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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| 18/07/2014
3:30 PM |
The Record Breaking Weather
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I
just added the date above and realized that it has been
exactly a month since I wrote the last blog although it
was actually posted a little over two weeks ago. I kept
thinking about getting another one written, of course,
even feeling guilty when I didn’t. But the couch
has beckoned me on most evenings after a hard day’s
work and won out over sitting at the computer for several
hours.
Probably the biggest reason for exhaustion at the
end of the day has been the unbearably hot weather.
I’m sure most of you in BC and up and down the west
coast of the US know exactly what I am talking about.
In the last blog I wrote that we had gone down to Mission
for a couple of days and then side tripped around by the
Duffy Lake Road past Pemberton to get home. We worked
full speed for a couple of weeks around here and then
headed down to the Kootenays for about ten days rather
than going to the Yukon for a month as we had previously
planned.
After a long day on the road from Porteau Cove on the
Coast back to Williams Lake the back way, I decided my
back wasn’t up to a trip to the Yukon and back in
the time we had and Slocan Lake is always a great place
to go for a trip. Sadly, it rained a good part of the
time that we were there so we didn’t go for the number
of walks or hikes I would like to have gone on but it
was still a really welcome break from the work here. Besides,
we thought we were getting away from the mosquitoes here
but they never did show up so I guess we didn’t
need to leave after all other than needing a little vacation.
Unfortunately, by going south I missed my opportunity
here to transplant a whole whack of perennials that I
have to get moved before we can even think of starting
on building the new outdoor room. The cool rainy weather
would have been perfect for doing the job. That is definitely
not what we have had for the past two weeks.
We had to get home in time for guests coming to the cabin
on July second and spent the next three or four days playing
catch up on lawns, watering, and all the other chores
that come with being gone. Just about the time that our
guests were gone and I could get down to the tedious business
of moving some very large, very well established plants
and shrubs, it got hot. Furnace hot!
I don’t know if we broke any records for our
area but I know that records fell all over the province
day after day for high temperatures, particularly the
last week when BC suffered through an official heat wave.
On the seventh of July it was still 26C or 79F at supper
time and it just got warmer from there. It ranged from
28C to 32C or 82 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit day after day
for the next week until just the last couple of days when
we’ve had a slow cool down with a major weather change
today. It didn’t actually take me that long to adjust
to the higher temperatures and blazing sun, and I continued
to work outside very day, albeit much slower. But the
nights are what get me. I am miserable if it’s hot
for sleeping at night and although we were lucky because
it cooled down for a good part of the time at night, much
better than in 2004 during the Lonesome Lake fire, we
still had a couple of too warm nights.
At least this time we have good blinds on all the front
windows as well as the ones on the western side and
I admit that they do the job much better at keeping sun
and heat out than those classy sheets we had nailed up
in 2003 and 2004 during the hottest part of those summers.
Even with the blinds, though, keeping this house cool
is a pain in the behind and involves all kinds of timed
steps to do it because the place is built with wall to
wall windows facing south to attract heat in winter, not
keep it out in summer, and of course we very much
miss the huge pines we had all around the house that we
lost to the mountain pine beetle in 2006. That made a
huge difference!
So now we’ve developed our little routine of closing
all blinds and all windows early in the morning so that
it looks like a morgue in here. Then at about five when
the inside of the house had hit 26C or 79F, I would start
the furnace fan which would bring the cool air from the
basement up into the rest of the house. That would keep
it livable in here until ten at night when it would be
the same temperature if not a little cooler outside than
in the house. All windows and doors would be opened up
while the temperature dropped steadily outside and we
put a fan up in our bedroom door to draw the heat out
from inside the house through the loft. However,
that meant all that heat that had accumulated near the
21 foot ceiling had to be depleted through the bedroom
before that room would be even close to comfortable for
sleeping. It worked most nights but by the last
night or so of the hot weather, every surface in the house
had just acquired too much heat in the past week and I
ended up grabbing a couple of hours on the couch before
venturing back up to the sauna we called a bedroom.
I don’t know why we don’t get an air mattress
and set it up in the basement for these occasions. I
guess because we just don’t get enough hot weather
for the discomfort to stick in our little pea brains for
any length of time. I’m just thankful we
live where we do. I can’t imagine what it would have
been like in other parts of the province where the nights
don’t cool down. I guess those people probably have
air conditioners…..
Most days we had clear air here and sometimes a slight
breeze, but for a couple of days we had a little smoke
haze in the air, and four days ago it rolled in and just
settled over us like a blanket. I swear, the smoke magnifies
the sun and the heat because it was truly stifling that
day, with a blood red moon that rose that night, but by
the next morning the smoke was gone. However, I don’t
believe the Cariboo or a good part of the central province
has been so fortunate.
