A Mysterious Hawk

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 stories like 'Lake Monsters' about the Lakesounds just go into Archives on the lower left side of this page.
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22/04/2008 9:05 PM

The Hawk

We've gotten a little closer to the identity of our little killer bird newly arrived to the area. But it's still not a sure thing, even with pictures. Maybe readers can help but darned if we can positively identify what we've got according to the bird book.
Andy walked over to the neighbour's to check for damage to the docks stored on that shore. While he was there, these hawks started carrying on. One had caught something and was flying along with it while the other tried to take it away. Apparently it succeeded in doing so and it turned out to be the female because according to our bird book, they're always much larger.
I had already taken a quick snap with the little camera when one of these hawks came cruising by the deck for a blackbird snack, but since I'd had the camera set on video while I recorded the wild lake sounds, I was too slow to react. You really couldn't tell much about the bird by the time I got a picture of it. Andy came back over and got me so we slung binoculars and camera over our necks and went trekking. All the while the lake was thundering and rattling, while water 'breathed' up through the cracks and the blackbirds sang over it all. It's pretty noisy around here in the spring.
There was no sign of the hawks once we got there, but Andy did point out what he thought might be their nest. It makes sense because there was no question they were mating a month or so ago. At least I can't imagine any other reason for all the ruckus they were making. While we waited for them to arrive back we wandered around taking note of all the ice folded up here and there. The other two docks are okay, but a dock salvaged some time ago by the one neighbour who was going to fix it up and use it is now beyond salvage. It's pretty twisted up and it's definitely toast. We wanted to check on his airplane because of the way the ice was acting, but it was okay. A ridge of ice had come up under his airplane floats but fortunately was too brittle to do any damage. Andy broke it down with his foot pretty easily. Everything else looked okay so we returned to sit on a stump in the sun and see if our hawk returned. It suddenly did but since it was behind me, I only got a few quick pictures before it disappeared but it's a beautiful bird. It started hunting over the meadow but it's such a quick and silent little thing that it's easy to lose track of it.
We think it's either a Cooper's Hawk or Sharp shinned Hawk, both with a spread in the 20 some inch range, but we still can't rule out American Kestral or Merlin. Whatever it is, its presence here on a full time basis is definitely uncommon because I think that last year may have been the first sign we ever saw of the species. I'll post the best picture I got and you guys can let me know what you think it is.
Terry B. and my Mom were out having fun in the skies today and flew over Nimpo Lake several times checking out the ice ridges. They estimated around ten of them on the Main Arm alone and I can only assume it's because of the warm up, then sudden drop in temperature, and we've had a wind out of the north for the last few days which could be pushing the ice down to us from the North Arm. Who knows. It's all 'guesstimation' anyway and we're not the only ones that will sustain damage from it this year. Terry figures his big airplane dock is in danger and I dread to think what sideways pressure will be put on docks along the Main Arm.
It went down to -15C or 5F last night and it definitely got above freezing today. The sun had a lot of power and a great deal of ice had already melted out along the shore by noon. I'm hoping this cold spell will end and start some serious melting so that the ice stops folding up.
I had hoped to start a new week tonight because I have lots of new pics to post, but we've lots to get ready for tomorrow and I'm running out of time. I'll probably just delete a few pics on the right or save my new ones for a new week and move this update into when I can.
For anyone local that didn't remember, the Nimpo Lake Community Association is putting on a bingo at the Hall at 1:00 on Saturday. Pizza, hot dogs, chips and soft drinks will be available and Leah and Richard have collected an unbelievable selection of prizes from local and Williams Lake businesses. This is to add to our Hall improvement fund and besides, I think I volunteered for the concession so if you show up, the soft drinks are free. Be there or be square!

