The Republic of Atnarko

So I've made I've finally made it out of Bella Coola but it was not an easy feat, My heart wasn't in it either, I have to say I really fell for the valley.


The phone lines are still not fixed and there is no informaiton on when service will be restored. A barge brining in heavy road equiment was arrange to ship our cars down to Vancouver and then we could arrange flights out as the airport is running flights again.


But while we were stranded up in Stuie (okay with our own generator, killer wine selection and more coho than you could shake a stick at) we decided the next time the government completely failed us we were going to seperate. It will be the republic of A. We are almost completely self sufficient we just need to work on some arsenal and arrange a marrige of convenice with a Nuhulk princess and the Swede to secure an alliance with the natives.





Due to the flood I wasn't able to upload pictures of undisputibly the best day of my life!


so here's some more random pics...


Annalee and I up at Ape lake near a glacier

All but 6 of our guests have now been evacuated! Now there isn't much to do but drink red wine and eat all the salmon we have left!

Big flood of 2010!

Helicopter refueling tank on the move with our dumspter!




Road just east of the lodge as far as we can go.










Neighbours farm now under water-all cattle dead but she managed to save her horses and float plane.








Water coming past the second cabin-we moved these people into the lodge

Bears were pushed up from feeding on salmon on the river banks-black bears and grizzlies roaming all over the place.

earlier in the day when the river overflowed the banks and flooded the first cabin

Richard lapointe landed the heli 2 feet from me ! Sometimes the heli's dont shut down when we load guests and luggage so we have to be right there and ready to go. clients are billed by minutes so we have to move quick to get them going.



Beautifull morning in Stuie! It snowed on the mountain yesterday but it was 21 degrees on the deck.




Esqer trail next to the lodge has been closed!

there are bears everywhere now!

Alligator lizard up the tote road

So much has happened but I haven't been able to find the time to update the blog. So here's a bunch of photos and I am going to try and keep on top of things now moving forward!
Lot's of excitement here in Stuie!



Whoa! Looking in the back of people's pickups around here can be suprising. This cougar was killing sheep down on a Firvale farm so the rangers were called in.

Some dollies we caught on the Atnarko. Tonight the boss asked us to make Gravlax tonight so we couldn't come home without any fish.

We thought Carol was cooking in the kitchen but when we drifted by the bear-viewing station at Belarco she was up there with Ranger Wes.


Cub and sow sharing a fish

Bear!!

Whent fishing in some Mackenzie drift boats today and the boss and his friend Y.P. came along in pontoon boats. If you look up stream you can see a bear wandering down-We had to get back in the boats soon after this.

Swede a little to close to a bear! We were in a drift boat right behind him. Boy did he have to back paddle fast about 5 seconds later!

Today Swede wanted to have some fun as a friend who was visiting and he also wanted to check out a new unscouted ridge for future heli hiking so we packed some lunch, bear spray, radios, survival and first aid kits and headed out to the helicopter-man these people are prepared (I carried a backpack but little did they know I had nothing in it but a chocolate bar and my camera).


Looking for a good spot to land.




Swede unloading our back packs at the drop off point-Hold onto your hats!

Checking out the view at the drop off point

Doug coming up a tricky part.

Our fearless leader looking at the map!

Breaking for snacks about half way up.


At the summit!

At the summit calling for our ride on the radio!







Pat, Doug , Pilot Richard, The Swede and Skye at the end of the hike

I told Doug I'd go on a nature walk with him but I wasn't interested in any wildlife poop (the technical term is scat) but these naturalists can't seem to help themselves. This scat- he informed me against my will had some salmon and berries in it-nice

Pink Salmon moving up the Atnarko to spawn. Spent a day with doug on the trail looking for Pika's(small alpine rabbit things)

Crazy fight right on the front lawn of the lodge. A male grizzley chased and killed a cub and the the mother protected it for over 6 hrs so the male wouldn't take it and eat it. we could see another cub down the path but it was being wise and kept hiding in the bushes. The park rangers said they know it happens all the time in the wild but had never seen anything like it before.

Grizzlies are here!!

Some of our guests get a little to close to the action.


The bear looking at the guests-This is when Carol had to go down and move everyone back.




Carol and I have been crazy busy. Most of the staff is off on holidays as it was supposed to be a slow week but we ended up with a full house of drop-in guests. So inbetween cooking and serving we are also doing the maintenace, laundry, airport shuttle, tour bookings, supply runs and housekeeping, We had the boss doing dishes and clearing tables. Ontop of how busy we are the Grizzlies have come to the valley early this year in search of salmon-as there are no salmon yet we have to keep retrieving guests from dangerous situations on the lawn-

dispite warnings when they check in, bear aware posters in the cabins and having to fill in waivers most people still get way to close.

So walks and tubing have officially come to a standstill unless you have 3 or more people in your group, bear spray and or diva the dog.

Most of our guests are trapped in paradise right now as the hwy has been closed due to several forest fires on heckman's pass ( the hill). they had a pilot car leading people out of the valley up untill 5am but now the hwy is completely closed. We have the fire chief coming down to talk to us today so thay we have something to tell the guests.

I have to go and battle spiders now in the cabins-spiders never sleep is one of the Swedes favorite sayings- that and "this is gonna be great on youtube!" (every time a guest gets to close to a bear:))

Tubing down the Atanarko

Annalee, Carol and Nina drifting by one of the lodge's guests and guide Lee trout fishing.

The banks of the Atanarko out just down the path from the lodge.

