Forgotten and Vacant for a Decade | Abandoned Hot Spring Resort | Destination Adventure

[Music] so [Music] it's always interesting seeing a place that's been abandoned or left and forgotten but this one felt just a little bit different because if it was up to the owners it would still be running today ever since i was a kid all i wanted to be was an explorer sail the seven seas find new worlds but uncle d everything's already been found what like everything well yeah oh man well so much for that but if i can't be an explorer i can still be an adventurer so i bought a motorhome and i'm hitting the open road my name is dustin porter and this is destination adventure [Music] the hot spring property was very first preempted by a man named bruce johnstone who bought it with the intention of making a wellness retreat and that's exactly what he did by 1910 the first hotel was open and business was underway what makes these springs so special is first the size being the third largest hot spring in the world the temperature which is a crazy 89 degrees celsius and the mineral content soaking in these hot springs has proved time and time again to heal ailments from skin conditions to tumors even cancer over the years the hot springs have changed hands several times but in the 70s due to financial restraints the owners ended up abandoning it and it sat vacant for nearly a decade then in 1984 the canadian government put the entire property up for bid to anyone across canada and it was purchased by its current owners bert and marlene who bought it with the intention of opening a hot spring water park resort just like you see there today and five million dollars and two years later mount leyton hot springs opened [Music] early years of operation were very successful and a 10 million dollar expansion project was being planned a large conference center was being built and a whole bunch more stuff to follow but in the 1990s a recession ended up bringing the construction to halt this was just one of several issues that ultimately the resort would not overcome over the next 20 years nothing really progressed with the expansion project but the resort remained open and was enjoyed by thousands of people but it didn't take long for the british columbia government to step in with new regulations demanding that they chemically treat and chlorinate the hot springs no different than you have to treat a pool [Music] bert and marlene they tried to comply with these new regulations but being a natural hot spring the water flows in just as it flows back out taking the chemicals with it so as you can imagine it wasn't long before they were running into environmental issues and that is ultimately what ended up closing the resort [Music] i'd like to start this tour from an area called the splash pool let's check it out i love this beautiful rock work and every pool that we're gonna come across was all hot water it was not heated it's natural hot spring water that's how you get up to the water slide it is closed but you can see the slide actually coming through there [Music] just outside just imagine how fun this would have been keep in mind we are almost as north as you can get here in british columbia so their summers wouldn't be crazy hot so pretty much any day you'd be able to enjoy a hot spring just in there that's the restaurant and there's upper dining here i think maybe it would have been a bar area it's locked so i can't get in there so this would have been like a kiddie pool a little water slide coming off the turtle that's fun oh lay windy i might actually be able to get up there sticky door holy i like that color wow beautiful wood on the roof there wow look at that awfully nice hmm right this might be my favorite part first of all i just love how it's so overgrown just looks completely forgotten but you can see where the ring goes around i can just imagine like a hundred little kids here having so much fun and look at this ufo h2o beautiful british columbia wow put a lot of thought into that that's our anyone that's not from bc that's our british columbia license plate pretty cool i would assume that water would have come out of each of these everyone that has a hole on top i have to assume it would have had water coming out of it those are stuck on there somehow let's see in this one no way to know for sure so to get in here i'm going to have to go back around so these stairs are very soft wow do you imagine being here as a kid i'd for sure get kicked out like 10 minutes in because i'd be full sprint from one from one toy to the next i wonder if maybe there's even water going through here i bet there was found a better way really excited to see into this building because this was supposed to be a conference center and it was actually never um it was never completed so excited to see in here here we go kind of looks like someone's wood shop in here but it's just because it was still under construction everything's kind of just left exactly how it was wow beautiful staircase let's do the bottom first and then we'll go up wow i wonder if the plan was to fill this with with hot water because you can see steam coming out of that thing in the middle so that's definitely got hot water in it excited to see how high up this goes wow could you imagine this though just full hot water of course a lot of this stuff would be gone but uh yeah that'd be amazing all right let's try out this fancy staircase oh nice there's some beautiful woodwork on this property a lot of moisture has been in here [Music] a lot of time [Music] this building has its own level of spook factor because most of the walls the exterior walls are just that paper it's really windy today so you can really hear the paper slapping wow they just dropped everything stopped this is crazy these beams here these are solid that's not pressed together that's solid wood oh man i don't know how many are in this building but structurally this place is amazing wow look at the roof in here that ceiling just like perfectly polished wood oh my god [Music] somebody put a lot of thought and effort into this that skylight's broken there that's probably where the moisture is coming from the floor below this one that one's good though this is amazing not an architect so maybe this is usual but it seems like they built this from the top down because this well that area is pretty well done i think i don't know but the rest of this is definitely not uh that water down there you guys can't see it on the gopro but uh it's actually boiling very very hot look at this all those timbers solid wow this is a beautiful building it's such a shame it was never finished [Music] and you know what it's not too late to to finish this or salvage this structurally this place is rock solid they'd have to do of course a lot of work but i think it'd be worth salvaging for sure like these are bone dry not a bit of rot i can see on any of them that n1 looks like it may have gotten a little bit of moisture but nothing to worry about this is cement anything that's been sitting a long time and it's overhanging i don't know if i want to walk on it [Music] gathered up some courage i'm gonna walk along the cement walkway i don't know what the plan was for or for when this was finished probably would have had a guard rail down the side and then you can walk around such a beautiful building looking at how they built this building i shouldn't even think twice about walking on that cement but something about it just doesn't quite sit right didn't even get locked out see that water slide up there [Music] splash down lounge i know the feeling wow freaking nice motorhome out there that's fun it looks like it's used a lot too a cool actual leather saddle hmm i'm guessing that's steaming behind them there again beautiful woodwork they have one greenhouse here already that's heated entirely by hot springs check this out this is a grapefruit tree can you believe that northern northwestern british columbia grown grapefruits nice healthy tomatoes it is nice and warm in here this right here this is where the hot water is and it is hot i'm surprised the camera's not fogging up there we are yeah it's so hot in here that's why it took a while but then these pumps just deliver it throughout the uh throughout the greenhouse it's really amazing setup and there could and should be hundreds of these this one farm could produce enough food for all of northwestern british columbia and into alaska so pretty amazing several people have tried to buy the resort since it shut down in 2010 but just for the land because it is 900 acres some of which being lakefront but marlene is adamant that it sells to the right person someone that's gonna turn it into a wellness center or utilize the land and the hot springs and put up greenhouses and grow produce so if you're a real person with a real offer reach out as always take nothing but pictures leave nothing but footprints i'll catch you on the next one [Music] you

Channel: Destination Adventure

Views: 172,557

Rating: 4.9409022 out of 5

Keywords: abandoned, lost, forgotten, Urbex, urban exploring, adventure, explore, resort, hot spring, waterpark, MoHo, Motorhome, winnebago, travel, road trip, nomad, tiny home, documentary, Dustin Porter, Destination Adventure, BC, British Columbia, Canada

Id: 2ch9i8J9dTg

Length: 21min 40sec (1300 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021