Wilderness Adventures - Dec., Week Two/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.
Rolling over an image will give you its description.
Check out the Picture
of the Day.
| 30/12/2011
8:30
PM |
Getting it Together for New Year's
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Hi everyone. I did not expect it to take
me this long to get back to the blog but it's been pretty
wild getting ready for Christmas and then the New Year's
Party. We went down to the Okanagan and didn't get back
until just a week before Christmas so there was a scrabble
to get some decorating done, presents wrapped, cooking
done..... you know, all that stuff. We couldn't
have a Christmas tree because the cat, who is still in
'kitten' stage, unfortunately, would have destroyed every
ball and decoration on the tree and would have
ruined my Christmas spirit. I didn't need the headache.
As a result, we had to resort to a terrible old tree that
you pull out of a four by four inch box. You can just
imagine what it looked like after being stored in there
for a few years in favor of the real thing. It was
one sorry, wienie looking thing, less than two feet tall
with a terrible lean. Charlie Brown's tree had
this thing beat hands down but at least it was small enough
to put up on the mantle out of Trouble's way.
There is absolutely no time to write much tonight but
I just wanted to get this up and let you know that there
will be a blog up about the Ice Party. I just have to
figure out how to work the new camorder so I can take
movies at the party, and then change them into stop motion
photos. We'll see how that works. My other delay is going
to be changing around the blog for a new year. That always
takes some effort and doing so that people can find the
old year's blog. Maybe I'll leave that for a week or so.....
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| 10/12/2011
6:30
PM |
The Work Party
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If you call, they'll come!
We had a great work party for the New Year's Ice
Party today. Nearly 20 people showed up ready
and willing to work. Andy started the slash pile on fire
early this morning and dropped a number of beetle killed
trees along our road that were later cut up into firewood
for the New Year's bonfires. The beauty of clearing out
some of these beetle killed pine is that it cuts the risk
from forest fires in hot years. Two birds with one stone.
Gotta like it!
We all loaded firewood and cleaned up the limbs and burned
those because there's snow on the ground so it's safe.
Len brought his truck and a big trailer that we loaded
up with wood that he'll just keep up at his shop until
the ice party, which is really nice. It saved us loading
wood up into trucks, taking it to a dropoff point and
then having to reload it once the ice is safe enough to
cross and take it over to where the ice party will be.
The guys cut up a bunch of Swiss Candles as well
that we've got safely tucked under a tarp now.
Those are six foot long tree butts that are sliced down
the middle with a chainsaw nearly to the bottom but not
quite, with four to six lengthwise cuts depending on the
size of the log. Then during New Year's Eve, we drop tinder
into the tops and the centers of the logs burn right down
creating a huge candle that can last several hours. A
few of us also went out and cut down aspen on our road
on a really bad corner. You can't see around it when the
aspens are in full leaf and a few of us locals have been
nearly run off the road there more than once. A lot of
really big aspen fell down in that hole this fall when
we got that heavy, wet snow as well as a few small ones,
so that corner is nearly clear now. We just cleaned it
up a bit more to increase visibility and we got
our aspen to hang Christmas lights on at New Year's. Now
if we can just collect everyone's Christmas trees after
Christmas....
So that was a big job done today, and with lots of willing
hands it went really fast. It definitely makes organizing
things for the Ice Party much more pleasant when you have
a work party. Last year was really great too. It was just
the first year that was not good and that was our fault.
We should have called people and asked for more help than
we did. Mind you, it didn't help that nearly everyone
in the communities of Nimpo and Anahim had that bloody
awful flu/cold three Christmases ago, and most of us were
dead on our feet.
We were supposed to get snow today after a really
beautiful week and I kind of figured it was our lousy
luck, but it turned out to be another really nice
day with lots of sunshine and very little breeze. About
an hour after everyone had arrived it was up to freezing,
so not too hot for working and not too cold for sitting
around the fire. We got lots of work done and then we
all had our wiener roast. We got back to work out on the
road and lo and behold, Maria from the bakery showed up
with hot chocolate, hot coffee and freshly baked cinnamon
buns so back to the fire we went! Who's gonna turn that
down?
So thank you Maria and guys and ladies that came
out to help. Leah even brought the twins that
are only two months old. I didn't hear a peep from the
car sets sitting next to the fire so I'm assuming they
were in there. At least it got her and Richard out of
the house for a change and the babies got to enjoy their
first bonfire and wienie roast. And in this country, that
will only be the first of many. Sadly, one of our guys
had to leave a little early on an ambulance call but we
got lots of work out of him before he had to go. :-)
It looks like the good weather is going to continue for
this next week. There were a couple of nights this
week that we took the dogs for a walk in the moonlight,
mostly so that we could listen to the lake. It
makes such amazing sounds after a warm day and then once
it's dark the temperature really starts to fall, the moon
comes up, and the lake really starts talking!. I love
a full moon when there's snow on the ground. We carry
flashlights but don't need to turn them on. It's nearly
bright enough to read a book by when the moonlight reflects
back off the snow.
We still haven't caught a picture of our midnight
marauder with the wildlife camera. It didn't work
at all one night and night before last it only caught
our cat's butt going in the cat door in the morning a
couple of times. I don't know if the flash isn't working
or if our home intruder hasn't been back since I scared
him off the other night. Foxes cover a pretty good territory
and if that's what this is, then maybe he hasn't been
back this way on his rounds yet. Or maybe I put the fear
of God into him the night he was in the basement.
Last night I saw one of our local foxes crossing the road
when I came back from Nimpo and he was quite a ways from
our place. I know it was him because he's black with a
pale colored stripe around his middle and Andy has seen
him on our corner.
I'm too pooped to pop so this is going to be a short blog
tonight! Take a look at photos sent to me by Ted
Hlokoff of the work party today. I'll put them up on the
right and on the Picture of the Day.
I won't be posting a blog for the next week. Maybe I can
get one posted next weekend. Indulge in good cheer and
Christmas parties, everyone. In the meanwhile, last week's
blog can be found at December
Week One
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Anahim
Lake Highway cam looking West.
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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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