Canada’s Famous Abandoned City. Remote and Untouched. | Ocean Falls | Destination Adventure

I think for most people a dream destination is going to be something they've seen on Instagram or on Facebook, maybe they've heard about it talking around the water cooler at work, but for me a dream destination is going to be something that few people have heard of, even fewer people have seen, and it starts with a six-hour drive that takes you about halfway to the middle of nowhere followed by a six-hour ferry ride that only runs once a week that completes your journey to, well, the middle of nowhere. You're the only person I've ever met that eats a sandwich from the bottom to the top. What's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with it, it's just straight. Next time you're taking a trip to the middle of nowhere, buy this before you leave, it's nine bucks. That's the end of the pavement, we just stopped to get washer fluid and the car is like an icicle, it's a mudsicle. We are at the top of the Bella Coola hill, completely walled in with snow, and this is the only kind of sketchy part we'll have this trip. Then everyone who's local you'll know, but anyone who's not local, Bella Coola hill is notoriously bad, so fingers crossed for a good descent. What do you think of the descent so far? It's good, it's really good. I'm actually not even touching the brake, the car is just doing it. Everyone told me don't take the jetta down there, this jet is doing great, all right, we've lost a mudflap, but otherwise... We're officially at the bottom of the hill. Wasn't a problem at all. Yeah, radishes. No, hook me up with a radish. You want a radish? Yeah. Welcome to Bella Coola, one of my favorite places, extremely beautiful place. This is the first time I've been here in the summer... Hey. This is the first time I've been here in the wintertime and it is... It's just as beautiful in the winter as in the summertime. We have a whole bunch of time to kill here now because the ferry doesn't leave until 5 a.m., so I don't know what we're gonna do. Go to the bar, have a beer, have a burger. So what are we doing? Waiting for the ferry. Sorry? We're waiting for the ferry. They said we need to check in a minimum of 90 minutes early. There's nobody here. Sure wish they didn't make us wake up at 3 a.m. to come here and wait for two hours. Yep, we were here before the crew. It's now 4 30 just checking in. Oh no. We're very lucky to live in a country and a province where we have access to something like this and it's really only a $46 ferry ride. Now I work on cruise ships so I'm very fortunate I've got to travel all over the world and very few places in the world are as beautiful as the ferry ride from Bella Coola to Ocean Falls. Come back tomorrow, you know it's not enough that I can make you laugh. Why try to borrow even more time, time you never have. It's too late, too late, too late, too late. During the six-hour ferry ride, we did not see one single boat. We didn't see any other people. There is no roads. There is no buildings. It's just miles and miles of pristine, beautiful forest and mountains as far as you can see. Just arriving here to Ocean Falls before we start exploring. Let's take a moment to thank our sponsor. This episode of Destination Adventure is sponsored by Still North Designs Company. This is a company that I've been a fan of for a long time. You've seen lots of their gear in my videos before and I'm very excited to be working with them and proudly supporting their product. Ocean Falls is extremely remote. We're a minimum of a four and a half to five and a half hour ferry ride from Bella Coola. It's actually only 57 miles by water. We're 24 miles by water from Bella Bella. We have no roads here. There is no way to drive a vehicle here. The only way you get in here is by water or by air and if it's by air it has to be a float plane because of course we don't have a runway. We just got loaded up with some maps and some information. So we're going to give you guys the grand tour of Ocean Falls. We're on Front Street right now. It's the main street. Wraps around to 10th Street. And what you see here, most of these are have fallen over. But these are the garden apartments. Then there's up there Apex apartments. So we'll be exploring those. And then where I'm standing right now, this used to be a strip of houses. And it was kind of like VIP luxury houses. This here is the old bank. That's where we're staying. It's actually bed and breakfast now. And then the fancy hotel in the back. So really excited to do some exploring there. And then on this side we got the fire station just on the other side of these buses. We won't be able to get to this other side because everything's locked. Because there's a business in this building right here. But this one used to be part of the old pulp mill and just old derelict building. This house that we're coming up to right here, this used to be the company house. So when the VIPs and presidents of the company and stuff would come, they could stay here. And now it's been restored inside and outside. And somebody does live here full time. This is a really cool spot here. And probably the only example you'll see. Most of the roads here were made out of wood. And you