21/04/2008 8:21 PM

Lake Monsters

I suspect Nimpo Lake is going to be called a monster by more than one person this spring. And it isn't going to have anything to do with the noises it makes....or actually it does, but only as the end result.
Andy first noticed this morning that a ridge of ice had pushed up between the point and the big island and from the big island to the small one. The first ridge is pretty high in spots while the second is much lower. You could see that another ridge had been pushed up from the big island angling away from us to the far shore but that isn't all that uncommon. More uncommon was a tent shaped mountain of ice that was pushed up in the back bay near the far shore and that ridge got lower as it went along but still extended to a bay on our side running crossways to what is technically the Dean River. I had never recalled seeing such a little mountain of ice there, nor had Andy, which prompted us to take a bit of a jaunt around our property.
We checked our dock first down by the guest cabin and a ridge of ice had pushed up right under our dock between the two sets of barrels, putting a pretty good kink in one of them. The back end of the barrels had been pushed up enough to pull the nails and force the dock off of its winter supports and the tail of one barrel pushed up one of the deck boards. We won't know until all of the ice is melted off of the lake what the total damage will be or if the barrels will 'unkink' and pop back out again, or if they will have to be replaced.
All along the shore in our front bay and the side shore, folds of ice had been pushed up around shrubs lining the shore, particularly where the ice had been melted and there had been water only days before. We think that's what happened in the dock area, and indeed, wherever you see a ridge of ice now, there had been open water. When it froze over in the cold of the last couple of days, it formed another three or four inches of fresh ice, but compared to between two and three feet of ice on the rest of the lake, it would still be the weakest point of all. If the lake ice was growing again or moving, it would first crack and then fold on those weak spots.
We went around to our point where we have the 'christmas' tree with the red lights on it all winter so that sledders can find their way home to see what had occurred there, and where there had only been a monster crack extending from our point to the far shore yesterday, there was now a monster ridge of ice pushed up where that crack had been and seemed fairly recent. A couple more large cracks ran along the shore and were fresh enough that water was still 'breathing' under the fresh skim of ice formed this evening.
The ridges and cracks certainly explained all of the noise for the past couple of days. Two nights ago the lake was making noises like a movie set UFO the way it does when the ice is growing. No surprise considering our temperatures. Yesterday and last night it never stopped rumbling, and today....we've never heard it sound like it did today. It just grumbled continually and it was loud with lots of gunshot cracking. I actually recorded it again this afternoon so I'll have to mess around with the sound this week and see if I can get it uploaded to the Lakesounds page.
I got to sneak away from my computer for a little while today when my partner came in and invited me to help contribute to global warming by starting some slash on fire. Heaven knows we could do with all the warming we could get considering our temperatures. It was down to -16.5C or 3F last night and never did make it to above freezing today.
We've actually been waiting for a reasonably calm day to start some big slash piles on fire over on property belonging to two different neighbours who aren't here this winter and asked us to do the burning. By the time they get back fire season could be upon us and then they can't burn, so we often get to play the neighbourhood firebugs. Suits me. I like fire and it's way more fun than being stuck in my office.
We got several big piles burning and played around with pushing in limbs as they burned down until we both smelled suitably of heavily smoked salmon. Guilt finally got the better of me and I had to come back to work but it was fun while it lasted and the corner out on our road already looks considerably better. Now if we could just get rid of a few hundred more red trees....

