Wilderness Adventures - June Week Two
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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!
| 14/06/2005
1:56 PM
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British Columbia Floatplane Association
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The
BCFA will be having their Annual Fly-in at Nimpo
Lake in the middle of July. Pilots will start
flying in around Thursday and Friday July 14th. and
parking their plane at various areas around Nimpo
Lake and Anahim Lake. Not everyone arrives by
floats, some come in on wheels or amphibs. Many land
and park at Terry Brandt's and Lois Bowman's place on
Nimpo Lake, because they have two large hangars and
cement aprons going right down to the water for amphibs,
and a long plane dock for floatplanes.
It's not unusual to see 10 or fifteen planes lined up
at the dock. Lois and Terry provide a great buffet and
silent auction on Saturday night and bonfire outside
afterwards, for everyone that wants to visit. Attendance
is usually excellent and often involves up to a 80 or
a 100 pilots. The experience is a great one and provides
a super opportunity to get to know some of the town
and bush pilots from all over British
Columbia and the U.S.
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| 13/06/2005
12:08 PM
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Golfing
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Did
you know that Anahim Lake has a private
golf course? It's not exactly what you would expect
in the nature of a golf course however. It costs .25 cents
to play, and whatever you do, don't bring your own clubs!
Or so I've been warned. Was supposed to go golfing today,
but it's windy with some heavy overcast out there, and
looks like we might definitely be in for a midday deluge.
We sure are in the rainy season right now. Anyway, I haven't
had the opportunity to see this golf course yet, but I
understand it has sand greens, short drives and lots of
hazards! The last course I played on in Saskatchewan
had that problem too. I attended the Annual Cow
Patty Classic there, and it consisted of golfing
in a series of cow pastures. The hazards consisted of
you know what, and if you ended up in a fresh hazard,
it was your choice to try to 'chip' out of it (if you
didn't mind the head of your club turning a kind of weird
browny green color) or you could take a penalty. Gopher
holes posed their own set of problems, for obvious reasons,
especially if they were deep ones. Of course there
were no greens, but gopher holes were utilized, just widened
out a little and a can put in the hole so that you could
recover your ball and replace the flag. I found a lot
of balls from previous years, probably because I was in
the woods a lot. But I did win a prize for coming in last!
Anyway, I look forward to checking out our local course,
and I'll let you know how that goes....as soon as it stops
raining.
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| 12/06/2005
1:26 PM
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Writing For The Search Engines Is Tough
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Trying
provide a web site with good content isn't that difficult,
but getting good placement is a different story. Even
with careful and dedicated research and reading every
newsletter pertaining to search engine placement that
I can, I'm still never sure how the search engines work.
Or how they determine a web site's placement. Of course,
I don't think anyone else is too sure either. I've been
writing this newsletter for two reasons. To draw attention
to the area and hopefully promote the tourist
industry here, and to draw the attention of
the search engines. That has been very successful with
Yahoo, but I'm just not sure how Google does things.
Their robot does seem to pick up the site more often
because of this newsletter, but in the latest incidence,
it only updated the home page, and none of the others.
Which seems really strange. However, I will keep writing
in the hopes that it will help the area, but sometimes
it's a little hard to dedicate the time it takes every
day to write something interesting about Nimpo
Lake and Anahim Lake. Not that
they aren't really interesting regions, just that I
don't get out much! LOL.By
the way, with all this rain, the fishing
is really good right now.
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| 11/06/2005
3:45 PM
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Now You Can Find Anahim
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Apparently
Simba, down at the Anahim Lake Inn, is the
reason why we now have proper highway signage. Simba owns
the motel in Anahim Lake, but is originally
from California. Her brother was coming up for the first
time from San Fran last year to visit her. After
turning left at Williams Lake onto Highway 20,
apparently he drove west for a couple of hours and at
no time did he see a mileage sign for Anahim Lake.
Finally, after driving about 100 miles, he turned around
afraid that he had made a wrong turn somewhere because
there was no indication on the road signs that he was
headed toward Anahim. It's true, the highway signs say
Alexis Creek, Tatla Lake and Bella Coola,
but you have to come some way west before any signs indicate
Anahim Lake is ahead of you. After Simba complained to
the Ministry of Highways about the issue this past winter,
new signs were created and apparently now, there are about
20 signs indicating where Anahim Lake is. Which is good,
because it will be much clearer to the tourists as well.
