Wilderness Adventures with articles on Tweedsmuir Air, Flightseeing, Dining and Amenities in Nimpo Lake and Anahim Lake

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!

07/06/2005 1:02 PM

Tweedsmuir Air Flying School Kids

School kids from Anahim Lake School raised enough money to go on a flying field trip, which is pretty cool when you think about it. Field trips when I went to school usually involved being packed on a bus travelling long hours to go see some boring old historic town or something. Actually, I wouldn't find that kind of thing boring now, but I sure did then. However, the local kids got a great field trip for the end of their school year. The class raised money to hire the local floatplane charter service based at Nimpo Lake to take the kids flightseeing. Since the planes are limited in the number of passengers they can take up at a time, the rest of the kids were kept occupied at a sub's home where they could go fishing on Nimpo Lake with the principal or play games and sit around a bonfire outside while they waited for their turn on the floatplane. Tweedsmuir Air were flying two planes at a time to accommodate the kids and picked a good day to do this. Their last scheduled field day was last week when we had real low skies and rain, and they wouldn't have seen much from the plane. Fortunately, the date was changed to today, where we have mostly clear skies with high cloud, allowing the kids a great view of the Coastal range, Rainbow mountains, Monarch Icefield and Hunlen Falls, which will be roaring full force with spring run off this time of year. Hope they all have an unforgettable day!

06/06/2005 11:03 AM

"If you don't like the Weather, wait five minutes"

Last week we were fighting forest fires, this week it's a deluge! You don't normally see rain of this calibre in this country, and I certainly haven't seen anything like it in years, but last night it poured so hard it just destroyed gravel roads in a matter of minutes and water was running everywhere. It dropped exactly 2 inches of rain last night according to my rain gauge and it certainly settled the dust, so to speak. It's nice after a rain like this because everything just gleams. The leaves on the populars are that bright, vibrant green, and even the fully mature spruce and pine look a lot brighter and cleaner. The change is probably so significant because of all the pine pollen in the air this year. It has dusted everything for the last few weeks, but now that it's been washed off by the rain, everything looks as bright as a copper penny! Lots of boats out on Nimpo Lake fishing for trout this morning. It'll be excellent fishing after a rain like that, especially since it seemed to have settled the bugs for a short while.

05/06/2005 10:42 AM

For a Unique Vacation Experience, You May Want to Consider Climbing into a Floatplane

Nimpo Lake is considered the Floatplane Capital of British Columbia and as such, can offer the world weary traveller a unique experience while vacationing. At Nimpo Lake there are two floatplane charters from which to choose, although the one, Sharp Wings, only operates one plane. The other, Tweedsmuir Air, operates two Dehavilland Beavers and a couple of smaller planes. The pilots can take you up sightseeing over Hunlen Falls, the Monarch Icefields, Rainbow Mountains and over several other ranges where you will see gorgeous alpine lakes, rugged peaks, waterfalls and glaciers, all for a very reasonable price. The floatplanes go in and out of fly in lakes on a regular basis to take fishermen in either for a day of fishing, or to overnight at one of the outpost camps. Here you'll often find that your group has an entire lake to itself to flyfish, canoe or troll for some of our wild fighting rainbow trout and take pictures of wildlife.
If you decide to stay at a resort or camp on Nimpo Lake, you'll get to watch the floatplanes take off and land on a fairly regular basis. Even for those of us that live here and take the planes for granted, stop and get a little thrill watching a gentle touch down on the water. Take off is a little noisier, but you always find yourself lifting your seat off your chair to help the plane get up and away. If you would like to learn a little more about flying locally, go to the Flightseeing page or check out the photo gallery here Flying.

03/06/2005 7:41 PM

Dining in Nimpo Lake

Two restaurants in Nimpo Lake offer varied fare. Chilcotin's Gate is right on the highway and is a licensed family restaurant. They have quite a large and varied menu, as well as a lunch buffet on Wednesdays and a brunch on Sundays. They also often have special occasion nights such as on Valentine's Day and the owner Cindy, will often bring in comedians through the winter months. The Gate is the post office for Nimpo Lake and can provide courier service should you need it. They also have a great deli section and a computer on line that can be used by the public. The Gate opens at 6am in the morning in summer so you can get that early start on your fishing day!
The Dean on Nimpo is just off the highway in Nimpo Lake and is a resort with a very upscale restaurant called Pilot's Bar & Grill. There you can relax in the lounge, in the restaurant proper or outside on the patio with a selection of appetizers and cocktails before the main course, or browse through the gift shop for something unusual to take home with you. Pilot's doesn't open until lunchtime, but they do stay open until 10pm or later if there's quite a few people there.

02/06/2005 3:54 PM

Amenities in Anahim Lake

A couple more businesses have listed with Resorts BC. McLean Trading is a grocery store located in Anahim Lake offering a wide selection of a little bit of everything. When they say "If they don't have it, you don't need it," they mean it. This is also a liquor outlet and they have an in store butcher that will cut your meat to your specifications. The store is easy to spot right on mainstreet for its massive wild horse mural on the front and its wagon wheel hitching posts. Yes, here in the Chilcotin, you still need hitching posts for those riding horses. If you would like to know a little more, check out the Groceries page.
The Dutchman Restaurant is located right on the 'Y' entering Anahim Lake and sports a glorious profusion of flowers outside in the summer. In fact, it can be hard to see the restaurant for all the hanging baskets and vines draping the arbour and entrance way. The restaurant is open quite early in the morning until 10 at night and offers regular family fare, as well as pizza takeout and catering to group luncheons and dinners. I don't have a picture yet of the restaurant because the proprietor asked me to wait until the flowers start blooming. I'll post a pic as soon as that happens!

01/06/2005 8:08 PM

Bella Coola

Had a good trip to Bella Coola today. Went down for the day for appointments and Chinese food and to pick up some plants at the greenhouse there, among other things. Also took both the 35mm camera and the digital looking for wildlife because I would like to update some of the photos on this site periodically. It was spitting rain when we drove down so you didn't get quite the view that you normally would because of low lying cloud and fog but we did get a nice picture of a doe midway down the hill. Saw a lot of bear sign on the highway once we hit the bottom of the hill clear to Hagensborg, but of course no bears. Did the appointment thing, then walked around and admired the terrific flowering plants in the gardens in Bella Coola that would never grow here in Nimpo or Anahim Lake. The Chinese food was great and the weather started to let up a bit. Bought a few plants at Moore's Greenhouse and headed back up the hill. Toward the top, we started seeing a lot of bear sign on the road again and I commented that we should be seeing bears somewhere along the road. Sure enough, a big black went over the side of the bank on the right. We pulled ahead and off the road hoping to get a look back at the bear, but no sign of him. But just across the road nonchalantly chewing grass like he was a world class lawn mower was a nice big brown bear. His hide looked a little dull so he might have been shedding, but more than anything, he looked hungry and could have cared less that we were there. He just kept chewing away at the grass in a clearing next to the road even when we backed the truck up and took more pictures. As usual, however, they're all on the 35mm and won't get developed until this Friday at the earliest so I don't have anything to show you. Why I didn't pull out the digital and take a few shots with that, I don't know. So you'll have to be patient.

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!

Take a flightseeing trip from Nimpo Lake

Large brown bear between Anahim Lake and the top of the 'Hill'

Brown bear fresh out of den just wants to eat grass