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!
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| 19/04/2014
10:00 AM |
Still Waiting on the Lake to Open Up.
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The
past couple of weeks have been a mish mash of everything
weather wise. We’ve had high winds with a couple
of calm mornings, reasonably warm temperatures averaging
between 8 and 10C or 50F but for about three days
there we were at 13C and made it up to 15C or nearly 60F
this past weekend. In fact with three amazing
days in a row I got all kinds of yard work done and we
got quite a bit of burning done. On Sunday we had a pretty
good sized pile of slash from those two trees we had topped
this winter so that went out on the burn pile which meant
a wienie roast. It was a stunning afternoon and
after working all day we were both ready to sit and relax
around a fire with a couple of friends.
It’s going to be the end of open burning pretty soon
and with a good bit of the snow gone, it would be foolish
to burn much past the first of May anyway so I guess if
we have any more stuff to clean up and burn, we better
get on it. It’s just that’s easier said than
done. It seems that we’re on a dead run doing one
thing or another and these winds have thrown a wrench
into things because they just won’t let up. I think
we’ve only had one reasonably calm day in the past
month or so. The advantage as I’ve mentioned before,
though, is their drying effect which is pretty critical
at this time of year. Without them we would be knee deep
in mud.
Our lake ice hasn’t moved much at all this
spring. There just isn’t a thing to indicate it’s
melting. By this time of year there is usually
a little channel of water between our shore and the edge
of the ice that the buffle heads and loons cruise until
the open water expands but the birds are still all stacked
up down at the bridge where the Dean exits the lake, and
even down there the ice is taking its own sweet time moving
out.
The point has opened up a little bit but nothing like
it should be. Normally it would be open all the way across
to the island by now. I saw a couple of birds in the water
there yesterday but those are the first so it hasn’t
been opened wide enough for anything to swim around or
feed there.
We went to Willy’s Puddle and back on Tuesday
and Clearwater Lake is already wide open with not a shred
of ice on it. It normally opens up about two weeks
before Nimpo Lake with the exception of last year when
Nimpo cleared before Clearwater, the first time ever I
know of that happening. But I don’t see our lake
ice being clear in two weeks. I mean, it should be. That
would put it into the first week of May which is our average
ice off, but I don’t know about this year. Who knows?
Maybe the ice will just suddenly fade away like it did
last year.
What the ice has been doing some nights
is making a tremendous amount of noise, especially when
it’s really warm during the day and gets really cold
at night, and then throw a waxing moon in there. There
was one night that I lay in bed listening to it and the
ice did not stop muttering and rustling for even two seconds.
It was just a steady noise of low crunches and whoofs,
and whispers. I love listening to but trying to describe
it is pretty much impossible.
The mountains are still whiter than they have been
for most of the winter so I think there must be a pile
of snow up there now. There are lots of time when
we’ll be clear here but you can see storms to the
south and the west and it's snowing over the mountains.
We’ve had the odd flurry here as well but thankfully
nothing that amounted to much. We also got some rain for
a couple of days this past week but it wasn’t heavy
nor steady, so it didn’t really mess up the drying
process on the roads and in the yard. In fact what we
did get was perfect because our main road was just graded
and even though the frost is still coming out of the ground
the surface was actually getting pretty dusty, especially
after being graded. So the rain just served to compact
the fines brought up by the grader. The rain might also
have helped to warm the surface temperature of the lake
ice but like I said, no real sign of melting yet.
We have certainly been more fortunate than the rest
of Canada. The prairies got snow Thursday and Ontario
got nailed yesterday. I think it’s Atlantic
Canada’s turn next. Poor buggers. Winter just won’t
go away for them. I think that the worst part for most
of the Provinces is that they’ll get a few really
nice days and then bam! Ontario was up to 23C or 73F one
day earlier this week and the next day they were –4C
or 25F and slammed with snow.
Isn’t that just a non-balmy surprise!
