Grizzly Bears at Nimpo 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!
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21/11/2008 7:11 PM

More Wind

We definitely got a little piece of that wind storm that the forecasters warned us about but it wasn't nearly as bad as that last wind storm. In fact, it wasn't too bad at all. I wasn't at home for most of the afternoon because I went to Anahim Lake, but other than the power being out for a few hours and the lights flickering a couple of times, we didn't sustain any damage. However, the home I went to in Anahim did end up with more trees down, with a really big one landing on their shed while I was in the house. It had busted off right at the base and of course, it was a green tree.
I didn't know this but I guess Anahim Lake got somewhere between eight inches and a foot of snow depending on where you lived when Nimpo got less than five inches last Sunday. Since it was heavy, wet, snow it took down a bunch of trees including on the property I was visiting today. They ended up with trees landing on just about everything in their yard that could be landed on. I guess Nimpo got lucky on that one!
I was surprised to see Anahim Lake completely frozen over today. I knew it froze over sooner than Nimpo but I didn't think it was that much sooner! Heck, they'll be ice skating before you know it. This wind has pushed most of our ice back into shore so the lake isn't frozen out front anymore, but you can hear the clinkers in the back bay where the water is trying to crush the edge of the ice on its way to the river.
I don't know what the high temperature was today since I was gone but it was around 3C when I got home this afternoon. The snow was getting pretty soft on top between above freezing temps and a fast moving wind. The wind has calmed down pretty well for us now but it looks like they're expecting to be hammered in Vancouver tonight. The wind was just starting for them when we watched the news tonight and you could hear sirens going off all over the place in the background. I think that they were fully expecting numerous power outages tonight. But hey, it's Friday night! A few candles, a little romance....
Yes, I know, most Vancouverites would much rather have their electricity. Can't blame them for that, I guess.
Geez, Ontario sure got wacked! Several feet of snow overnight and today in some places with a lot of motorists stranded on highways and in the ditches for hours. They can just keep that weather! This is one of those rare times that my theory about east and west weather breaks down. Normally, if it's nice weather in the east, it's going to be lousy here. If it's nice here, it's nasty there and it seems to hold true quite often. You can't be right all the time, though.
One thing I would have liked a piece of was to see that meteor that went over Alberta last night. It was so bright that people in southeastern BC and folks in Saskatchewan saw the bright light. It showed up pretty well on television, taken by someone with a cell phone camera obviously, but you could see its fall really clearly and when it got close to the surface it lit up the whole sky like a white sun. Or the way I always imagined a nuclear bomb blast would look. It was really something and I would love to have seen it!
I don't know if anyone else has noticed how much less spam they're getting with their email, but mine has dropped sharply to one or less a day. I used to be inundated with spam until I got some software online called Cloudmark that does a marvelous job of taking the spam out of my email. It's speeded up my ability to process my legitimate emails enormously but I still had to sort through the spam folder once a day to make sure it hadn't picked up a real email by accident. It rarely did, but I still had to check it. Now, it's amazing to have no spam at all!
Apparently what news reports called the 'mother ship' of spam, a web hosting company responsible for distributing up to 80% of spam around the world, was shut down in the US last week. It won't last of course, but it's sure nice to have a breather in between. It's too bad the crooks, the shysters, and the schills are well on the way to ruining the Internet for everyone. Mind you, it's hard to blame the bottom feeders in this world for taking advantage of people, because people often set themselves up for it. If all people resisted the urge to open up spam emails, spam email would be dead. Someone has to be buying from these scumbags or it wouldn't be worth the spammers' time to continue with bombarding us with it. But no, people just have to see what's in that email.
The way I look at it is if you want viagra or cheap meds, go online and search for it on a search engine. Comparison shop and you'll probably find what ever it is you're looking for, including porn or whatever at a cheaper price anyway. Don't open up spam email!
I already know that people that open up spam mail won't listen to me but I can always hope....
Have a good weekend, folks!