19/04/2008 12:34 PM

Little Spring Surprise

Folks on Vancouver Island woke up to a little surprise this morning coming in the form of about a foot of snow. I gathered from the news that most snow clearing equipment had been put away by now because the airport manager at Nanaimo said he had to get his plow back on his truck and the same for the city workers because they were slow to get out this morning.
A lot of flights got held up and power lines were down, but with quickly warming temperatures, the snow won't stay on roads long. It's beyond my understanding as to why you would insist on going out on a Saturday morning during a record April snowfall, only to end up in the ditch, if you absolutely didn't have to.
Vancouver itself only got a light snow that melted in no time but the Okanagan got about three inches and everyone the province over was bemoaning the fact that the little tulip heads on their little tulips were covered in snow. Ha! That's what you get for stealing our snow!
The diehards here have been praying for snow and we only got a light dusting, but they went out snowmobiling anyway this morning. Had we gotten a few inches of snow to cover the ice on Nimpo Lake, I suspect Andy would have jumped the twelve feet of open water near shore with his machine to cross over to the other side of the lake, but as it was, he and Richard had to load their sleds up in the trucks, and drive down to the other end of Nimpo. The ice is just too slippery to run on right now with little snow on it so there's just not enough lubrication for the snowmachines. And since it went down to -13C or 8F last night, obviously there's no water laying on the ice, either.
The weather people were right again, (Jeepers!) having forecast a cold front moving in by the weekend. Yesterday we had blowing snow and frigid temps out of the north and while it's settled down a bit, it's still cold outside. This cold spell is expected to last for about three days and then it looks like we'll get some nice weather next week if the satellite pictures are at all correct.
The red winged blackbirds have begun to mob the bird feeder now, but so did the chickadees yesterday, and they haven't been around much, probably because overall, our temperatures haven't been too bad. They're far better weather forecasters than the weathermen, that's for sure. They've just been picking here and there for the past couple of months because for the most part, enough bare ground and seed heads have been exposed, and enough insects have been in the trees, that they've been well fed. Yesterday though, they started hitting the feeder hard from morning on, so you knew cold temperatures were coming. Last night quite a few blackbirds huddled up in a spruce tree in front of our house looking cold, miserable, and determined to not get too far from the bird feeder. Unfortunately, they make easy targets for predators as a result. A falcon went cruising slowly by checking out the bird buffet at supper time and I don't know if it's the same one from last year or not, but it's obviously got the advantages of that bird feeder figured out.
I've just gotten back to the computer here after having a visitor for a while and finishing up canning some apple butter so I don't have much else to report. The sun keeps trying to peek through the heavy cloud so it alternates between too hot or too cold in the house as happens every spring and fall. It's also making a difference to the temperature on the surface of the ice because the lake is booming quite a bit right now. It looks like it's snowing over the mountains so the guys won't have much for visibility but it's probably the last ride of the season so they'll be making the most of it no matter what the weather does!

16/04/2008 5:00 PM

Little Weather Update

As you've all probably realized by now, I have my work computer back from the repair shop. I'm still struggling to get things cleaned up by the time true spring hits so that I can be outside instead of chained to a computer inside. Hence, no blog for the past couple of days, but there really hasn't been a lot happening, either.