The day after the smoke cleared I noticed multiple
smoke plumes north of the Itcha Ilgatchuz Range which
we can see from the back of our house. We looked
on the map and going by the reports on the news, we were
seeing smoke from forest fires that ranged from Chelaslie
Arm about 150 miles north and west of Prince George to
the Euchiniko Fire about 60 miles northeast of us and
due west of Quesnel. A wind out of the north was what
brought the smoke down on top of us and once it switched
out of the west again, it cleared out here. Since
then it’s been very windy and you could see the smoke
plumes blow up every evening and all day yesterday with
big black billows in one spot where a fire had hit fresh
timber. From there the smoke would settle on the
horizon and you could see great swaths of it going east.
I can’t imagine what the air quality in Quesnel or
Williams Lake has been like in the past three days but
it must be just brutal. We did see a news item today showing
Prince George at 9:00 a.m. this morning and the smoke
was so thick and low, pressed down by heavy cloud, that
people had their headlights on to drive and it looked
like the middle of the night on the streets.
We had a cool down yesterday with a little cloud
moving in by late afternoon and today has been between
10 and 15 degrees cooler than the past week. Very little
sun, spitting rain, and high winds keeping that smoke
at bay.
I had high hopes with the change in the weather of being
able to start on the perennial transplant again for the
first time in a while but both the plants and me would
have gone sailing to Inuvik in this wind. The result is
that I no longer have an excuse to not write a blog.
We have had a few developments around here in the
past month including a couple of bears being around which
has interfered with my going for the regular three mile
walk in the morning.
I had been seeing little signs since late May but I carry
bear spray and bangers anyway so didn’t think too
much about it. Then about three weeks ago just after we
got back from down south, I was walking on the road part
of my route when I saw where the wild Indian horses had
skidded to a halt and their tracks dove over the side
of the road into the ditch and off through the woods.
"That's odd." I thought, but it wasn’t
until I came on a great dump of bear scat the other side
of a little rise just past that point that I realized
a bear had probably popped up over the hill and startled
the horses into running. The sign was fresh that
morning so I stopped to check my spray and clear the end
of the bear banger before proceeding down the road and
then around by the back trail. I had the wind
in my face and only Cat was with me so I kept a pretty
clear eye out and made a little bit of noise now and again.
I still didn’t worry too much about running into
a bear after that because as long as you keep the wind
going in front of you and make some noise, they’ll
be long gone before you have a hope of seeing them. Then
I got a phone call a couple of evenings later from a gentleman
inquiring about properties that he had been looking at
while here a few days before.
Once he figured out where we lived from our conversation
he described encountering a bear in our bay. He had been
down here fishing in a boat and saw a shadow in the trees
near shore. He went in to have a closer look, realized
it was a grizzly, and as he went to back off, the bear
bluff charged him. He said the bear came into
the water and started swimming toward him so he backed
the boat out of the bay and cleared out enough to watch
the bear cross to another shore. He thought it possible
that the bear had intended on going into the water anyway
and he was in the way, hence the charge, or the bear may
have smelled the fish in his boat. He said it wasn’t
in the best of shape so it’s possible it was hungry.
That would fit with my estimate that the bear had not
even come out of its den until well into May when I found
the plug along the side of the road. That would put it
way behind on the calories list.
I spoke to him at length just to get an idea of
his knowledge level regarding bears and there was no question
that he knew what he was talking about. He had
worked for Ministry of Environment out in the Chilcotin
and Bella Coola for years so he had extensive knowledge
of grizzlies and blacks and their general behavior. That
kind of worried me.
There is no question that we have grizzlies around here
but they are rarely seen. They seem to want even less
to do with people than people want to do with them so
they’ll normally be long gone before you even get
in their vicinity. That a grizzly would bluff charge
a human being is highly worrisome and I thanked him for
the warning. I also haven’t gone out walking
since without Andy. I figure with the two of us and a
dog a bear is highly unlikely to come near us. Since then
the hot weather pretty much precluded any chance of walking
until this morning when we both went out with one dog.
However, several people have reported seeing a black bear
on the road and around this area lately so I would expect
the grizzly is gone. While sometimes you will see both
species in the same general area, it is not likely that
a black bear would be here if the grizzly still was because
grizzly will often kill a black in its territory. More
than likely, the grizzly will be headed toward the Atnarko
headwaters or down into the Bella Coola Valley now for
the salmon run. At least that’s what I hope.
Normally I would never worry that much, although I would
keep a cautious eye out on the back trail if I knew there
might be an aggressive bear around. But prior to this
I’ve always had River and at least one if not two
other dogs. With bears it’s not so much about a dog
protecting you as that bears see numbers and size as being
a disadvantage to them.
But Mocha, the Lab, died a couple of springs ago and River,
the Rottweiler, whom I’m confident would protect
me with his life and has the size to prove it, is finding
three miles a day just a bit much now. He’s 14 and
still in wonderful shape but he can’t do the walk
every day and lags farther and farther behind on the rare
occasion he does. That leaves the Catahoula, a breed that
is commonly used here for cougar and lynx hunting, but
I have no confidence in her at all when it comes to protecting
me from a bear. First of all, she has no clue what
a bear is, she’s not a big hound, and I’m pretty
sure she places a much higher value on her own skin than
she does on mine. That would definitely be a case
of all you have to do to protect yourself from a bear
is to run faster than the next guy, and she can definitely
outdistance me.
