After two days exploring Cranbrook, my partner and I continued on with our East Kootenays road trip, setting off to the mountain town of Kimberley. Dubbed the “Bavarian City of the Rockies” in the 1970s, Kimberley instantly charmed me. The town is bordered by the Purcell and Rocky Mountains and is renowned for its outdoor adventures, alpine-inspired buildings and boutique shops. There’s a great energy here. The town has attracted many young entrepreneurs who are making their mark. The Kimberley Platzl: A Bavarian-Inspired Shopping District We took a walk through the pedestrian-only shopping district, the Platzl. Here, it’s clear how the town embraces its German roots. It’s lined with independent shops, boutiques, cafes and restaurants. I picked up a six-pack of beeswax lip balm from Moody Bee, made from the store’s own beehive. This brand is so popular, it’s now carried in a few Fairmont hotels. In the Platzl, we had lunch at Stonefire Pizzaria. This warm and welcoming eatery embodies the culinary tradition of Naples, crafting pizza rooted in old traditions, using a finely milled Italian-style flour prized for its soft texture and delicate strength, and then baking each pie for 90 seconds in a wood-fired Stefano Ferrara masonry oven hand-built in Naples. Read More in BC Living Magazine

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A charming alpine mountain town with a rich, fascinating history, Kimberley is known as an outdoor playground where hikers, bikers and golfers can celebrate the outdoors with a plethora of invigorating choices. Ensconsed in the East Kootenays, Kimberley is a destination with drawdropping mountain views, inspiring nature trails and a peacefulness that will fill your soul with calm. These are our top choices for a riveting visit to Kimberley and its neighbouring town of Cranbrook. FORESTS OF GOLD A fall hike in the mountains around Kimberley transports you through a forest exploding with yellow and gold, as the alpine and western larch trees change colour. Head to Kimberley Nature Park, where over 50km of hiking trails for hikers and bikers weave through 840 hectares, traversing ponds and streams and leading to heart-stopping vistas of the Purcell and Rocky Mountains at high elevations. The park is home to open grasslands, shaded gullies, moss bogs and forests of ponderosa pines. Look out for moose, elk and western painted turtles along the way, and prepare to be inspired by the magnitude and ecological diversity of BC’s largest municipal park. Read More in SOAR Magazine

From Bootleg to battery-powered, “A Good Place to Be” is also a good place to bike (BikeMag.com) Sometimes it pays not to have a reputation. Unlike many of its neighbors in the Kootenay Rockies of southeast British Columbia, whose freeride forerunner bona fides have made them staples of bike cinema since the ’90s and whose very names conjure visions of steep, slabby shuttle laps (Nelson) or technical XC epics (Rossland), the small town of Kimberley has escaped easy classification. Aside from the aptly named Bootleg Mountain, the reputation of which gets passed hand to hand and filed in many area riders’ “someday” folders, the mountain bike culture remains untethered to a history to be escaped or embraced. The forested benches and bluffs above Kimberley allow for back door-to-backcountry access on more than 200km of trail. Photo: Aaron Theisen Voted BC’s best small town by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the community of a little more than 8,000 feels less like a mountain town than a small town that happens to be in the mountains. Even the town slogan, “A Good Place to Be,” reflects its low-key and unassuming vibe. Read the rest of the article on BikeMag.com