I would say better them but us but we’ve all
had our share of that kind of spring weather at one time
or another. It’s called, “Welcome to Canada.”
I remember being absolutely furious as a kid one spring
in late April. It had been a long, long winter but finally
the weather had really warmed up, everything pretty much
melted and even drying up, grass just starting to turn
green and us kids playing outside and loving every minute
of it! It was a late Easter like this and we had a long
weekend from school coming up and then boom! There’s
a two foot dump of snow. Man, was I cheesed off!!!
I don’t know why weather is such a big part
of my life but I’ve often thought my first real run
in with it harkened back to that spring. My second
clearest memory of being really cheesed at Mother Nature
was on Halloween. All my life we kids were dragged to
my Mother’s friend’s house for Halloween where
all the folks of her age and one generation older hung
out. So while other kids got to go trick or treating,
we had to go there and hang out with the old fogies which
was absolutely no fun at all, regardless of what my Mother
thought.
(I’m that age now, of course, and still would not
consider people my age to be more fun to hang out with
than going trick or treating or hanging out with other
kids.)
So this one year we’d had the most marvellous, long,
hot fall and we had to talk long, hard, and fast, but
we finally convinced my Mother that it would be way more
fun if we kids could have a bonfire and friends over for
Halloween. I think my Dad must have pitched in
on our side for a change because otherwise, we would never
have won that one. She finally gave in and even became
part of the planning process, agreeing to buy the hot
dogs and marshmallows for us, and we had just the biggest
plans to make this the best Halloween party, ever. You
never saw such an excited little bunch of heathens in
your life! The day before the big party, the temperature
plummeted and it started to snow, and snow, and snow……
My brothers cried. I was PO’d beyond belief and of
course we had to call our friends and call off the big
party. The next day my Mother dragged our sorry butts
up to the same old place she always did every year and
we watched fireworks in the snow and listened to the old
fogies tell each other about their aches and pains and
which doctors they were seeing and what operations they’d
had in the past year, etc. To this day I’m certain
my Mother was in cahoots with Old Man Winter and I have
never, ever trusted Mother Nature since.
I never bet on the weather. I always have high hopes when
planning a function for outside, but I don’t bet
on it.
I’ve seen commentary written here and there
over the years about the inordinate amount of time Canadians
seem to spend talking about the weather and it’s
true, we do. I think that it has changed somewhat
in the cities like Vancouver now, which doesn’t see
a lot of extreme weather so urbanites probably don’t
notice much other than it’s either raining or it’s
not. But there are still a lot of Canadians in rural areas
and most of the rest of Canada’s cities are not so
large that they aren’t affected by weather.
For example, New York probably isn’t as affected
by winter weather as it was a hundred years ago because
it’s just such a massive heat sink. Where
as Montreal and Toronto are probably the only two Canadian
cities that can claim to be big enough to rarely be affected
by winter weather. The rest of Canadian city centers are
affected drastically by winter weather and rural Canada
is affected year round, of course, just as rural US is.
With exceptions like this past winter when all of North
America got a winter waxing, Canada generally has more
extreme winter weather than the US. I think Canadians
figure you can’t change it, so you might as well
talk about it. While weather as an opening topic
of a conversation has been a global joke for years, it
actually is a conversation opener in pretty
much all of Canada.
Maybe weather is less of a factor in the daily lives of
folks that get up, drive to work, sit in an office all
day, drive home and sit in their house for the rest of
the evening. But for people that work all their lives
outside, weather becomes a major factor in their lives.
