Wilderness Adventures - August, Week 2/2011
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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!
If
you would like to see pictures of wildlife, mountains, lakes,
exciting snowmobiling, events and more, and read some great
contributed stories and ongoing blogs, just
go into Archives on the lower left side of this page.
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Check out the Picture
of the Day.
| 17/08/2011
8:15
PM |
Continuing Saga of the Dump Grizzly
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A week or so ago I stopped
up at the Post Office in Nimpo on my way to Anahim Lake
with some of Tracey's terrific coffees when I saw the
glaring poster on her door. Since Tracey doesn't put
signs up where it impedes the vision of people going
in or out I figured it must be pretty important and
stopped to read it.
Lo and behold, someone decided to take a pot shot
at the grizzly at the dump and wounded it. Apparently
one of the natives claimed the bear charged him and
he shot at it. Now I think we could all poke holes in
that story. Bears are really, really fast and the chances
of a person having time to reach into their vehicle,
pull out a gun and put shells in it, and have time to
shoot the bear before it ate one's sorry little butt,
is extremely slim. In fact, probably next to impossible.
But it's his story and he can tell it whatever way he
wants. Since the same bear has been seen around
the school at Two Mile, it's hard to blame someone
for shooting a bear thinking that they're protecting
their family. Even though shooting a grizzly is highly
illegal and protecting the family was probably not the
primary concernin this case. More likely it was bragging
rights, but I could be wrong and I'm willing to give
some wiggle room here. But if you are going to
take a shot at a grizzly, for cripes sake, kill it!!!!
Having a grizzly bear inside the electric fence at the
dump where he's going to be constantly exposed to people
was bad enough. Having a wounded bear is a whole different
story and dangerous as hell!
So here I am on my way to Anahim Lake with a truck load
of household garbage bags, scrap wood and prunings,
metal, and a couple of tires, and now I'm confronted
with this warning poster. This load requires, not a
quick plunge out of the truck to throw three garbage
bags into the dump and back into the truck again, but
a stop at three different parts of the dump because
of the different types of garbage.
Geoff up at the Post Office was kind enough to offer
to come with me, but since I had a lunch date to make
I refused, trying to figure out what the heck I was
going to do. I knew I had to stop to dump the
household garbage for sure because otherwise,
every raven in the vicinity of Anahim would be in the
back of my truck ripping open garbage bags. I've never
had that happen at home or in Nimpo but I certainly
have in Anahim and didn't want a repeat.
Tracey had just told me that the RCMP were hanging around
at the dump warning people so I decided to take a drive
in to see. If they, or someone else was there, I would
stop. I got there and the only ones there were two native
ladies, one poking around the metal section outside
the electric fence, so I stopped and called her over.
I let her know about the bear for which she thanked
me and then I drove on inside the fence thinking if
a bear was gonna get anyone, it would already have gotten
her. Although, the next time I looked around those
ladies were long gone and there was only dust in their
wake, so they didn't waste any time getting
out of there!
There were no ravens which is never a good sign, so
I pulled up as close to the dump site as I could, took
a cautious look into the hole and around it, jumped
out of my truck, left it running and door open and threw
the three bags of household garbage into the hole and
jumped back into the truck quicker than you could say
BOO! On I went to Anahim where I met a Conservation
Office on the highway heading toward the dump. So I
figured he had probably just gone to get a quick bite
to eat and was headed back to the dump.
I still had my load of non-perishables in the back of
the truck but I figured they could stay back there for
a long, long time. While having lunch we see an RCMP
vehicle and a CO's truck headed to the east and guessed
that perhaps they were going to the dump too. So I figured
what the heck, if there was going to be all kinds of
people there, I would off load the rest of the stuff
on my way back home after lunch. I pulled into
the dump and there wasn't a soul to be seen, so I don't
know where all those guys were going. Not to
the dump, that's for sure!
I took a long look around and pulled ahead so that my
tailgate was right where I needed to dump the two tires,
and away they went with my truck door open, the truck
running and the little ding ding from inside going steady.
I figured if it drives me crazy it's bound to keep a
bear away as long as it's going. I did the same for
the metal and then I skedaddled out of there. I had
already decided that the most time consuming stuff to
dump, the wood and prunings, could go back home with
me and just go on the neighbour's burn pile. It
all sounds pretty chicken I guess, especially if you
weren't there, but I never got to this age by
not having a little bit of built in caution, and I'm
no fool when it comes to the possibility of a wounded
bear. If someone else wants to go chest thumping around
the dump with a wounded animal hanging around, why they
can just go right ahead.
I haven't heard anything since as to whether the
bear has been found dead or not. Since the warning
poster is still up and the big sign in the dump is still
there warning of a bear, then I'm assuming not. But
I haven't heard that it's eaten anyone yet either so
that's a good sign.
For the past week up until just a couple of days
ago, our weather has been magnificent. Morning
after morning we would get up to a sky so clear it would
make you cry and a couple of days, not a single cloud
moved in for the whole day. And it was warm! Not hot,
mind you, but a whole lot warmer than we've seen all
summer.
The high pressure system that kept everything so nice
collapsed over the weekend but even so, our weather
has been good until today. Today was overcast, a little
rain spit off and on, and it was decidedly cool. While
we've been down to freezing for the last couple of nights,
today was the first time you could feel that fall chill
in the air. There's a cold front coming down
from the north and boy, can you tell. Here we finally
started to get used to warm weather after a cold spring
and summer, and boom! We're back into jacket weather.
My garden sure perked up with the sunshine and warmth.
It did more growing in the past week than it has in
two months. I've got some beautiful big tomatoes coming
on in the greenhouses finally, but it's gonna take a
whole lot more sun and heat to turn them red, so I'm
crossing my fingers.....
We're supposed to see another high pressure system
build in that's going to bring warmer temperatures over
the weekend. Barring that, I may have to start
the electric heater up in the greenhouse.
We're really on the edge for growing stuff in this country
but with the last two summers being so hot, it was all
doable. One cool summer just shows you though that it
really is a close call for trying to grow hothouse type
veggies.
At least the close to freezing nights have kicked
butt on the mosquitoes! Hallelujah! They aren't
bad at all and we've set by a campfire on three different
occasions in the past nine days without it being too
nasty and it's getting better all the time. I haven't
even had to put bug spray on in the last three days
and I've been outside all day for two out of the three.
So hopefully, they're just about done with. That should
have happened exactly a month ago but what the heck,
I've got rockery plants in full bloom that should have
been done at the end of June, so everything is at least
a month behind. I hope that means we're going to have
a long, glorious fall! Mother Nature owes us one.
This
is the start of a new week so you'll find last week's
blog at August
Week One..
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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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