Wilderness Adventures - May, Week 3/2012
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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.
| 16/05/2012
9:30
PM |
The Marvelous Weather
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Wow,
it wasn't until I looked at the date that I realized how
long it's been since I last posted. But then again, we've
had absolutely marvelous weather and it's hard to stay
inside and in front of the computer. The only reason I'm
on the computer now is because I fell off my guest cabin
steps on Monday and can't walk particularly well at the
moment, so continuing with my chore list outside in glorious
weather is off the table for now.
Since the middle of last week we've had really warm
temperatures that just kept getting warmer and warmer
through the week, even though some of those days
there's been cloud mixed with sun or a high haze. I think
we reached a high of over 17C or 63F one day which was
amazing. Last Thursday and Sunday, Mother's Day, were
both pretty nice days but we're in a cool down now.
The high pressure system swinging in from the south bringing
warm temperatures and sunshine has moved off and now we
have a high pressure center dropping down from the north.
We still have sunshine but it's bringing temperatures
about ten degrees cooler (20 degrees cooler in Fahrenheit)
than we had. Which means the breeze that was with us during
the week while it was warm is now going to feel pretty
cool. Maybe it will freeze out some of the mosquitoes
that are just starting to show up. Last night
we were around our neighbours' campfire and while there
was a breeze there wasn't any sign of bugs. But just after
nine the breeze dropped, it suddenly felt slightly warmer
and we were under attack. It was just the big, lazy, slow
mosquitoes, but they were still in a biting mood, so we
headed for home.
It's nice having the summer neighbours starting to arrive.
It's pretty quiet around here during the winter so we're
generally ready for visiting by this time of year.
I understand the ice officially went off of Nimpo Lake
on the 9th of May. By the evening of the 8th there was
only a small band pushed up in front of the resorts in
the back bay, but ice is ice so it wasn't considered ice
off until all the ice was gone. Heck it wasn't even all
gone when the first floatplane landed over at Wilderness
Rim and Tweedsmuir Air had one of their planes in the
water three days later. Less than a week after official
ice off, several of the resorts had moved their docks
out of the back bay.
We've had the fly boys out of Comox disturbing the
peace in the skies over us for the past couple of weeks
or so. Normally they perform their exercises hiding
behind clouds so that you can hear them a lot but you
can't see them, but maybe we've just had too much blue
sky and they can't be as shy about it. Normally I find
fighter jets performing their exercises pretty thrilling
stuff but this has been going on for some time and they
are definitely noisy buggers. I wouldn't mind so much
if I could see them but more often than not it's been
too dry aloft for contrails so you can hear them, you
just can't see them.... except when they do a thundering
fly by at lower altitude as they just did this morning.
They went over really low the other day too but both then
and today, by the time I grabbed my camera with the telephoto
lens, they were long gone already. As you can see on the
right, I only just caught the underbelly of one going
by and he was already several miles away by the time I
snapped the photo. Man, they move fast! That's probably
just so people like me can't take photos of them.
This is the time of year when they seem to train for the
longest period of time and I can see why it would be a
good area. We get few planes going over here except for
one or two cargo planes heading north around supper time.
There was one span of a couple of days last year that
we saw massive transport planes going north as well but
they actually looked like big military transports. We
probably don't get more than two or three airline jets
going over in a day, and we are on flight maps as a military
training area, so maybe the jets just avoid this airspace.
More likely though we just aren't on a regular flight
path. Suits me. Keeps the cloud cover down. :-)
I would like to introduce you to a new listing on this
website. Woodland Caribou Resort is located at Puntzi
Lake. Dan and Jan opened up their resort last year and
have a lot to offer. They have several modern suites in
the lodge with full bathrooms as well as a cabin with
all the modern conveniences. For those of you that like
to camp, they have 12 full service RV and camping spots
with showers and laundry available for your use. Each
campsite has a fire pit with wood provided and there is
also a general use campfire spot for lodge guests to enjoy.
There is a store on location that includes fishing tackle
and bait for sale and the lodge also offers boat rentals.
Puntzi lake is a great midway stop from Williams Lake
on your way out to Nimpo or Anahim Lakes. It has terrific
fishing for rainbow trout and kokanee to 2 1/2 pounds
and if you time your visit right in July, you can join
in Puntzi Lake's famous annual fishing derby.
So folks, if you're on your way out for a visit in the
West Chilcotin, please consider making a stop at Woodland
Caribou Resort. And if you would like more information
on the resort, you'll find it at Puntzi
Lake Accommodations under Puntzi Lake
on the menu.
This is the start of a new week so you'll find last week's
posts at May
Week Two.
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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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