The #BuyBasin Online Festival continues with live presentations by local businesses including those in the adventure industry.

It’s been three weeks since the #BuyBasin Online Festival launched on Facebook and in that time there have been live online performances by such musicians as Ricky Diamonds and Shred Kelly, instructional talks about cooking al dente vegetables and using a traditional letterpress, as well as presentations by businesses in the adventure industry, many of which we showcase below. The festival is a partnership between the Columbia Basin Trust and online magazine FestivalSeekers, is free to attend, and will take place on Facebook every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday until April 30.  There are still opportunities for companies to be a part of it all provided they are located in the Columbia Basin region, which encompasses everywhere the Columbia River runs including Trail to Golden and Valemount to Kimberley. Simply fill out this online form to apply: #BuyBasin Application Form.

Some of our favourite live presentations during the festival have been by local gear manufacturers as they not only fall into the ethos of “buy local,” their work goes deeper down the supply chain to “build local.” Kay Gyr of Agog Sports in Nelson is an excellent example of this concept. We’ve featured Gyr before as he’s a prolific inventor with many patents to his name and one of his most recent inventions includes the SlopeDeck, which we’ve written about before on this site.

Basically a skateboard that can be used on snow, The Slopedeck has revolutionized outdoor activity not only in the winter months, but also the shoulder seasons because it doesn’t require a lot of snow. Nor does it need a chairlift because it’s designed to be ridden in a park, an alley, or the backyard. Gyr gave a presentation during the #BuyBasin Festival about the Slopedeck as well as a few other things he’s working on.

Another Kootenay-bsaed manufacturing business in the adventure industry is LynxOGT and owner Dylan Bucher gave a presentation during the #BuyBasin Festival about how powerful his headlamps are. We can definitely attest to their strength given that we recently wrote a review about the Raven Double Ultralight Headlamp and gave it a 9.5/10 rating. It offers 1,800 lumens but only weighs 100 grams making it the lightest, most powerful headlamp on the market. In the review, our editor-in-chief Mitchell Scott confirms that the strobe function of the headlamp is so strong it can scare away bears.

Editor Vince Hempsall used the Lynx OGT Raven Double on a handlebar mount, new for this season, and went fat biking with it at night. What was his verdict? This is what he writes, “I don’t often quote scripture but the passage in Genesis that reads, “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good” is an apt description for my first experience riding with the Lynx OGT Raven Double Ultralight Headlamp. Not only did the 1,800 lumens illuminate the trail a good 50 meters in front of me, it’s wide, 120-degree beam angle also lit up my periphery. I’d never experienced that before with a bike light.” Bucher’s presentation during the #BuyBasin Festival took place in the daylight so it was difficult to get a full appreciation for how strong his headlamps are but take it from us that these locally-designed lights are the best.

Aside from gear manufacturers, other businesses in the adventure sphere have been showcased during the #BuyBasin Festival including Reel Adventures, a fishing guide company owned by Kerry Reed who’s been guiding for 21 years and now specializes in tours on Kootenay Lake and the Columbia River. Reed played a key role in the feature article that appeared in Kootenay Mountain Culture‘s Summer 2020 issue about the fish stocks in Kootenay Lake called Lake On The Line.”

Reed’s #BuyBasin Festival live presentation took place in the middle of Kootenay Lake onboard “his office” which is the 22-foot Hewescraft Ocean Pro called Reel Adventure. He took attendees on a virtual tour of the boat and showed off the latest in gear from the new Scotty R5 universal rod holders to the electric Lowrance fish finders and he also discussed the tackle he uses to land the lunkers.

Many stores have been showcased during the #BuyBasin Festival and that includes ones in the adventure industry such as Bikes and Bites in Valemount. Owner Jeff Jewett went live to give attendees a tour of his shop and then discussed electric bikes and whether riding them is cheating. We here at Mountain Culture Group are very familiar with the debate around ebikes and even wrote a story about the topic five years ago in Kootenay Mountain Culture called “Electric Bikes – The Devil’s Tool?”

Jewett said during his #BuyBasin Festival presentation that he was an opponent back in the day and thought that to ride an electric bike was cheating. Three years ago he had the opportunity to get on one while visiting a store in Jasper and “I put it on Turbo and when it took off, I was sort of nonplussed. I was like, ‘Is that all it’s got?'” But then last year he had the opportunity to get some ebikes into his store and he got on one that he now rents out and went on a hill with it. He came around a corner and saw some young guys huffing and puffing and he just waved and rode right on past them. Jewett continued, “I know you might be saying, ‘Oh, that’s not fair,’ but you now what, it’s so much fun.”

To see a rundown of all the presentations so far, visit festivalseekers.com. As for the live presentations, performances and business broadcasts, they are free to attend and can be found on the Facebook page #BuyBasin Festival. There are also financial incentives to attending the festival: if you share one or more videos from the Facebook page, you could win $100 towards a Basin-area business of your choice, or a $50 gift certificate to the Shred Kelly online store. Every video you share is another chance to win and four winners will be selected on May 3.

If you are an entrepreneur or business owner who wants to partake in the festival, or if you simply want to find out more information about it, visit ourtrust.org/buybasin.