20/11/2008 7:16 PM

Keepin' It Short

I don't have a lot of time tonight, folks but I'll give a quick update on weather and stuff. It was -10C or 14F this morning but it actually warmed up to not a bad day. It got a degree or two above freezing during the warmest part of the day and might have gotten warmer if there hadn't been a high haze for part of the day.
When the sun did shine, it was absolutely brilliant on the ice that has built out from our shore. Of course it's just like glass so the light shooting off of it and into our front windows is magnified to the point that it's hard to see through the glare at times.
According to the weather forecast, we're all supposed to be getting high winds from a strange system coming in off the Pacific. Apparently it hasn't yet formed into a stable pattern and won't until it hits the coast. The forecasters are saying there could be some severe wind damage in coastal areas. I don't know how much we'll get but I guess we'll see when we see.
From the looks of the radar pics, the system is packing some significant moisture, and that just might mean more snow for us. Right now the snow has melted in a few spots where the sun and that warm air hit it a few days back, but in most places, there's a pretty good layer of snow or ice on the ground.
The ice on the lake has held up so far, even continuing to grow some more this morning. But I expect that any high wind at all will bust it up. That's pretty normal. We often get ice growing out and it getting bashed back into shore for weeks before true freeze up.
The loons are still out there fishing, and any I've seen through the glasses are definitely young ones. I'm flabbergasted that they are still around this time of year. Andy said that 10 years ago, it was rare to hear even one around Halloween time. But the last couple of years they've stayed later and later and we're not sure why. This spring the loons were the latest getting in of any year in the past. Often the males are in long before the ice is off the lake and all they have is a thin margin of water along the shorelines to paddle around in, or they fish down on the Dean River. But this year the ice was pretty well off of Nimpo Lake before anyone saw or heard one. We've also had several cool, wet springs in a row, so we wonder if the loons are nesting later, or losing their first eggs and raising young later than normal. Whatever is happening, it will soon have an effect on the loon populations on the lake. They can't keep going right up to freeze up before leaving, or many just won't make it.
The dogs haven't set up any more of a ruckus since that shotgun blast last night, so perhaps it scared our visitor away for awhile. Our neighbour told Andy today that he and his wife went for a walk and found bear tracks on top of his snowmobile tracks in the back woods that he made on Sunday. Probably made around the same time as the one I found on our driveway, set sometime between Sunday afternoon and Monday night because everything has been frozen too hard since then for a track to be formed. All I know is if the bears wait much longer they're going to have a devil of a time digging a den in this frozen ground.

