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.

Carol cleaning a 38lb Salmon

Cal asked me to fillet a salmon for dinner, I said sure until I went to the cooler and saw a sea monster on ice, so Cal gave me a quick lesson on cleaning big salmon and I had to do the other one.

Yesterday he hired a Nuxalk guide down in Hagensborg to visit some petroglyphs in the area-Dilly said the hike up was "petro"-fying. We had to follow a badly maintained trail along the Thorsen creek over several rickety bridges and up steep hills to get to the site. So despite arthritic knees and bad nerves the guide and I were able to bully, prod and pull the ladies up the hill. Dill at one point found a rock to sit on and said she was fine to live there the rest of her life so I had to point out if she fainted in that position she would fall forward over the cliff into the river of glacial water below and be dragged out to sea only to be eaten by orcas-so she agreed to continue the hike. She did say it was worth it but I'm sure the thought of going back down was in the back of her mind the whole time we were at the site. The petroglyphs based on other archaeologica evidence as they can't been carbon dated are though to be 5,000-10,000 years old. They were carved by the same people in the valley today the Nuxalkmc (shortened to Nuxalk in the 1920's) Our native guide guide Nells explained the carvings using local legends.

This Glyph attracted the attention of the Maori in New Zealand and many have come to see it as it is very similar to their rock carvings in their own culture and some Naxtle have also visited New Zealand as both sea cultures feel a kinship.

Owl glyph

In the evening we opened our 6th bottle of champainge in the lounge and listened to Doug "the Trail"

tells some stories of the woods and then he played us some songs on the guitar. He was really quite good.

This morning we had breakfast with some policemen from above "the hill". The stopped at the lodge for breakfast and some fishing. The area they cover is ridiculous, from bella coola to Williams lake over 5 hours away! They told some pretty good tales of the roads especially of the hill.

Today we plan to watch the soccer game on the television and perhaps take in a Rodeo in Anahim.

Bella Coola

View from Clayton Falls just west of Bella Coola on the Estuary


Totem pole downtown Bella Coola

Artwork on the hardware store

Our Cabin

So we've officially made it to our destination yesterday-Bella Coola being about 1hr from the lodge.

Carol had to run a few errands in town so we tagged along. It's not exactly a booming metropolis but we did find an ATM in the hospital, a liquor store and post office and a pretty good supply shop. Carol took us out to lunch at the Valley Inn which was very pleasant and then we had a lovely walk up to the Clayton falls which aside from being very pretty it also supplies the hydro electricity to the town. We also picked up the biggest Salmon I have ever seen for Carol to prepare for dinner at the logdge-30 lbs each. Carol also introduced us to a friend of hers June, whose father was one of the origional norweigen settlers in the valley and told some really great stories of a west coast pioneering family.

the forest Ranger also came by to give us the location of a couple of forest fires in the provincial park but still a good distance away. There are only two ranges for entire provincial park-nearly 1 million hectars!

tomorrow we plan to head out to see some native petroglyhs with a guide but today we are just taking it easy- the weather is in high 30's so were just keeping cool.