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Wilderness Adventures - March Week Four
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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!
| 3/31/05
4:23 PM
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High Winds and Pine Beetle Kill
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High winds today could cause power outages
to the Nimpo Lake and Anahim Lake Communities. This last
day of March is a particularily blustery day with wild
winds sweeping in over the Coastal Mountains with a nasty,
fast moving weather system coming in from the Pacific.
I guess the old adage of in like a lamb and out like a
lion is certainly true this year. The main concern is
that this area is starting to show some Pine Beetle damage,
especially along the Highway 20 corridor from log trucks
in the past carrying pine logs infected with the Pine
beetle to Williams Lake. Naturally, our hydro electric
line also follows the highway and high winds like this
certainly increases the chance of one or more power outages
from fallen trees. Our power is provided by a bank of
diesel engines in Anahim Lake, but our BC Hydro repairs
are provided by Service men from Bella Coola and Williams
Lake, so there is generally a time lag for repairs, at
times up to 12 hours, although they usually make a real
effort to get here as quickly as possible.
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| 3/30/05
3:10 PM
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Blackbirds and Sunshine
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Blackbirds are back in droves and their melody is the
true harbinger of spring! The term 'liquid melody' comes
to mind in trying to describe their song. I don't really
know how else to describe a whole flock of blackbirds
all trilling a different note in such a way that you just
know spring is here and everyone be happy!!! I used to
live in a cabin on the edge of a meadow and blackbirds
would come right up in front of the window where I put
seed out on the snow. You can actually distinguish between
the males quite easily because of their shoulder bars.
Each bird had a very distinct marking and color that varied
from one shoulder stripe up to three, narrow to wide,
from deep, dark red to orange to a bright yellow and every
shade in between. They are a very watchful bird so the
males would usually flock to the seed before the females
and immatures and mill around according to rank. Oh yes....there
was rank! That's why being able to distinguish between
the birds was so interesting, because time after time
I would see that a strict pecking order was maintained.
You would see several males at the seed, but when the
'Admiral' flew down and strutted up,(If I recall he had
two wide orange shoulder stripes) everyone backed out
of his way. If the 'General' (one red, one yellow stripe)
was already there, he would move out of the Admiral's
way but others scrambled out of his way and so on down
the line, until you got to a general population among
whom it was difficult to tell who stood where in the pecking
order. You would see them squabbling among themselves
often, so it was hard to identify everyone. For the most
part, the females seemed to be on the lower end of the
pecking order, but there were exceptions. When the odd
female flew down, everyone got out of her way!
Kind of makes you wonder....
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| 3/29/05
4:19 PM
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Sometimes it's just hard to know what to write
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| Much as I would like to update this 'blog' every day,
sometimes you just run out of things to say. I spend so
much time at my desk in the winter time building web pages,
and designing for my graphics business, that I just don't
get out in the community enough to keep up on current
events. Something that will have to change once I get
the commmunity newsletter for this site up and running
since it is supposed to be a source of information for
local people that go on the site. Right now, my little
window on the world is pretty small, because I have a
whole lot of things that have to be pounded out on this
computer before spring gets here so sneaking away to find
out what's happening isn't easy. There is also the issue
of ethics. If you're talking about people in the community,
you want to be awful careful about what you're putting
down in writing, so I'm trying to follow the old adage
of "If you can't say something good, don't say anything
at all" I try to stick to that because I have a very
controversial nature and once had to quit writing for
a newspaper because the owners felt all my articles had
to be in the editorial section or they could get sued
for the content. I just this moment finished having a
phone conversation with a very nice lady who was polling
me for my opinion on the BC Liberal Government, and their
representative for this region. I told her she really
didn't want to hear my opinion of our government. I'd
probably go into it here, but until I get a comments section
installed, it doesn't really seem fair to give my extreme
opinion on our politicians without giving someone a chance
to take a fair shot back at me! |
| 3/28/05
1:39 PM
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Results of tests for snowmobiling accident are not yet known.
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Still have not found out much about the
extent of injuries to a member of our snowmobiling party
on Saturday. It's thought by search and rescue members
that the injured fellow should have been flown out of
Goat Pass by helicopter as he seems to have sustained
a serious fracture of his back. He's been sent to Kamloops
for CT scan, so we'll know soon. We're very fortunate
to have a search and rescue group in the Anahim Lake,
Nimpo Lake region. Wayne Escott was first up on the mountain
to bring the injured member down with Floyd Vaughan. Wayne's
partner, Dawn Benton, is instrumental in raising a great
deal of money for search and rescue and our local ambulance
service for things like stretchers and other equipment.
Step in the door of her establishment, Marg's Takeout,
and you will probably be sweet talked into buying a raffle
ticket. For such a small population base, the people of
our local communities are very generous with their pocketbooks.