19/11/2008 7:20 PM

The Cold Front

We saw something this morning that we haven't seen before on Nimpo Lake. The ice extended from the shore well out beyond anything we've seen before in a single night of freezing, and the back bay was entirely frozen over in one night! It wasn't that thin, either. Andy had to pull the second half of his dock out of the water this morning and he was busting up chunks of ice between 3/4 and 1 inch thick.
It was -13C this morning here, but went down to -16C or 3F up in Nimpo away from the warming influence of the lake and everything was covered in hoarfrost.
Our ice usually slowly builds outward from shore, the amount it builds depending on temperature, and will continue to over a period of days. But to have it build out as far as it was this morning in one night is really something, especially since it kept building throughout the morning! By this afternoon though there was enough of a breeze for it to push the edge of the ice up. The ice is thinnest and weakest on the outer edge so it doesn't take much wave action to break it up. I call the broken pieces of ice clinkers because they clink against each other and the still frozen ice with the movement of the water. Sometimes the pitch can be quite high and it sounds like a million spoon chimes ringing.
We were supposed to have at least another day of cold weather but it looks like it might start breaking down by tomorrow and we'll get some moisture. Right now it would suit me if it dropped to -20C or colder, and stayed there for a week or two. Our grizzlies are still around and it looks like they have no plans of going anywhere.
Both grizzlies were down the Dean River about three miles from here as the crow flies yesterday. The guy that saw them watched them eating wild berries in his yard from his front window. I'm starting to get an idea of their territory and we seem to be on the eastern edge of it, unless they're going into Nimpo at night.
All through dinner tonight we could hear our dogs barking, especially River. (The Lab barks at people, River at animal invaders) Every time we went outside with the spotlight, he would be right there so Andy figured it couldn't be him. But there was no question in my mind it was his bark, even over the sound of the television. But for the first time, he wasn't going very far, especially down the driveway as he usually does, while barking.
The last time we heard the dogs, I got the News muted quickly enough to be sure it was them, and they were definitely going nuts. Usually they bark at something, almost always legitimate, and once we come outside they figure they've done their job warning us and that's the end of it. They go take a nap. But for them to repeatedly start up with the barking, even after we've been outside to reassure them, there's something around and it's scaring the hell out of them. Their hysterical barking indicated they were trying to scare off whatever was coming in, but they weren't willing to go too far out of the yard to do it. At least until reinforcements arrived, anyway.
Andy grabbed a gun and spotlight and headed outside while I went to get the shotgun. Once Andy was out in the yard River put his brave hat on and decided to accompany him down the driveway. I guess the pup was going around the shed to check things out with the hair up on her back but she was really scared of whatever it was that was out there and kept running back. I had grabbed some little firecrackers on my way out and figured we could set a few of those off to scare our visitor or visitors away but Andy did one better. He let off a shotgun blast up into the air and that was the end of it. No more barking dogs then or since, so whatever it was has removed itself from our part of the neighbourhood for the moment. I think I'll take a walkabout tomorrow and see if I can find tracks on or near our property.
Since we rarely see the dogs act like that, I'm assuming that the bears were the most likely culprits and it would seem that they have a regular circuit that they're following. The guy that saw them yesterday said they were matched in size so they would have to be young adults, albeit big ones. We're all guessing that they were probably kicked out by their mother this year, and would be three, if not up to four, years old. If this is their first year on their own, they may not even know where to den up. Unfortunately, in this cold weather, they'll start using more fuel to keep warm and in the search of food than they'll be able to supply themselves with.
On the coast, grizzlies will have started denning up in early November and up at this elevation, normally October would be the month of choice because there's often snow on the ground then and food is harder to find. This has been an unusually warm late fall which may explain why our grizzlies haven't hibernated yet, but they can't live on berries forever, either. My biggest worry is that if the cold persists, within two weeks they're going to be getting awfully hungry and berries are not going to give them the weight they need to hibernate. If they were 40 miles up the Beef Trail, I could care less, but their presence in my own back yard makes me very unhappy. The dogs aren't exactly roaring with delight, either!

18/11/2008 7:34 PM

Reverse Weather

Yesterday I wrote about us having a Chinook. Today we started into a deep chill. It dawned clear and cold this morning with not a cloud in the sky. It did make it to a couple of degrees above freezing but there was no wind so it seemed a lot warmer.
At least yesterday's wind got rid of all the slush in the lake from that snow on Sunday. The slush froze out several feet from our shore in front and the entire back bay was frozen over slush. Kind of scary since technically, the lake shouldn't be freezing over for at least another three weeks. It may happen sooner, though. We're supposed to be going into a deep freeze for the next few days now because a cold system is swinging down from the Alaskan panhandle. It's already down to -7C or 19F this evening and it's been dropping fast. We're supposed to see another nice day tomorrow before a couple of nasty lows crash into that cold front coming in.
I'm really hoping cold weather will drive those rotten grizzlies into hibernation. I haven't had time to go out for a walk for the last two days, but couldn't resist the nice weather today. I was headed down our driveway and hadn't gone more than a few steps past our fuel shed when lo and behold, there's a bear track frozen into the snow. I called Andy over to have a look at it because he said he hadn't seen any tracks this morning. He was looking for sign of whatever it was that kept setting the dogs off last night. He missed this one.
There was only the one track because the snow had been messed up so much in the past couple of days by vehicle and dog tracks, but it was definitely one of the bears and he was going down the drive away from the house, so he'd already been and gone. It's hard to say when it was made but it was definitely after Sunday's snow. Our neighbour had come around to our place on his snowmobile while we were at Charlotte Lake, and the track was on top of the snowmobile track. I am so not a happy camper. A bear snooping around our place puts our dogs into a bad situation not to mention that it's a lot harder to get up interest in walking in the back woods. One bear is one thing but I'm not keen on running into two of them. Especially if they're so used to human smell that they're coming onto our property.
Today I walked down the road and then cut into the woods at the junction intending to walk down to the gun range on the back trail. I hadn't gone far when I noticed a pair of large dog tracks (I'm assuming that's what they were) on a set of moose tracks at least a day old. Just in the trees there was a place where a whole bunch of kinnickinnick had been dug up. I don't know what did it but the dogs were certainly going crazy at the smells around there. Then River's head went up and he was watching the woods with his nose in the air. Mocha was doing the same and then she let out a low whuff. Without knowing what it was they had smelled, I decided I'd head back out to the road again. The road was really hard packed ice and the snow in the woods was pretty hard too, so it was impossible to determine what might or might not be around by looking for tracks. I might be chicken but I'm not stupid, either. Which is why I'd like those bloody bears to get on with the hibernation thing!
I heard another loon call today, so they're still around. We watched three of them fishing out in front a couple of days ago. One of them is pretty small and I sure worry it's not going to make it. We've got a few ducks around now too. We usually do get a lot in this time of year. I'm not sure why they hang in so close to shore but they always do. They glide away when I go out on the deck to get a picture of them, and then glide back in when I come back inside. Warmer water or more feed along the shoreline, maybe? I wonder if one of them is that poor, sorry looking bugger we fished out of our fireplace this spring after it fell down the chimney.
I have a meeting tomorrow and work to do, so I'm not sure if I can post a blog tomorrow. Happy hump day for everyone that works on a Wednesday!

