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!!!