Our temperatures did drop slightly on Sunday as predicted, but not nearly as much as I expected. As a result, our melt has continued and last night it only dropped to barely below freezing. I think that the last time I looked at the thermometer it was over 12C and at least 17C in the sun. That's over 60 degrees Fahrenheit, which is really warm for us. And very nice too, I might add. We're supposed to have one more day of not too bad temperatures and then the mercury is supposed to plummet over the weekend for all of BC.....Naturally.
Our winds have kept up most days, with some getting pretty wild. This morning was an exception, actually, to where it was reasonably calm until later this afternoon. I had hoped we could burn some slash piles today because the snow is melted off of them but not from around them, so they would be quite safe to burn, even though some of them are sitting smack in the middle of a forest of very red, very dead trees. But...the wind came up and it was too late.
It's hard to get mad at all of the wind this time of year because it really does aid in drying things out. Break Up would probably last twice as long if it weren't for the wind. Still, going out on the deck in warm sunshine this morning with not a breath of wind makes your realize how nice it is when it's calm and how warm it is when it's not blowing cold air over barely melted ice on the lake. There were even flies around, probably because the boards on the front of the house were so warm. The rotten little mothers were even breeding, at least until they got flattened. I swear, even if there was a holocaust that wiped out every living thing on the face of the earth, those bloody things would still be buzzing around, doubled up jumbo jet style in the spring doing the hokey pokey.
Our hole in the ice out front has enlarged. In fact, there's only a narrow little frozen walkway to get out on the ice that was formed by the ramp Andy built with the Bobcat this winter for running the sleds up off the lake. Otherwise, there's water or thin ice on both sides for a few feet. Once out on the lake ice away from shore it's good and solid. Over by the cabin the ice has melted away from the bank at least 5 to 6 feet all along the lake shore and little fish and other creatures are darting around in the warm, open water. It won't last long, of course. Not if we're getting a cold spell because everything will freeze back over, but it's a start. You would think by now that everyone living in this country would be patient because you know everything has to melt and spring has to come some time. It's just the law of nature. But you still go around noting all the signs, maybe hoping that somehow, some way, paying close attention will speed things up. It won't, but we all do it anyway.
Friends of ours were doing yard work the day before yesterday vigorously raking and burning all day. That's awesome, but I don't have the nerve to do that. That's like waving a red flag at a bull as far as I'm concerned. That's like saying, "Okay, Mother Nature, come smack me a good one." POOF!! Two feet of snow! And she'll say...."Serves you right. That's what you get for trying to push spring." As it was, we did get a little tiny powder sugar coating of snow the next morning, but since our friends are fervently wishing for snow so that they can go snowmobiling again, I think Mother Nature chose to ignore their transgression. (I know, you think that all sounds like superstition, don't you? You should try living here.)
I took a look at all my perennials in the garden yesterday covered in last year's dead leaves and stems and decided to leave them that way for a while yet. It provides an insulating blanket against the cold and I have many times before tried to put the jump on spring to my detriment. Perennials that were doing just fine, well established and happy, died because I removed the mulch too soon. That's why I always say, "You don't want to piss off Mother Nature!"
I can't think of anything else to report so I'll get back to work. Thanks very much to those people that sent a note with feedback regarding the lake sounds. I really appreciate it!