17/11/2008 6:50 PM

The Chinook

Yesterday it snowed and the temperature only ranged within two degrees all day at just above freezing. It started to warm up in the middle of the night and when Andy got up at daybreak, it was already at 5C. or 41F. By 9:30 this morning, it was at 9C and got up to 11C or nearly 52 degrees Fahrenheit at one point this afternoon when I looked.
The wind howled all day and while I watched our poor old 'stretched to the limit,' trees on the property bend over in the wind, I figured for sure we were going to lose our power. Surprisingly, we didn't. Although I guess while we were out of electricity for only about four hours yesterday, portions of Anahim Lake didn't get theirs back on until around 8:00 p.m. last night. That's a change from the norm. It's usually the other way around.
Our snow was going fast today between the high temperatures and that chinook wind carrying the moisture away. It won't make the snowmachine enthusiasts happy at all. It doesn't make me particularly happy either since this weather really ices everything up. I can only hope the snow stays on the back trails. Speaking of which, I didn't even get a chance to get out today and see if our bears had left any fresh sign. Too much work to do. That, and I would probably have stuck to the road anyway. When the winds are like that, being in the bush with trees whipping around doesn't seem like a particularly smart idea to me.
I've got to get back to work but before I do I just wanted to mention that there's a new listing on the Property for Sale page, and some new pictures up on the listing for 1583 Nimpo Creek Road. The first is a really pretty looking place situated on Charlotte Lake with 10 acres, four lakefront cabins, and a fully serviced sunroom attached to a storage facility and shower house. Looks like the property has an awesome view and lots of room to roam so check it out!
I finally got some summer pictures (just in time for winter) that shows what a terrific view that place overlooking Nimpo Lake has. You know, the one with the hangar? It's sure awesome looking from the deck with the lake below and Coast Mountain Range behind. The nice part about that property is you've got a great view, legal access to the lake, but you don't have to pay waterfront taxes. Bonus!
Our temperature is starting to drop pretty good tonight and all of BC is supposed to get a real little cold spell with the new system moving in. It does look like it might clear off a little over the next couple of days and give us some sunshine. According the the satellite pictures on the weather tonight anyway.
Oh yes, one last thing. John Flaten from Charlotte Lake died yesterday, I believe. Or we were told about it yesterday when leaving Charlotte, anyway. He'd had to leave his home on Charlotte Lake a little while back because of health issues that I guess he just couldn't beat. John was a retired beat cop from down on the Lower Mainland, was a real gentleman, and a pretty cool dude. I'm sorry to hear he's gone. I'll miss him. He was one of those guys that I had hoped to have tell me a few stories, because he had lots!
That's one of my biggest worries nowadays, is getting some of the stories about this country written down before they're lost to us forever.
Goodbye John.