Today was fairly quiet for work. Got up at the crack of dawn and fed our guests and sent them all off on day trips-This was Carol's great plan-get rid off everyone for the afternoon and then we could go tubing down the river. The Atanarko river is a lake fed river that runs in front of the lodge, most around here are glacier fed so pretty cold but the Atnarko is warm enough to swim in. It's pretty fast moving so getting on the tube was a chore but once on you tear down the river at a good lick-which as Annalee pointed out is very good when there are bears on the banks! We put one car down at the fisheries pool- a fish-counting place and campground just about a mile downriver from us and then headed back up to the lodge where we got in. We passed one of our guests trout fishing on the river with Lee one of our guides. Very relaxing day.

The boss is in a very good mood today as we had some rain last night-We've had suh dry weather that forest fires have been burning in several spots in the park (we are just in side the tweedsmuir provincial park border on the west side) We have all taken turns going down to unofficial campsites in the area and feeling rocks to make sure fire hasn't gone underground, The natives had their annual powwow here in Stui last week so we had to have a pumper truck come up and soak the area just incase (Stuie is actually exactly where the lodge is, it is a thousand year old meeting place for the plateau natives and the valley natives, historically the two groups would meet once a year and trade. Stuie is a derivitive of a word meaning meeting place in Nuhalk language.

Prawn Catching and hot springs

Masa and me being setup for a photo by Taylor

Janice, Skye and me enjoying the hot springs-our modeling career almost over

Janice, Skye, Taylor and Masa Cooling off in the inlet- water was still warmer near the shore due to the hot springs.

Janice, Skye and me waiting for masa to come back with the dingy to pick us up.

View of the mountains coming back to Bella Coola.

Photographer Taylor Kennedy (national geographic photographer !!)and freelance travel writer Masa Takei have been staying at the lodge and have spent time doing some adventure travel with the boss. They did some heli camping/fishing/hiking and yesterday Swede invited me and Skye (lodge manager) to join them for a photo shoot doing some prawn catching and a visit to the hot springs in a coastal cruiser. We left Carole, Annalee and her sister Nina with a full house of guests but they got to go up in the helicopter hiking yesterday so we didn't feel sorry for them!

First Captin Kiff and his great cruiser Nan (Nuhulk language for grizzly bear) took us through crazy choppy water down the betnik arm (if we kept goining it would take us out to open ocean) to pick up some prawn traps he had set earlier the day before -He said the deeper you put the traps the better but then it gets harder to pull them up, especially full of prawns. Guess what the bait was! Cat food in a can-whiskers is his favorite, but you have to make sure you only put a few holes in it so your prawns don't end up smelling like catfood-blah. Unfortunatly our harvest wasn't that great as the winds and current had sent the trap into shallower water and thats when the starfish and crabs have a feast!

After we pulled up our catch we headed further down the straight and encountered some pretty rough waters as we hit the convulgence of several different water sources that gave us a pretty rough ride-good thing I had a gravel earlier. Things calmed down after we shot off into an inlet towards the hot springs.

Once we got as clo se to shore as we could in our boat we pulled the dingy of the top off the boat and skye did 2 trips to get us all into shore save for the captain and his wife who chose to stay on the boat.

After Taylor took a billion photos we were left alone to enjoy ourselves in the spring and ocean with some beer.

Lots of fun!!!

Catching up on the blog!

Had a fantastic day yesterday the big boss Swede's friend showed up on a harley after driving from NYC and Swede wanted to take him out for a heli hike as a treat and asked if I wanted to come along (Sorry but Carol was on her own again in the kitchen). We drove down to Hagensborg where the hanger is and the pilot Rob gave us a quick run down on helicopter safety and then we took off into the costal mountain range- the view was unbelievable. Swede pointed out some of the runs they do in the winter and where they do some of the hiking. Leonard wanted to touch down on a ridge and the pilot obliged and we put a few helicopter prints in the snow on the top off one of the peaks. Fantastic!


One of the lodges A-star helicopters

Our pilot Rob

We set down for a moment on the peak straight ahead. what a Rush!



A view of some of the heli skiing and heli hiking terrain the lodge uses

More Salmon for dinner-This one provided by one of the lodge guides.

Walkers Island

Big Cedar forest on Walker Island

More Big Cedars on Walkers Island


More!

Annalee, the lodges resident masseuse,Pat, Carol and Dill, saying goodbye.

I can't believe it's over! Yesterday the ladies said their goodbyes to the other guests, carol and Staff and we headed down to the airport (we use this term loosely). Carol was a bit concerned that the flight might be cancelled due to high winds (we didn't mention this to Dill)but it was still on. Once they checked in their baggage at the one room airport we had about an hour to kill before take off so we drove 5 minutes down the road to walker Island to check out the big cedars-they werent kidding! The forest was full of huge trees. After a lovely walk through the forest gazing at giants, listening for bears and eating thimbleberries and where Pat once again kindly attracted all the mosquitoes so that they didn't bother dill or I, we headed back to the airport where Pat and I did our best to distract Dill from the narrow runway through the mountain valley, the small prop plane that was their ride and the gusting wind that wasy blowing the huge trees around. I can be honest now since she did get on- I wouldn't have done it!!! you should have seen her face as she crossed the tarmac-I was sure she was going to run back but nope she was super brave and even gave a big wave and smile before she ducked into the plane. I did stay and watch their tiny little plane dissapear through the mountains and was perturbed by how bad it was pitching on its way up and didn't really feel good untill I called them at their hotel in Vancouver and found them safe and sound and into the brandy. They said a woman on the flight who takes it twice a week said it was the worst flight ever. I'm sure Pat and Dill will fill you all in on the details.

After the airport I drove back to the lodge as I had to serve dinner to the other guest and right as I was pouring the wine at one of the tables a black bear waltzed past the dining room window-I'm definatly going to have to get used to this or I'm going to be a lousy waitress! I'm also going to have to keep my camera on me at all times.