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| 10/06/2005
2:25 PM
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Short Today
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Time
is a little short today, so the story will be too. A fun
picture was sent to me by email called BC Street Gangs.
It's of four grizzlies walking down the
center of the highway. "Only in Canda" as they
say. Weather varies between sunny with big, grey thunderheads
and overcast. No rain yet today. A bit of a breeze. Still
hoping for frost at night to knock some of these bugs
back. This weather seems to be prevailing over all of
the province so it's really cut back on the problems with
forest fires, which is a real blessing because it's awfully
early in the season for fires. I've been working at the
sawmill between Nimpo Lake and Anahim Lake
as a grader. Being at my station at night has not been
pleasant. The mosquitoes are truly brutal. However, this
seems to be a province wide problem this year. If you
read some of the old stories about the goldrush
days, and how the bugs used to drive pack trains
over cliffs, and drive men and animals on the Klondike
Trail mad to distraction, especially going through
the muskeg swamps further north. I can certainly see why.
Even with the bug dope layered on every hour, the mosquitoes
this year are like attack planes. Swat at them, and they'll
just keep on coming. However, June is always a bad month
for mozzies. Once it gets hotter in July and August, they
should, hopefully, all but disappear.
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| 09/06/2005
12:50 PM
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Camouflage Wildlife
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Yesterday
was moose, today we play spot the deer.
Deer, like moose, stand out against the backdrop of a
highway, or grassy road allowance, although maybe not
as much because the deer aren't nearly as large or dark-colored
as moose. We have both Whitetail and Mule deer in
the West Chilcotin, as well as the Black Tail down in
Bella Coola. The deer's coloring changes from
red and white spotted as fawns to a buff or tawny color
as adults, that can vary from reddish brown in summer
to greyish brown in winter. The amount of white on each
animal can vary from deer to deer and species to
species. Spring is an especially bad time of year
for deer on Highway 20 because they come
out to graze along the highway where grass greens up sooner
than elsewhere and to lick up salt put on the road throughout
the winter on icy roads. Unfortunately, their favorite
time of day to be on and along the road is at dusk and
dawn, when light is the poorest and the deer are very
hard to see. Care should be taken during these times at
all times of the year when driving Highway 20. If you
look at the pictures on the right, a deer
has just crossed the highway and is on the grassy road
allowance where she still stands out. But once she gets
into the bush on the other side of the road, she stops,
because she knows she blends in to the surrounding country.
Third deer down scampers off the road to Bella Coola
just inside Tweedsmuir Park boundaries,
but once high up a hill among the surrounding bushes,
it stops to stare back knowing it's well camouflaged.
By
the way, I had to sharpen the wildlife pictures, especially
where they're hidden in the woods, just so you could
find them in the pictures!
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| 08/06/2005
12:25 PM
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'Let's Play Spot The Wildlife'
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Wildlife
stands out on highways and gravel roads because it's not
a natural background for their coloring. But what's truly
amazing is how they look once they dive off the road.
Most ungulates, such as deer or moose seem
suddenly to blend in with whatever their background, light
conditions pick up guard hair color and seem to make the
animal transparent, or certainly to blend in with surrounding
flora. Take the moose on the right for an example.
Not quite on the road yet, he's starting to really stand
out. But once he crosses, he's starting to blend in with
the road bank on the other side just because of the way
the sun hits his hair. On the third picture, once he get's
into a dark stand of aspen, he's hard to spot and if he
were standing still and you didn't know he was there,
you would walk past a six foot tall, 1000 pound animal,
and not even know it. This particular moose has a large
grey/white patch on his hump over the shoulders which
is very unusual and may have been caused by a past injury,
or he may just be getting old. Moose vary in color
depending on light conditions, age and gender from
light brown as calves to nearly black as fully mature
animals with varying degrees of grey or light brown on
the legs and muzzle. Tomorrow, we'll check out some deer,
or maybe tomorrow will be a black bear day.
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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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