This
is about a remote area in west central British Columbia, Canada
called the West Chilcotin. Surrounded by numerous glacial mountain
ranges, alpine lakes teeming with wild Rainbow Trout, and full
of wildlife. Living here goes from no running water or electricity
to spacious log homes with all the conveniences and without
the smog!
If
you would like to see pictures of wildlife, mountains, lakes,
exciting snowmobiling, events and more, and read some great
contributed stories and ongoing blogs, just
go into Archives on the lower left side of this page.
Rolling over an image will give you its description.
Check out the Picture
of the Day.
16/07/20108:24
PM
The BCFA AGM and Forest Fires
Planes
have already begun to arrive today for the BC Floatplane
Association's AGM tomorrow. Actually, they began arriving
Thursday, which is a good sign. There have been lots of
planes on floats and wheels cruising in on the lake or
overhead on their way to the airport or the dirt strip
where the AGM is being held, so that's kind of cool. The pilots have certainly hit it lucky with weather
this year. It looks like it will be really nice
right through to Tuesday with sunshine and clear skies.
Unless the forecast changes of course, but it does look
like another high pressure system is building in.
We've had days and days of really nice weather, although
Monday was really cold with a chilly wind. Actually, we've
had quite a bit of wind for the past week and the only
possible good it has done is helped to keep the mosquitoes
at bay..... Somewhat.
We had guests on Monday and I saw them through the window
as they walked down our driveway in the morning with him
wearing a heavy lumberjack coat. I thought, "Oh,
must be from the Coast. Not used to our temps."
Until I went outside myself a little while later and immediately
dove back inside for my winter coat. Brrr!
It has warmed back up again through the week but dropped
again last night to just a couple of degrees above freezing.
Andy turned on the sprinklers over at the neighbour's
when he took the dogs for a walk this morning and couldn't
figure out why hardly any water was coming out. He
took the sprinkler off the hose and a few pieces of ice
finally came plopping out onto the ground with the water.
I forgot to disconnect their sprinklers tonight. I hope
it doesn't freeze again, although it's not supposed to.
It warmed up drastically today so it won't drop nearly
as much overnight. A forest fire started at Bull Canyon on Wednesday
and closed Highway 20 for the day. I guess the
fire crossed the highway and it was quite smoky even yesterday.
It also burned a power pole so there was no electricity
from there to this side of Tatla Lake until Thursday evening.
Still, the Cariboo Fire Center threw a lot at it. I was
notified of the fire shortly after it started so I checked
out the information on the Forestry website. By
Wednesday evening there were already a number of firefighters
on it, air tankers and helicopters bucketing.
I just checked it out on the forestry website a few minutes
ago and it's grown from 30 hectares to 160 hectares. Unfortunately,
it's human caused, which we suspected it would be since
Bull Canyon is a recreational campground. People will
never learn, I guess. It's not like we can't expect enough
fires from lightning which we can do nothing about. But
to get people causing them! If they don't know we're in
extreme conditions they must be brain dead. That's
why there are fire danger rating signs all along the highway
in any community where there's a forestry hut. So
that people will be aware of what the situation is.
The news hour flashed one of the BC forestry maps on TV
the other night and it was as I had suspected just from
walking around outside and knowing how little moisture
we've received since the snow melted. Our region
is in the red (extreme) and everything around
it is in brown (high) fire danger zones. If you're interested
in looking at the map for BC just copy and paste the following
address http://bcwildfire.ca/Weather/Maps/danger_rating.htm
in your browser.
So far, so good around here. I don't know how we've been
so lucky so far as to not have a local fire, but we sure
have been. I don't know if there's a lookout up
in our forestry tower yet but Andy thought he
might have heard something today on the radio to indicate
there might be. I guess we'll see. It's crazy to not
have one.
Andy just came in and told me to come out and take a look
at the smoke in the west this evening. Yep, definitely
smoke, but it's in the direction of that fire in North
Tweedsmuir and very apparently far away so I think it's
the one I saw the smoke on when it first started a week
ago. We've been seeing a pretty red sky over in
that direction for several evenings now, and smoke would
explain it but this is the first evening we've
had such clear blue in that direction so that you could
see the smoke. The only other fire of note in the area
is around Kluskus and that should be farther northeast
to our location, so as I said, we've been awfully lucky
so far! I think what has saved us is the periodic cool
downs we've been getting between hot spells. That heat
just doesn't build up long enough to create lightning
storms, and as I mentioned before, there's no moisture
around here to create a thunderstorm buildup. Cross
our fingers!
We've been taking weekly trips down to Bella Coola for
the past several weeks and seeing a lot of bears, but
this warm weather seems finally to have driven them all
into the bush. Or they're down on the rivers fishing now.
We didn't see any on the trip down this past week, but
we did have incredible clear blue skies all the way down
the Hill. Perfect for pictures for a change! Check it
out on the right!
You'll find last week's articles at July
Week One. Have a good weekend.
The purpose of this web site is to draw attention to a
remote area of west central British Columbia. It is a
beautiful area that relies heavily on tourism. The search
engines don't know much about the West Chilcotin, Anahim
Lake, Nimpo Lake or any of the other small communities
in the region and I hope to change that! Even as large
as this site will eventually be, there just isn't enough
room or time in the day to fully describe this incredible
country but I am going to try scraping away at the tip
of the iceberg, so join me!
Follow
the links, and see what the West Chilcotin is really like!