So now if I want to go for a walk every day I can only
hope I can continue to talk Andy into going with me so
that to the eyes of a bear there are three creatures on
the trail, start packing my rifle, or just go on the assumption
that the grizzly is gone and the black bear is too smart
to stick around when it sees me. I’m hoping for the
first and once the salmon runs begin in full down in the
Valley then there shouldn’t be a lot to worry about
anymore.
In addition to bears hanging about, we’re getting
other wildlife around here that doesn’t normally
belong including a small whitetail herd of deer
that has moved into the area in the past couple of years
and this year at least one of the does has twins with
her. Whitetail deer have been unheard of here before,
although they’re common down in Tatlayoko Valley.
All we have ever had was the rare Mule deer, and of course,
moose and caribou. The neighbour is not happy with seeing
them in her yard and I dread the day they find mine. The
tracks have come up to our gate but not through so far
and at least one hangs out at the neighbour’s corner
on a regular basis. Deer in our gardens is one injustice
we have not had to endure so far in this part of the country
compared to many other places, including in the towns
and cities, but it looks like they are on their way in.
The wild Indian horses have also become a nuisance
to the point that most of us have had to build fences
around our properties and install gates this year.
We’re lucky because we live on a peninsula and our
meadow is wet, I didn’t have a lot of fence to erect
this spring, but I expect there will come a day when the
horses will figure out that the meadow dries out in the
fall and we’ll have them coming in to check out the
lawns in which case, I guess I’ll be building more
fence. I’m trying to convince the locals of the tastiness
of horse meat but I don’t have anyone convinced quite
yet. Too many more destroyed yards though and I might
have yet.
I’m beginning to suspect that the horse herds
with so many young foals this year, and the newer whitetails,
are what is drawing in the bears this summer and the wolves
this past winter but I could be wrong.
On the upside, the day we returned from our trip down
to the Kootenays we saw mama loon in our back bay with
a couple of fluffy little babies, dad nearby keeping a
close watch and setting up a ruckus whenever we got anywhere
near them. He’s a pretty aggressive loon which is
probably why he still has two babies left and the pair
in the front bay seem to be down to one.
The other day I could hear him setting up a row in the
back bay long enough that I went to take a look at what
was bugging him.
A swimmer with a life jacket on was on her back swimming
from across the other side to our side of the back bay
where the docks are stored. She was propelling herself
by kicking her feet and beating the water in exactly the
same manner as the male loons do when fighting over territory.
It was too much for the male. He kept making runs at her
over the water beating it with his wings trying to scare
her out of his territory while mama loon slowly made her
way toward our shore with babies in tow and away from
the action.
The loon would thrash his way toward the swimmer
and on one occasion, it looked like he went right over
top of her. I saw her rear upright looking a little
stunned and not sure what had just happened. Then she
rolled back over and apparently oblivious to the whole
situation, continued on into our little bay, which really,
really teed off the male, but other than continue to try
to scare her out of his area there wasn’t much he
could do. I give him full marks for being willing to take
on a creature more than eight times his size in order
to protect his family and territory. Presumably that same
determination is what has kept the bald eagles from getting
either of the two babies, though not for lack of trying.
We’re still shaking our heads over the miracle
of lack of mosquitoes this year. It’s utterly
unheard of but I can tell you, it has been very welcome.
We attended a little gathering at the other end of the
lake last Sunday, the night of the super moon and in honor
of our good friend, Henry Sparks, who died of stroke at
5:30 a.m. that day. We sat around a fire and were bothered
hardly at all by mosquitoes. We also had a fire the week
before for our cabin guests and some friends, again with
few mosquitoes until nearly midnight when it cooled down
enough for them to come out. A couple of times we have
had reason to be outside in the evening and other than
about two nights ago when we went for a walk at the wrong
time, we have encountered almost nothing for bugs.
Sometimes in the shade away from the wind and sun
you’ll see the odd one but it’s been a pretty
amazing summer so far and unless the heat these
past 10 days set them back and they’ll come out yet
in cooler weather, I think we’re over the hurdle
for this year. How nice it would be if all our summers
were like that! We have had several hot summers
in a row now and a lot of the ponds and sloughs that developed
after the beetle kill have dried up this year. The lake
is the lowest we have ever seen it and there has been
nothing for rain for the past two months. With so much
of the mosquito breeding grounds dried up, I hope that
means that next summer will be just as good. It would
be so nice to get back to normal, which means lots of
mosquitoes but not as unbearable as they have been for
the past four years.
Fire bans went on this week so I guess we don’t
have to worry about bugs around a campfire in the evening
now anyway. No more campfires until the end of
September or until the weather changes. Since a long,
hot summer has been predicted for this year, I don’t
think that will change. But that's okay, we’ll just
have lots of camp fires in October. Or maybe our outdoor
room will be finished by then.
Nah... maybe not. It's a big project and the beams are
only just now being cut for it down in Bella Coola. But
next year for sure! Then camp fire bans won't matter,
nor will mosquitoes in the evening.
Last
month's blog is at June
Week Two.
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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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