Mid-September, I roped a friend into going to the Adam’s River Salmon Run. He really wasn’t keen on it. As someone who works on the Thompson and Fraser Rivers, he sees thousands of fish in the river each summer, and understandably didn’t want to go see more. Luckily, my persistence paid off, and we went for the mini road trip. Every 4 years there is a mass return to the spawning grounds; 2010 was supposed to be one of the biggest returns in the past 100 years, so why not check it out?

The Salmon Run was elementary school field trip extravaganza when we were little! We would have to learn all the stages of the life cycle. Here’s your science lesson just in case you don’t remember grade 2. The salmon swim from the Pacific Ocean, travel up the Fraser River through Hell’s Gate, up the Thompson River and into the Adam’s River where they spawn and die. (And, smell horribly bad!) The eggs hatch, grow, swim to the ocean, live there for a few years, and if they’re lucky to have survived that far, they swim back to the Adam’s River to start the cycle all over again.

We were there at the start of the Sockeye run and the very end of the Chinook run. The size difference between the two fish is crazy, but I wasn’t able to get any good photos of Chinook to compare. They don’t turn the bright pink colour that the Sockeye do. We wandered the trails, took a few photos and all in all had a fun little road trip.