can actually see remnants here of the old wooden road by these residents. Here's a better angle of the boardwalk or the road. And this was most of the roads in Ocean Falls. And then the residents here. And a lot of these houses were actually built up on stilts. Oh god. What you got there Kurt? Just an apple. This would have been the school, this building here. And it is privately owned so we are not going to be going inside that one. But then across here was the playground. And up on the hillside would have been more residential. But it's hard to map it out because everything is overgrown so quickly. This right here, quite obviously a church. No longer has service. Oh, Curtis. What? Cram some cookies. I'm eating. This big building that we see here, this green one. It was originally a woman's dormitorium and they called it the hen house. After that it turned into a hospital. And now it's had several people purchase it and run it as a lodge. But from what I hear the roof has a large leak in it. So it's slowly falling again into disrepair. So hopefully they can fix it up because it's still in good shape. This area that we're at right now. There's a big slide that happened here and it went across the road many years ago. But this used to be what's called Jap Town. And unfortunately here in Canada we have a bit of a bad history with Japanese internment camps. And all the Japanese people that worked here, they lived in this whole section that was called Jap Town. And during the war they were all taken and put into internment camps. It's a terrible thing that the government has done. But it's part of the history here. So I wanted to point it out. There's nothing left. You can't see anything really. Just this wall back here. And maybe if we hiked all through here you might see something. Up here there was a lot of buildings out that were on stilts. And over the years once everything started to fall into the ocean, divers have gone through and found medicine bottles and stuff like that with Japanese writing on it. So that's a pretty neat piece of history here. So Ocean Falls gets a tremendous amount of rainfall. And anything here that is made out of wood is pretty much completely destroyed now. Even people that own houses here, apparently within three years if they're not really kept up well, they get completely destroyed just because of the rainfall. But we're lucky a lot of these buildings were built out of brick and cement. And they've held up quite well. So that's mostly what we'll be checking out today. Ocean Falls is a town that has a huge history. It was a company town. Last company that owned it was Crown Zellerbach. They sold it to the BC government. And the BC government finally had to shut it down for economic reasons. Well shortly after the shutdown they decided to, as they call it, normalize the town. Which basically meant that the government did not want the liability of all of the houses. They didn't want the upkeep of all of the infrastructure that was here. So although there was still a lot of people who lived here and wanted to continue to live here in the belief that there was no way that the paper mill wasn't ever going to run again, the government decided to bulldoze and burn everything. We'll go in and check out one of these houses. Boot room. Oh there is an old vacuum in here. That's cool. Love that paint color. And the wallpaper too. Amazing. Quite dated. Floor's in good shape. That's pretty cool. You know what? I expected this to be much worse. Wow. This is very cool. Look at this. This living room. I love this layout. Amazing view. And there's a whole row of these houses. That one looks like it might have some stuff in it. Oh we got an upstairs too. And this little Harry Potter closet. Cool. And these stairs look to be in good condition. So let's head up and take a look-see. You know what? This ain't a bad looking place. This house, this quite possibly could be one of those scenarios where somebody does own it. They bought it as like a vacation place or something like that. But then they haven't been coming often enough for the upkeep. And then unfortunately it just falls into disrepair like this because of the amount of rain that they have. Because this is in better shape than I thought. But it's far past ever being salvageable again, unfortunately. They basically came in with a fleet of excavators, ripped everything down, piled it up and burned it. The few buildings that were left were privately owned or were sold by the government to private investors at the time. Coming up here, this is one of the government buildings I was talking about. We'll have our post office at the end and then courthouse and jail in the middle. And they're no longer functional but you can see still very well maintained. Whoever's waiting for mail at the post office, your cat's here. Ocean Falls basically became a paper town because of two reasons. One is the quality of the water coming out of Link Lake is just incredible. It's so pure that they did not have to filter it to make white paper which is unheard of. It's phenomenal. And the other was quite literally was the falls afforded the opportunity to generate electricity. Being able to generate electricity here themselves made it possible for the paper