Wilderness Adventures - April, Week 1/2010
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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.
| 03/04/2010
4:53
PM |
Easter Heads
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As
usual, the Chilcotin is unique in how it does things.
Rather than color Easter eggs this weekend, some
Nimpo Lake community members decided to color their hair.
Like many good local events and happenings, it all started
out one evening over a glass or two of alcoholic refreshment
between two guys that challenged each other to bleach
and then tie dye their hair. Since the wife of one was
sitting there and is always quick to hold fundraisers,
she decided this would be a great way to raise money for
the BC Children's Hospital Foundation. One thing led to
another with one guy challenging yet another over a period
of a couple of weeks and we ended up with five guys and
one gal agreeing to bleach and then color their hair.
Leah, who's husband started it all, decided that we would
have to do the bleaching first on Friday, but that
the color would be applied to the hair Saturday in front
of the store in a ribboned off area. There would
be lunch provided by Leah and Richard contributed by them
on behalf of the store, (They also paid for about $150
worth of coloring material.) for a minimum donation of
$5.
Leah talked me and another friend into showing up at Oscar's
cabin last night where the bleach fest began. (Helped
along by more alcohol refreshment, of course.) However,
since the victims.... er volunteers, actually trickled
in one at a time, I didn't even have to do much. Leah
did all the bleaching. We started early in the afternoon
on Melanie because she's part Cree with hair well on its
way to her knees and we figured it would take at least
two applications of bleach to get her hair light enough
to take color. We only did a portion of her hair or else
it would have taken all the bleach Leah had bought. Then
a a glorious purple was applied to the newly lightened
hair. Permanent purple that is.
The guys were next and we had Oscar (who is named
for the grumpy muppet on Sesame Street. Not his real name.
But it fits.) looking like a parrot in no time.
Then he, Richard, and Clint, who was sporting a fluorescent
orange racing stripe and green goatee, went up to the
coffee house jam at The Bean with the homemade charity
sign. The lead singer had agreed that if they made over
$100 in donations from the coffee shop, he would allow
an impermanent color put in his hair. If they made over
$250, he would go for the permanent. They picked up $260
in donations so Chris was doomed to blue hair by 11:00
this morning. Good sport that he is, he arrived on time.
We had one hold out last night that was supposed to arrive
at 7:00 but kept making excuses every time we phoned him,
but after enough harassment, he arrived at 9:30 last night
to become a blonde. The same holdout didn't arrive until
after we had everything packed up and everyone had left
this afternoon to get his tie dying done. I guess I can't
blame him. He's a young guy and though handsome enough
as a blonde, I don't think he was quite prepared to go
the whole way with blue. Or maybe his ranch chores really
did hold him up. :-)
The weather was not particularly pleasant for our
little endeavor this morning. We had sun, thankfully,
but we also had a really chilly wind. Even moving vehicles
around in the parking lot to block the wind didn't help
much. As our volunteers arrived one by one, so did the
onlookers. They too got into the action and before you
knew it, over half the people that had arrived just to
watch now had impermanent color in their hair. I hope
it's not permanent. Andy's is pink and while it looks
quite nice, I'm hoping that it will wash out and not just
fade out.
There were smokies, hot dogs, donuts, potato salad, and
Leah's special cupcakes. Most of the eats went as the
donations came in. Everyone was really generous but the
party broke up by 12:30 this afternoon because of the
miserably cold wind. It's really too bad because I'm sure
if we had stayed out a little longer more people would
have stopped. But then again, we were out of all
but the permanent blue color. We'll have to buy
more variety next year. Setting it a little later when
the air is warmer might be a good idea too. I really pitied
anyone sitting there in that wind with wet color in their
hair. The kids didn't seem to mind but I saw a few adults
shivering.
I'm not sure what happened to our local RCMP. I understand
that at least three had promised to show up today for
some temporary color to be applied, but only one was there
and she was out of uniform.
Thanks to everyone that volunteered and everyone
that contributed. You did wonderfully for such a tiny
community!
This is the start of a new week so you'll find last week's
blog at March
Week Four . Just to let you know, I
will be away all week to a conference so I will not be
writing before next Saturday at the soonest. Happy Easter
Everyone!
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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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