13/04/2008 7:05 PM

What A Different World Out There

It's amazing what a difference one day of warm temperatures can make, but two days is phenomenal! Yesterday it got up to 15C or 55F but we had a vicious wind. I should remark here that the weathermen was actually right in their predictions for a change. Mind you, it must have been a pretty obvious prediction to make because the weathermen on both news channels that we watch insisted that Saturday was going to be exceptionally warm and windy and they can't ever agree on anything. I'm always surprised when they can agree on what day of the week it is.
Since we knew that the warm spell was coming I made a note of how much crusted snow was still covering the lawn yesterday morning. Not only was it all gone by this afternoon, it was gone so fast that it was spring green in places. That won't last once the cold comes back but was refreshing to see.
I have a low spot in the center of my garden where all of the snow melt ends up, including all of the winter's accumulation that slides off of both the roof on the house and the garage. Yesterday, if I had tried to walk there, I would have sunk into mud up to my knees. Today, I could probably walk on it without sinking in at all. I think that's where a pond might eventually go. It makes sense to put one there.
Yesterday I would have stepped off of our shoreline onto the ice in front of our place with confidence. Not so today. The heat of the sun off the banks and the reeds has melted right through the ice and there's open water there now going out several feet. Andy drove the fourwheeler across the lake yesterday to pick up the trail groomer and bring it back to this side and he said there are literally hundreds of spider holes from football sized to something a person could drop into. He said they're all frozen over but it's clear black ice with long cracks radiating from each. That's usually the best sign that the lake ice is going to start to go rotten. I still wish I knew what causes spider holes. It's a mystery to me but I sure would love the answer!
The wind we had yesterday was down right nasty and gusting like crazy, but it did us a favor by carrying away all that moisture from melting snow. Our power flickered a couple of times yesterday but Kleena Kleene was out of power all yesterday afternoon and evening because trees had gone over on the line down at Chilanko. A friend visiting from Anahim Lake had a tree fall right next to her house. I couldn't tell much from the screen on her digital camera, but it was a huge spruce that just barely grazed the roof of her house and several of the branches were on the deck. I think it fell on the corner where her family park their vehicles and if that's the case, there's only a few feet between the vehicles and their house and it's a miracle the tree didn't do any damage. Her husband's Saturday night out had to be canceled because he was going to spending the night cutting up the tree and cleaning up the debris.
We got lucky. No trees down but I sure expected it. I'm actually surprised how well our few remaining trees are doing. Considering that until last winter, they were sheltered by a thick grove. Once we had to take most of them out killed by mountain pine beetle, I didn't expect the rest to have a well enough developed root system to hang in there, and of course, seven of them didn't. But the rest are doing okay. Now we just have to see which ones turn red this summer.
Today wasn't nearly as warm as yesterday, getting up to only about 4 or 5C or around 35 or 36F and still quite windy, but the fact that it didn't freeze last night made a huge difference. In fact, it was warmer at 4am this morning than it was just before noon, but that's because the weathermen were predicting a cooling trend after our one day wonder. Right again! Woo Hoo! Two for two! That's pretty darn unusual, for our weather forecasters to be correct two days in a row. Unfortunately, in the face of this morning's warm temperatures, today's sledding expedition was called off. Warm temps meant lots of lubrication for sliders this morning and the sleds would probably have stayed cool, but if it was soft up top, then snow conditions would not be very nice. I think everyone feels pretty much the way I do. It's time to park the sled and get on with spring.
A big nasty black front moved in from the southwest around supper time last night and I fully expected hard rain or snow, but it only sprinkled a bit after midnight. It looks like there's another big cloud bank to the west tonight but otherwise the sky is clear so I expect it will drop well below freezing tonight. That's okay. At least we got one good shot in the arm and it sure took a lot of snow down.
I was talking to one fellow last night who's been plagued by wolves all winter and has been losing cows in the midst of calving to them. Another nearby lost two horses to the packs last summer. I don't know if there's been an increase in the local wolf population, if they've been driven out of the high country by the larger than normal snowfalls, or if they've followed their prey down from out of the mountains that have been driven out by deep snow, but they definitely seem to be a problem now. I know we don't often see wolf tracks on our snowmobiling trails so to see a whole wolf pack following Charlotte Main this winter was highly unusual.
I'm always torn by reports of predator depredation because while it's nice to have wilderness so pristine it will support wild killers rarely seen elsewhere, they can sure wreak havoc on both domestic and wild animals such as moose, deer and caribou. A lot of people that aren't familiar with the backcountry think it's necessary to protect wolves, coyotes, black bear and grizzly, but don't realize the devastation they can cause where there is a population explosion. It's the same as the bald eagles. Everyone from the city oohs and aah's over them when they arrive on the rivers of the Lower Mainland during the salmon runs, but don't know that bald eagles like to pluck the eyeballs out of the heads of newborn calves as an appetizer before starting in on the calf itself. They do the same with the young of wild animals too, of course. And we all know that harassing loon babies until they drown is one of their favorite sports but they never show that on National Geographic. I realize that it's all about survival of the fittest out in the real world, but I have to express sympathy for the poor rancher trying to make a living. He's still getting far less than a dollar a pound for a prime beef, even while you're still paying over $7 a pound for the same, and he has to fight for every animal he has. Although, I confess, sometimes some of them do seem to be setting the banquet table. Those are the sheep farmers. I have to shake my head every time I go past a place that has sheep. I don't know how they do it. While most cattle and horses can fend for themselves to some extent, I have no idea how a sheep farmer manages to keep anything alive. In this country where a delicacy like that is easy pickings for coyotes, wolves, black bear and grizzly, small wonder that there are only a very few raising sheep, but I'm surprised that even they are still in business. Everyone likes a challenge, I guess. That or else they all have damned good sheep dogs!