16/11/2008 7:59 PM

The Grizzly Tracks

I don't know what's happening with our back trail, but the predatory wildlife sure seems to be moving in. I had really hoped taking these last few days off from writing would help me to catch up on some work. I did manage quite a lot but the arrival in the neighbourhood of a pair of grizzlies slowed progress somewhat.
It dropped between 4 1/2 and 5 inches of snow on Friday and it would have been more but it was melting from underneath almost as fast as it fell. Then it started raining and continued all through Friday night. In fact it stayed above freezing until nearly 5:00 a.m. when Andy got up and noticed the thermometer had just dipped below the freezing mark. Which is why, when our neighbour stopped over in the morning to ask us to make a positive identification on some bear tracks, it was pretty easy to tell almost exactly when the tracks were made.
Alex had come out of his driveway and noticed a bright red spray in the snow on the other side of road. Closer examination showed him that a bear had left a zig zag trail of berry diarrhea at least twelve feet long. It had also left some humungous tracks that had been set into the snow after the rain quit and just as it started freezing. Not sure whether the bear was a black or a grizzly, he decided to come and get us since he knows that I like tracking.
Andy and I hopped into his truck for the short ride out our driveway and up the road to the end of his driveway. It just about blew me away when we jumped out and saw the size of the bear tracks! We followed them to the mess of splattered berries and beyond into the woods slightly then backtracked him. There was definitely something wrong with the whole picture. It was a really big bear, but every once in a while, you could see the track from a hind foot, and it was smaller than the others. Either a single bear had one hind foot smaller than the other, or more likely, there were two bears, but if so, one was walking in the tracks of another. And that didn't seem all that likely.
We backtracked the animal down the road to just across from our driveway where you could see the animal had a large dump of pure red soapberries. The animal had wandered all over a small area in the trees eating berries before wandering down the boat ramp to the lake for a drink. There were several circles of tracks so it was difficult to pin point where the bear had been first. Now I realize the reason why there had been so many tracks was because there were two bears. But I didn't become certain of it until this morning I bolted awake thinking, "I know what was wrong with those tracks!" I had been so impressed with the size of the things, that I took note of the fact that a lot of the rear tracks had the imprint of a front paw over top of them, but just didn't realize the significance until I 'slept' on it. Some tracker I am. Sheesh! As far as I know, it would be impossible for a bear to step on his rear track with his front paw. That meant that with the exception of when the animal was down near the water, and a couple of other places, the second bear was following the first, and was stepping into the tracks of the bear in front of it.
We had taken the camera with us, so after taking some pictures and measuring the tracks with my hand (the sizes were identical to the tracks I found in the first snowfall a couple of weeks ago) we walked back home. I downloaded the pictures so that I could study them on my computer without looking over my shoulder. (It isn't always easy to concentrate wholly on a track when you know that it means there's a very large bear in your vicinity and you don't even have bear spray with you.)
I went through all the pictures carefully, doing the straight line measurement from big toe to little along the top of the foot pad, and there was no question but that the tracks were those of a grizzly. Now, we conjectured.... what kind?
Did the slightly smaller hind track falling into the first mean it was a sow with a grown cub following her closely? Was it a single bear with a deformed foot? Was it a sickly old bear with worn out teeth that hadn't gotten enough weight on yet to allow it to hibernate? A sow and cub is dangerous any time, and an either deformed or old bear might have difficulty acquiring food compared to healthy bears. Regardless, I wasn't happy with any of the prospects being on my back trail where I walk every day, as does my neighbour, and she doesn't even have a dog for an early warning system. Seeing the tracks a couple of weeks ago hadn't been bad because I could assume the bear was just passing through on the way to denning up. Especially since I hadn't seen any tracks since, although the dogs had acted damned uncomfortable about being out on the back trail a couple of times.
Now....though not written in stone, it could be assumed that we were on the bear's regular circuit or route in its search for food. Not liking that theory one bit!
I called our neighbours, since they had wanted to know, to tell them that the tracks had been left by a grizzly. Iris and I decided that we both wanted our walk so we would do it together and 'loaded for bear' so to speak. Armed with a gun and bear spray canister apiece and some firecrackers, we set out to follow our regular trail until we found where the tracks crossed it. It looked like the bear was headed north for the gravel pit so we took a trail in the other direction so we could get a walk in, never thinking at the time that there might be two bears and that one might not have gone north.
