Wilderness Adventures - West Chilcotin Blog
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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.
| 07/03/2014
4:20
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Yahoo! Spring Has Sprung!
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Starting
the morning, spring has finally arrived!
It dropped to –17C or 1F last night but it did not
take any time to warm up this morning at all. It
had hit 5C by 10:30 this morning and so far I’ve
seen a high of 7.7C or 45F today although the
temperature is bouncing around within a three degree range
with this system that’s coming in. The warm temperatures
have brought high winds with them, our spring winds coming
when they’re supposed to for a change, that help
to carry off all the moisture created from melting snow
and ice.
Our ground level winds have been coming out of the south
and east today while the you can see the clouds scudding
along from the out of the west and higher still there
are huge lenticular clouds dotting the sky. One of our
part time neighbours was out skiing on the lake this morning
but it would have been tough going out in that wind. More
power to him.
It really is nice to be able to stand outside in
a short sleeved shirt in a warm wind rather than bundled
up and in a wind so cold it’ll peel the skin right
off your face. I don’t care about too much
wind today other than it means no walk because there is
no way I’m walking in the woods with it howling out
there, but we’ve kind of been doing a lot of running
around anyway, so that’s okay. We had to do the milk
run to Anahim and finished hanging pictures up at the
newly opened restaurant in Nimpo. Andy is finally able
to wash the new truck, which it needs desperately with
all the mag and salt built up on it, but this has been
the first warm day where he dares to do it. If you tried
to wash the truck in those temperatures we had previously
the doors and windows would be frozen shut until summer.
And now that I’m back in my office, I finally get
a chance to write a blog. It’s kind of cool to look
out my office window and literally be able to watch the
snow melt off of the roofs on the woodshed and cabin.
Yesterday four of us went out for a little snowmobile
ride and I think it’s a good thing that we did.
At this rate, I’m not sure how much longer good snowmobiling
will last, although it does look like there’s a lot
of fresh snow up on the mountains. Our neighbour, Dawn,
wanted to see if we could get over to the Dusty Lake road
from Lilly Lake on snowmobile and we did find the way,
we just got turned around a few times, but that just made
it more fun. We eventually hit Towdystan and crossed over
to the Charlotte Lake road, down to the Hooch and came
back Dot Island way across the lake. I have to say,
it was certainly a pleasure to see the country from a
little different perspective for a change. So
often we go snowmobiling on the west side of the highway
toward the Coast Mountain Range. It was nice to get up
fairly high on the east side of the highway and get to
look at the mountains from that elevation instead of being
in their shadow. You get to see more of the bases of the
mountains and views that we can’t see from our place.
I used to hunt up in that area way back when and we’ve
taken a drive up Dusty Lake road the odd time, but I’ve
never been up there in winter before. As usual, with a
blue sky and winter air, the mountains look like you can
reach out and touch them.
We only covered 40 miles but that was actually more
than we expected and since conditions were excellent,
why not keep going?
Since it was one of those days you didn’t want to
end, I managed to talk Andy and my other neighbour into
breaking open our snowshoe trail on their snowmobiles
and mine so that I can get the other snowmobile in there
pulling the tracker for cross country skies. You know,
even being conscious of the fact that a snowmobile is
going to have to go over this trail when we first broke
it with snowshoes, it’s still really tight in spots.
It might not have been a good situation if the snow had
been really deep because you had to slow down so much
to poke between the trees, but if the tracks we put in
yesterday set up, I might be able to pull a tracker over
it without too much difficulty. However, I’m going
to watch the weather here for a day or two first. There
doesn’t seem to be much point in going to too much
trouble if all the snow is going to melt really quickly.
Looking at the forecast on Andy’s iPad last
night, it looks like the temperature over the next two
weeks is going to be above freezing during the day every
day and not that cold at night. We don’t
actually have a lot of snow on the ground, two feet at
most, so if we get a big melt and no fresh snow, we’re
pretty much done with the winter sports. We might get
a little more snowmobiling in on the trails, but that’s
about it.
I expect the warm weather means that the road bans will
be on and most logging operations and hauling will be
shut down here and thoughout the Cariboo in the next week
or two. When we get cold weather right up until this late
in the season, it usually means a fast warm up and one
big, icy, muddy, watery mess everywhere. That’s okay.
It’s Break Up. Hopefully our ice road will hold up
for the next month until our gravel road dries out. Less
ruts for the summer, that way.
But when we get weather like this, overflow is
more than possible and that will probably take out the
ice road.
Evening:
Well, it’s still an amazing 4.6C or 40F out there
tonight but the wind is howling like a beast, the tree
tops are whipping around at a pretty good rate and the
roof on the house is doing a little groaning and creaking.
I think I’ll shut my computer down before bed tonight.
There’s always the possibility of a power
outage in this kind of wind. As long as the wind
and temperatures hold, it will continue to melt throughout
the night. All we need now is rain to really take the
snow down. Oh, geez, did I say that out loud? The snowmobilers
will skin me alive! My other half will want to do the
same because I get to celebrate the clocks turning ahead
this weekend, which he hates because he loses the morning
light. But I would much rather gain the light in the evening,
my favorite time of day, and naturally, I get to rub it
in. Yahoo!! Happy Daylight Savings Time everyone….
Except for those of you that live in Saskatchewan and
Arizona, of course.
Last week's blog is at February
Week Four.
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Anahim
Lake Highway cam looking West.
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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!
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