Wilderness Adventures for this week in March includes the Mexican Standoff on Ice Story

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!

3/21/05 6:45 PM

Snow Squall After Squall

First full day of spring and it's just one snow squall after another.
Continuous snow flurries continue the build up of snow in the West Chilcotin as well as across the Province. Temperature was down to -17C or below 0F last night after it cleared off, yet it climbed to a couple of degrees above freezing today. There is a surprising lot of power in a late March sun even at this latitude so it worked hard to melt some of that snow today. A mudslide closed the Whistler Highway for the day yesterday, which disappointed a lot of skiers since it was reportedly the best powder of all season on the hill. 85cm in the past week. Two accidents occurred on Hwy. 20 just west of Tatla Lake last night, one just involved a lumber truck sliding off the road, the other required the passenger to go to Williams Lake in ambulance.

3/20/05 3:54 PM

Surprise Snowfall

Received about six inches of snow since last night and more snow is expected tonite, about eight inches on Heckman Pass, four to six inches on the Chilcotin Plateau. The roads from Tatla Lake to Heckman Pass are snow covered, the highways are bare and wet from Tatla to Williams Lake. There will probably be slippery sections after freeze up tonite. It doesn't leave a lot of open water for wildfowl that has flown in the last few days. They are several weeks early and hopefully this won't be a problem. It also makes it much more difficult for early spring birds to find food under six inches of fresh, heavy, wet snow. Walked in the woods today and it was completely silent. Not a breath of wind, no sound from any animals, just as though it was in the dead of winter. A couple of days ago a pressure ridge formed on Nimpo lake from the point to the big island and created open water most of the way. Today a snowmachine crossed that ridge headed for the main arm and hit that open water. Fortunately they were going fast enough that they ended up water skipping instead of sinking their machine into about 80' of water, which has been done before! For an idea of what water skipping looks like, unintentional or not, check out the Events.

3/19/05 9:35 PM

One Day Before Official Spring - Spring Is Gone!

One day before the official start of spring, and winter is back with a vengeance. Temperatures have dropped to -10C and it has been snowing for the last 24 hours. Very fine snow so it takes a long time to build up, but certainly a vast difference from earlier this week when balmy temperatures pushed vegetation and lake melt by about a month. Other areas in the province have gotten surprise snow dumps creating road hazard in some areas. However, it has been a boon for the ski hills around the province, who's sales over winter have been flagging badly due to high temperatures and low snowfall in the last two months.

3/17/05 12:53 PM

C.A.T. Shareholder's Meeting Reports Profit for 2004

C.A.T. Shareholder's Meeting reports $719,737 profit for 2004. C.A.T. Resources is one-third owner of West Chilcotin Forest Products Ltd. and CAT shareholders are local residents or local property owners. 36 of the 48 CAT shareholders attended the Annual Meeting at Nimpo Lake Community Hall in person or by proxy. Treasurer Hans Holst presented the financial information for 2004 and explained that CAT showed a profit of $719,737 for the year. This was a considerable improvement over the previous year when CAT had a loss of $338,889. West Chilcotin Forest Products is a jointly owned lumber company that brings the Ulkatcho First Nations, local community and industry together as equal partners.

3/16/05 12:54 PM

Nimpo Lake Community Association Meeting

There is a meeting for the Nimpo Lake Community Association at the Community Hall. This is the Annual General Meeting to vote for all directors and discuss points that have been on the table for the last year. Most prominent is the push for a Volunteer Fire Department. The other is the 'church' group or 'cult' that wishes to have that parcel of land on the lake donated to them. The meeting is at 7:00 PM Friday night.

3/15/05 5:23 PM

Mexican Standoff On The Ice

Bald Eagles, Trumpeter Swans and Canada Geese are all piled up on the same tiny little patch of open water. A formation of Canada geese searched all the bays and inlets on Nimpo Lake for open water last night and finally settled onto the tiny patch of open water on the point. Two Trumpeter Swans were already there and stayed in the middle of the group, all of who were standing on the ice instead of in the water for fast takeoff, because two Bald Eagles came flying in. They flew down from a snag on the nearby island to within about 50 feet of the geese and landed on the ice, whereby one of the eagles kept moving closer and closer to the geese. Four of the 30 flew off, they just couldn't stand the pressure I guess. The Trumpeter Swans moved to the outer edge of the group closest to the precocious eagle, then dropped into the water and started swimming back and forth between the two eagles, as though daring them to move any closer to the geese. They had to have been within 5 feet of the one eagle and would both face toward it and stretch out their necks slightly. They kept this up for about a half hour, then climbed out of the water and squatted on the ice, standing guard between the eagles and geese. They must have sufficiently intimidated the eagles because they didn't try to move any closer up until dark when I could no longer see them. I know you aren't supposed to attribute human values to animals and birds because there just isn't any similiarity between the species, but I sure don't know how else to explain what I watched yesterday evening! I took pics with a 35 mm and telephoto, I'm just hoping they turn out. I'll post them here when developed, but it's six weeks before going back to town, so it'll be awhile! Check out the variety of birds at the Bird Photo Gallery.

Please be patient with this site. It's still under construction!
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 aim 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. Which is why it's taking so long to complete the site! :)

Follow the links, and see what the West Chilcotin is really like!