We returned to her place and I stepped over to say hello to the neighbour in between us and my walking friend. He had a slash pile going and was about a 100 yards or less below his house so it blew me away to see bear tracks right there on his driveway. I asked him if he had realized the grizzly had come in that close to his house and he answered that yes, he and his wife had noticed them when they went for their walk that morning.
Well now I'm thinking, Geez....here's this bloody big bear, it's really late in the fall, we don't know if there's something wrong with it, and it's coming in this close to people's houses? It's one thing to have a bear out on the road, but that's getting just a little too close for comfort I'm thinking. I didn't realize how close until Andy, who had been over helping the neighbours, told me about the Reid boys, who had come in late the night before. Apparently, one of them went to the outdoor biffy sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning, or he thought it was around then, anyway. It was still pitch black so he hears these footsteps crunching on the snow on the road that passes right by the bathroom. He's thinking to himself at the time, "Man, these people are crazy out in this country to being going for a walk this early in the morning!" We might be crazy in this country, but not quite that crazy. What he heard was at least one grizzly bear walking on snow that was starting to freeze and get crunchy, probably no more than a hundred feet away from where he perched, with nothing between him and the bear but an old board door. I'm willing to bet he was glad he had no idea until a few hours later what was actually out there.
Andy went to the store a little later in the day and overheard a couple of guys we know commenting on these grizzly tracks they saw coming out of their driveway the day before. That's down the highway just a few miles from where we live, less as the crow flies. I guess they jumped out of the truck to measure these two sets of fresh tracks in the snow when they realized they ended abruptly at a log fence not far from where they were standing. Eyes as wide as saucers, I guess they jumped right back into their truck again and left the measuring for later. Their measurements were the same as mine, over 10" long on the rear track for one bear, a little more than an inch less on the second bear. 6" across on the front pad, which is exactly what I had measured both with my hand and later with a tape measure, and 7" inches in length on the front pad including toes and where the claws left the toes. Based on the similarity to track size, they figured the animals to be young adults traveling together, possibly siblings. That makes sense, I guess because the second track seemed way too big to be a nearly grown cub's.
I don't know where the bears went after they left our neck of the woods, but it wasn't until today coming home from Charlotte Lake that we noticed a berry splotch in the middle of the road less than a mile down from our place. We stopped and took a look at it and found a circle of fur from a squirrel in the middle of the splotch. It's hard to say if a fox, coyote, or bear got a squirrel and left the berry droppings in the same place since they all eat the berries. It's pretty difficult to judge when it occurred since it would have been under snow if it occurred yesterday, and the grader cleaned it off this morning, or if it happened some time today. We got another four inches or so of snow today and it was still snowing when we left this morning.
That was a trip in itself. We were invited to Charlotte Lake for a snowmobile brunch by folks we ride with. We may only have gotten four inches of snow but I'm pretty sure they had a foot of the stuff out there. The guy going in ahead of us was pushing snow and the rear end on his pickup was making drag marks in it. Before long, the leaf springs or mufflers, or something, were also making marks in the snow. We wallowed along behind him, widening the tracks because we drive a dually. I'm happy to report the brunch made the long trip more than worthwhile, but I figured for sure we were going to be digging or pushing our way out of ditch at some point in time.
The heavy wet snow created a power outage in Nimpo Lake from the time we left home until just before we returned, so our timing turned out to be pretty good.
The temperature today has been hanging right between one and two degrees above freezing, meaning the snow was wet and heavy all day. Right now it's misting rain outside, and if it freezes tonight, it won't freeze hard unless it clears off. That doesn't seem likely with the massive weather system moving in over the central coast and central interior. It's supposed to bring heavy moisture for the next 24 hours. It's certainly making the snowmobile enthusiasts happy!
Seeing as how this has turned into such a long-winded blog, I'm starting a new week. You can find last week's articles, including those about wolves, at November Week Two.

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!