mill to exist. Originally there was several pen stocks. There's only one of them that is actually used for generating power right now. They are original from 1926 is when they were installed, I understand. And other than digitalizing all of the controls on them, it's exactly as it was when it was built in the 1920s. It's pretty phenomenal technology that's still very functional and very applicable to today's standards. I'm in this building down below the waterfall here. Look at this. This is really cool. It's old telephone. This actually used to be the pump house that pumped water down to Ocean Falls. And there's pretty much everything is still left in here. This old gas engine, the pumps and the piping, everything. It's really, really cool. All the breakers, switches, everything. Really cool. There's a couple of buildings in behind me here that we'd really like to check out. But as you can see, it's gated. That's because this big blue building directly in behind me, the second floor of that building is a giant Bitcoin mining operation. Really fascinating story that's happening here at Ocean Falls because this powerhouse puts out so much power. They can do this remotely. So the second floor is supposed to be like 500 computer units or something. We were hoping to actually get in and check that out. But the guy who runs that, he left on the last ferry that went out of here. So we won't be able to check that out, but still super fascinating. The Bitcoin operation that came in, which is blockchain technology, has bought rights to a lot of the power generation. And that's really helped out for Boralex. I'm sure it's going to make Boralex substantially more economically feasible to continue to run the dam and the hydroelectric generation here. Here we are, the apartment complex. No, I think he said the apartment complex is the one that's most intact. Yep, going in. Oh, hold on here. There we go. So I'm going to take the elevator or the stairs. That floor is spongy. So I guess this would have been one apartment here. Door coming in. It would have been the kitchen. I'm going to step on a nail. There's not going to be a tetanus shot within 100 miles of here. And I would guess maybe a living room. A view would have been great, actually. Very nice back in the day. Down the hallway here would be bathroom. See the tub. Toilet would have been over here. And then I guess probably this would have been a two-bedroom. One and two. Very cool. Down the stairs. Sure is beautiful here. All right, I'd like to go all the way up to the top. Oh, look at that. There's even a door. Wow. I can't believe that some of these rooms still have doors on them. And this one is still locked with the room number. That is amazing. So this would be the top floor. A lot of water coming through here. I don't want to spend a ton of time in here. This building is cement, but this is cool. A little exit sign. Very cool. Heading back down. One of the coolest parts about Ocean Falls still has road signs. Love that. This court isn't very level anymore. This is pretty neat. You can still see the lines on the tarmac of this court here. It's very cool. Thank you to the folks that commented on my Vernonia video. I now know this is a holly tree. Thank you. This here is the most famous building in Ocean Falls. This is the big fancy hotel. And back in the day, used to be very, very fancy. So it has a warning in front of it not to go in. We've also been warned by people we're staying with not to go in there. We're going to try our best to poke around a little bit. I don't think we'll climb too high, too many floors up, but definitely will be going in to check it out. I'm going to go in here as much as I can. It's very dark, but I know there used to be a really big fancy hall here. Even the stairs, really nice. I don't know what kind of rock this is. It's very nice. Just trying not to get my feet too wet. I think this may have been the bowling alley. It's hard to tell. And now this roof is caved in, unfortunately. See if I can get over there. Okay, so yes, where I'm at here, I'm pretty sure is the old bowling alley. Could have been the hall. Oh, wow. This is very cool. Little bar set up here. Yeah, so still not sure if this was a hall or the bowling alley, but it's really cool. Let's see if we can make it to the other side, just so you guys kind of understand what's happening here. Very rotten. I don't really feel like falling through. Nice big doorway there. Greetings. Very, very cool. So I've gone about as far in here as I'm comfortable going. The floor is really, really soft underneath me. And I'm usually pretty brave with this stuff, but we are so far in the middle of nowhere. If anything happens out here, there is no help. So I don't want to push it too much. So unfortunately, I'm not to be able to go up too, too high in this building. Unfortunately, because I was really excited about this one. It's supposed to be the main thing here. I'm going to flip this over to infrared. You guys might be able to see a little bit better. Oh, there we go. Old cash register. It's pitch black in here, so I'm not able to see anything. But the camera on infrared picks up pretty well. That's cool. Let's see. I can see more down here. Not much going on in here. Ah, the old