11/04/2008 7:56 PM

The One Day Wonder

Woo Hoo!!! You wouldn't believe our weather right now! It was at least 10C or 50F today, if not higher and didn't get much below -3C or 27F last night. The first in a while and it's still 6C at 8pm. A huge system coming in from the Pacific was supposed to be bringing warm, moist air today, and a really, really warm day tomorrow. Dry for the Lower Mainland but looking at the satellite picture, iffy for us. It looks like we're right on the jet stream and could either be wet or sunny. In any case, the warm up is only supposed to last for one day and then a cold front is moving in behind with a nasty looking low.
Just today's temperatures alone made one heck of a difference! Yesterday, we took a short jaunt out onto the ice on Nimpo after hearing a shuffling crack that lasted a long time to see if we could find where the crack occurred. There was still that fresh layer of snow on the ice which was now crunchy, and lots of fresh cracks in it. By early this afternoon, you would never have known there was either fresh or old snow on the ice. Most of it had turned into a mirror with only the old snowmobile tracks showing through the thin layer of melt water. That will make quite a difference because that bright new snow was reflecting the sunlight and heat away from the ice but now, the water on the ice will absorb the heat and warm up a lot faster.
Even the patches of snow on the lawn are fast disappearing and my back trail was pretty soft when I went for a walk today. There's supposed to be a good wind tomorrow so that will certainly help to carry away some of the moisture from melting. It might be short lived but it sure is a long needed touch of spring. And we're faring much better than Calgary which got hit with that surprise dump of over 19cm or 8 inches of snow yesterday. Wouldn't that frost your rocket trying to get to work on ice and snow covered roads?
Actually, we were thinking just that yesterday while we sat on stumps out past our driveway, roasting hot dogs over a fire set to burn up the limbs and needles from some trees Andy knocked over for firewood. The trees are out by the public boat launch and are all beetle killed. It used to be a really pretty little spot for a vacationer to come and camp but now the dead trees pose a danger to anyone parked there. We need firewood and it needs to be cleaned up, so it's of mutual benefit to us and visitors to the lake. But since we would like to keep it park like, Andy always makes sure to have a fire and burn the debris from any tree he cuts down. As a result, we got to have our bonus hot dog time and wondered to ourselves what the 'other' people were doing on the Lower Mainland and elsewhere. Fighting time constraints and traffic and other commuters, answering cell phones, desk phones, or raging over blackberries and putting up with bosses. There's definitely a bright side to living in the boonies!
I heard the first liquid trill of the blackbirds in the trees today. They've been around for awhile, but only the odd one. Today, the flocks started coming into the feeder. I had been holding off filling up the birdfeeder, which was just about empty because I was expecting them to arrive a couple of weeks ago. I didn't really want to put any food in and encourage them to come in, because they just mob the feeder and the noise gets so bad over a period of several weeks, that you can't hear yourself think. Finally I decided they must not be coming this year and filled 'er up. And wouldn't you know it....
I'll see how bad it gets and decide whether I'll dish the seed back out again until they're gone. I don't like to encourage their dependence on the feeder, especially since I've noticed more and more immature blackbirds coming to it every year.
We've got a different bird this year and darned if either of us can figure out what the heck it is. Over at the neighbour's for the past couple of weeks there have been several fast flying birds calling almost steadily. They look much like a hawk, but they aren't all that big, more the size of a mosquito or nighthawk. I'm pretty sure it must have been breeding time for them because the noise and constant swooping has finally died down, but there was quite a ruckus there for awhile. I'm assuming that a number of these birds have decided to nest in that area because it's so quiet over there, but I don't know when they moved in.
It's funny because the one Conservation Officer that had studied biology told us that the first indicator that our environment was changing would be the arrival of different species of birds. He certainly seems to be correct on that count. Since the pine beetle devastation, we've noticed a marked increase in some birds, including woodpeckers, as well as a marked decrease in squirrels. I can definitely understand the squirrels since they depend so heavily on the pine forests for food and shelter, but hawks? Why an increase in their numbers?
I guess everyone's going to try and go out sledding on Sunday. That should be interesting! We watched a pair of sleds cross Nimpo Lake today, gingerly, I might add. If you tried to go too fast on the ice, you would be soaked in melt water in no time, and the ice underneath would be so slippery, it would be very difficult to control the machine and you'd be doing whoop de whoop 360's in no time.
I think I'll be doing a pass on the ride. My computer just arrived back from Kelowna today so I now have two weeks of work to catch up on. Even just getting this blog sorted out this evening has been time consuming because I skipped doing the RSS Feed while on the laptop, simply because it really fouls things up. As a result, no feed has shown up for the past two weeks, so if you had it marked in Yahoo, or MSN, for example, it doesn't look like I've written anything in some time.
I posted a link to some web pages I built a few days ago as a vehicle for the lake sounds I've talked about lots before. I haven't received a lot of feedback yet so I can only assume that the recordings of the ice growing in early winter, and cracking in the spring are too poor for most people's computers. My Sister-in-law did tell me that she couldn't hear that much on her laptop until she plugged in some headphones from her Walkman. That, she said, made quite a difference. I guess not many people use the external speakers anymore that you used to get with your computer and plug into the jack at the back, but if you still have a pair, that makes quite a difference too. And don't forget that if you open the volume control on your task bar, turn up the sound and the Wave balance. I'll post the link here again for a reaction so that I can decide whether to make it a permanent part of the web site. I'm always eager to have people enjoy something about this country as much as I do, but that sometimes doesn't always work if it's 'beyond, beyond'. The sound links start at Lakesounds where you can choose what you want to listen to.
I've started a new week so you'll find last week's stuff at April Week One.

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!

Either Cooper or sharp shinned hawk flying overhead.

Red and white SuperCub in a steep climb.

An ice ridge on Nimpo Lake breaks under a dock.

Torch from a slash fire reaches for the sky.

Flames from three large slash fires set off before spring.