On that note, the 139 Children's Fundraising Auction in
February raised an astonishing $15,000!
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| 3/26/05
8:29 PM
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Snowmobiling Today/One Injury
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Ten of us went snowmobiling up onto 'Trumpeter'
and one of us sustained a back injury. Conditions were
excellent with 6 to 10 inches of fresh snow but it was
on top of a hard packed, almost 'icy' base. Sidehilling
was a challenge because your machine kept wanting to slide
sideways down a hill. Hill climbing was superb because
most slopes were accessible, but if you hit ice at the
crest you risked being thrown off your machine or losing
momentum, so it was interesting. A couple of our guys
set off some small avalanches trying to crest a cornice
over at the 'cornice play bowl'. One did succeed in going
over the top, the other guy just about lost his machine
twice. I don't know how he kept it from rolling over,
or from running down the hill, because he'd been bounced
off by this time, but somehow he managed. Three of us
headed back down the hill for home about an hour early
because of a broken starter rope, so we missed all the
excitement that occurred shortly after. We heard the group
call for search and rescue in Anahim Lake, and two guys
left from there to take up a skimmer. I guess one of the
fellows came down the steepest part of Goat Pass, couldn't
slow down his machine, probably because of the icy and
windswept base, hit a house sized rock and both he and
the machine flew about 30 feet through the air. Both had
a very hard landing. Bent both tunnels so that the track
is rubbing against them, and it was thought the fellow
either sustained a back injury or broken tailbone. He's
stubborn though and limped himself and his machine down
the hill very slowly until they could meet help coming
up to the Hooch Lake Road. Only 375 miles on a brand new
machine ... did I tell you that you need a good paycheck
to stay in this game?
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| 3/25/05
9:36 PM
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Regional Pages Nearly Finished
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| Pages describing surrounding regions for
resortsbc.com are nearly finished and can
be perused here. Tatla
Lake and Alexis
Creek are located on the eastern end of
highway 20 on the way to Nimpo and Anahim Lakes. Each
page gives a brief description of the type of country
and origin of the town site or points of interest. The
Chilko
Lake page will tell you that Chilko Lake
is the largest high-elevation lake in North America at
nearly 60 miles long, surrounded by some of the tallest
mountains in BC, including Mt. Waddington, the highest
mountain in British Columbia, Canada entirely inside her
borders. The lake makes her own weather and because she's
glacial fed with milky green glacial silt, Chilko is noted
for being the prettiest colored lake in British Columbia.
Also noted for BIG fish! Dolly Varden and Bull Trout to
10 pounds, and native Rainbow Trout to 6 pounds. Chilko
river serves up Chinook and Sockeye Salmon at the outlet
of the lake. The river is known for world class fly fishing
and some of the wildest river rafting in Canada! |
| 3/24/05
3:48 PM
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Still Winter - Working on Spring
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It's still trying to be winter with cold
temperatures at night in the West Chilcotin but that sun
beating down every day is really warming things up! Will
probably go do some snowmobiling this weekend, so just
to remind you what a terrific place this can be in winter,
check out the snowmobiling
photo gallery and the winter
recreation page that describes some of
the great activities available here in winter because
I think spring is coming soon. Just finished the pages
about Alexis Creek and Bella Coola. Did some research
and many of the communities out here have had some long
and interesting histories. For example, the Chilcotin
Massacre, of which there were several - some of other
tribes, and some of settlers, surveyors and miners. Check
out the Alexis
Creek regional page for a little more detail
on the area.
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| 3/23/05
1:45 PM
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Photo Gallery for Resorts BC is Finally Done
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Finally completed the photo gallery showcasing the
West Chilcotin in British Columbia. Helpful locals have
kindly loaned me many of their photos of the area, and
some are drawn from my own library. The photo gallery
covers a wide range of subjects such as wildlife
in the area, alpine
flowers , lakes,
many of the activities and events
in the area available to visitors, quite a bit of information
on Parks
in the area, and photos of fishing!
...one of the main reasons people come here in summer.
However, there are lots of things to do in winter
as well. And you haven't seen anything until you've seen
our magnificent mountains
and sunsets!
If you're an avid birdwatcher, you'll enjoy the birds
gallery, if you like hiking,
you'll get a little taste of what the country has to offer,
and you don't want to miss the flying
section for those of you who would like to see the country
from a floatplane or those lucky ones that own their own
plane. Last, but not least, if you're wild about snowmobiling,
you're going to want to see these pics! And there is a
little, tiny section on Legends
& lore that I hope to expand much more. But there
is so much history in the country, that you just can't
begin to cover it all! Check out the links above, or start
at the beginning from the main photo
gallery page to get a little taste of what
you're getting into! Enjoy! I've posted a few pictures
from the gallery on the right.
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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.
Follow
the links, and see what the West Chilcotin is really like!
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