elevator. That's really cool. Going up. Yeah, this is a big building. Ah, I think I can get over there. Whoa, great big kitchen here. Not sure what this building is. Maybe this is the old co-op that they were talking about. Not to go in. Is that what the plates are for? This looks just like an old UPS truck. There are a lot of problems. We've got some derelict buildings that absolutely need to be torn down and cleaned up. Some of them have some environmental hazards. Some of them have some serious health hazards like asbestos and lead and various other hazards along those lines. We've got some absentee owners who really are not doing anything with their properties, and they're allowing nature to take its course. And the buildings are collapsing and allowing some of those toxins to basically still exist here. I would really like to see a lot of that cleaned up. I just looked up at the hotel, and this was blowing in the window. And it looked just like a woman in a dress staring out at me. Back at the hotel here. And oh, bowling shoes. That is so cool. But there is another entrance. Oh wow. This seems like it's in a little bit better shape. Not great, but better. So we'll see if I can find anything here. Some stairs or something. All right, I'm gonna flip you guys over to infrared. So it'll be black and white, but you'll be able to see a lot better anyway. And that's down. And nothing up. Okay, so I'm not sure how to go up here. Hmm, I don't know you guys. I'm trying my best to make this work for you, but I don't know if I'm gonna be able to go up. So there's been a gentleman's restroom. The urinal there. And toilet stalls. Sink here. I don't know what's going on here. This carpet ends, and then it has this square of tile. And then back to carpet. I don't know. And also on the roof here, there was some something different. There's a lot of hype with this hotel when I was reading about this place. When people are telling me about it. Not that cool. I don't know. I mean the bowling alley and banquet hall and that stuff. It's really neat. But other than that, it's this hotel is completely destroyed. There's hardly anything to see at all. I'm sure back in the day it would have been very nice and fancy. But now, it's definitely not what I would call the highlight. When you visit a place as remote as Ocean Falls, you kind of expect the locals to be a bit odd. While this might be true, the one thing that I found in Ocean Falls that you don't find in most places is kindness and a real sense of community. You need to understand this is a place where money doesn't really have much value because you can't buy anything. There are no stores there. The only thing you can actually buy in Ocean Falls is ice cream. That's the only thing. Other than that, if the community needs something, the residents, they're the ones that do it. Going forward, I would like to see Ocean Falls grow to a level that is sustainable. To buy real estate here is the cheapest oceanside real estate you can buy anywhere for a livable house. But every one of them is going to need some renovation. Somebody who's going to come here has to be able to do that sort of stuff. I'd like to see more people who are capable and willing to integrate into the community and contribute to the community. If we have a water main break, they're out there digging it up and fixing it. I know because I run the excavator. This sort of lifestyle, this really remote lifestyle, seems very strange to most people, especially you can't buy anything. It's very abnormal. But I think if you just sit back and study it, you'd be pretty hard pressed to find something as reliable with as much potential in, I guess for a lack of a better term, the real world. It's really hard to put into words what Ocean Falls is really like. And until somebody comes here and experiences it, it's been described as addictive. If you come here, you'll either really, really love it. And it's a high percentage chance that you'll really, really love it. Or if you're a city type person, you're going to hate it. Because there's no stores here. There's no liquor store. There's no amenities whatsoever. If you're not comfortable in your own skin, if you're not comfortable with your own company or very limited company, this ain't a great place for you. But if you really love the outdoors, if you love the fresh air and the clean water and quiet and the solitude, man, there's nowhere like this. It's paradise. What's up? Hey, what are you up to? Just playing puddle rock. There's not much to do here. This is what's happening in Ocean Falls. Little puddle rock. Want to play some puddle rock? All right. What if I got glass? Well, you can use whatever you want when you play puddle rock. You missed the puddle entirely. I want to thank you guys all for tuning in to another episode of Destination Adventure. Don't forget, you can now win all kinds of great Destination Adventure swag. You just got to check out the link in the description. And while you're down there, I have a link to our sponsor, Still North Design Co. So go over there and check their stuff out too. And make sure you tell them that Dustin sent you. As always, take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, and I'll catch you on the next one.