If it’s 30 below zero outside but you know you still
have to work a 10 hours shift in those conditions, then
you have to dress for it. Then you have to wonder
if your vehicle will start at the end of those 10 hours,
if your fire will have burned out and the house be cold
by the time you get home. If it will be too cold
or too windy to cut firewood on the weekend. And if you
lived with no indoor plumbing and an outdoor john for
much of your life as I did, then just going for a morning
constitutional is directly affected by weather. I was
raised on a farm so weather affected every day of our
lives and when I owned a farm in Saskatchewan, weather
affected every day of my life, from feeding animals, to
hoping they don't go down on the ice in the paddocks,
to waiting for first rains to green up the pastures, to
gardening, to hoping you could get the hay off the fields
dry and in good condition to hoping you can get out of
your driveway, to shovelling snow… again. Even
here where I don’t have to get up and go to work
in lousy weather any more, it still affects every day
of my life. From ear aches caused by wind and
SAD from lack of sunshine in winter, to pins in my ankle
that predict incoming cold and arthritis from injuries
as a teen that tells me when there are changes in barometric
pressure, I can tell you that weather affects my life
in every way, every day as it does most Canadians.
I have often wondered what it would be like to live
somewhere like Hawaii where the weather really doesn’t
change that much, the temperature is always pleasant,
and everything is always green. I can’t imagine it.
To me, that's what Heaven would be like.
However, just to clarify, while I know I talk a lot about
the weather on this blog, it isn’t entirely for my
own sake.
We actually have a lot of part time residents in the Chilcotin
that like to know what the weather is doing here. It helps
them to keep tabs on their cabins or houses remotely.
By knowing what the temperature is, they know how it’s
affecting their homes if they are away. And if there are
windstorms, then they have a good idea of what kind of
clean up they can expect when they get here. If
it’s a slow spring, summer residents know not to
bother to come up until everything has melted and dried
out or they may not be able to get into their driveways
when they arrive. Many like to come up fishing
first thing in the spring and like to know if the ice
is off of the lake.
If it’s a long hot summer then forest fires are a
likelihood and part time residents know that if they do
come up, they may not be able to get in or out if the
highway is closed. Some come up if there are a lot of
fires just to check on their places. And lots of people
like to know if it’s a long, warm fall because they
may take time out from work, etc. to make a quick run
up for some fishing or hunting.
For those that like to come up in winter, they know that
if there has been a fresh dump of snow it may be hard
to get into their driveways but the skiing or snowmobiling
is going to be excellent. On the other hand, a large amount
of snow can mean overflow on the lake so snowmobiling
from home might be impossible. If it’s really
cold, then winter visitors know it’s pointless to
come up because it will probably be too cold to do anything
outside and being stuck inside for weeks on end is no
fun. For people that do a lot of clean up on their
properties, they like to know if there is still some snow
on the ground in the spring but it’s dry enough to
burn while in the fall, some folks like to know when it’s
still warm out but there has been a fresh snow so that
they can burn their summer slash piles. And also….
I just like to talk about the weather. :-)
By the way, I do apologize to everyone for it being so
long between blogs. As many of you may have noticed, this
site was on and off line over a period of a week and there
truly was a lot of blue smoke over this house. I
changed servers, the first time in nine years, and of
course it was guaranteed to go wrong. I chose
an excellent host and I have to say, I have not had such
tremendous online customer service in years! Unfortunately,
I had to call the help line several times as it turned
out there was a glitch in the move, and every time I got
an English speaking American. In fact, the number goes
to Utah and I don’t care if it’s not toll free.
It’s just wonderful to get knowledgeable techies
that speak perfect English! My new server is Blue
Host and so far, I would recommend them to anyone and
everyone for hosting your website. I guess there’s
a reason why they have the highest reviews of any host
on the Internet. That being said, between my ignorance,
using a different domain server, the Heartbleed bug which
threw a wrench into the middle of my move, and just a
weird little glitch, a 24 hour move took five days. That’s
never a good thing but since I’m a great believer
in Murphy’s Law, it was expected.
Oh, yeah. And if you’re wondering what the weird
moon photo is up on the right, that was my attempt at
photographing the lunar eclipse the other night. I think
I need to improve my night photography skills substantially
before attempting this again next year.
Happy Easter weekend, Everyone!
Last
week's blog is at April
Week One.
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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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