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Boulder slides into Silver Creek shed

Salmon Valley: Couple on edge after huge rock falls from Mt. Ida.
Rock Slide Silver Creek
Damage: Regan Canuel stands beside the boulder that came loose from a cliff face on Mt. Ida and rolled down the slope on Saturday morning

Salmon River Road residents Regan and Jennifer Canuel got a hefty surprise Saturday.

The couple returned home from shopping and Regan went around to the side of the house where he noticed something amiss – a boulder about nine feet in diameter was sitting in his shed.

While the roar the huge boulder made as it tore a path down the steep western slope of Mt. Ida was heard across the valley about 11:30 a.m. on April 17,  Regan says the residents underneath the cliff were not at home.

“If I had been home I probably would have run and never come back,” he says, noting he and Jennifer decided to spend a night in a hotel to wind down and deal with the issue the next day.

On Sunday morning, the couple returned home and contacted the Columbia Shuswap Regional District’s Shuswap Emergency Program (SEP).

SEP co-ordinator Cliff Doherty called in a geotechnical expert, who advised the couple that aside from a few small, loose rocks, the boulder episode was over.

“Basically he told us ‘you’re in no more danger now than you were three days before it happened,’” says Canuel wryly, noting the expert also told him if the boulder hadn’t hit another rock and bounced off course, it would have crashed into the couple’s bedroom.

While there, the geotech spotted a fracture just to the south of the Canuel’s property and declared when, not if, it comes down, it will be a big event.

The couple has lived under the cliff for 13 years and has only heard “the odd little pebble coming down.”

Unnerved, the Canuels are moving their bedroom to the front of the house, with plans to build a protective berm at the back in the future. But Regan believes plans to sell the property in five years are not likely viable.

“I’m thinking I’d have to declare it and nobody’s gonna buy it,” he says.

Doherty says the cliff is composed of layers of lava flow, not unlike a pile of pancakes, and that rocks will continue to come down.

When the regional district receives the geotech report, the information will be shared with affected residents in the form of a letter.