateness of the name.”
The Bugs also happen to be the birthplace of commercial helicopter skiing, and the CMH staging helipad is still there, sitting discreetly next to the highway. Co-inventor of the sport Leo Grillmair lived to a ripe old age in Brisco, and many contemporary ski guides call the area home. But you can be darn sure about one thing: nobody goes around bragging about it.
~ Kevin Brooker
Find this full-length story and more in The Trench’s Summer + Fall 2024 edition: