Happy Birthday to my dear beloved wife. I do believe she's catching up to me age-wise. When we were first married she was 94% as old as me. Now it's over 95%. Of course, maybe it's because I'm getting younger. One can hope.
Tonight's beer menu. Marian, if you tell Brian right now, he can still make it here by happy hour :).
My friend with the yellow truck (sounds like a Curious George spin-off) and I always had plans to do a hike to a certain Reiseter Lake in the middle of nowhere. (I'm pretty sure it's my fault that outing never materialized.) So for years, every time we'd meet up the greeting would be "Reiseter?" Which is exactly how I greeted him a couple weeks ago when I tracked him down in Smithers. Unexpectedly, that got the ball rolling and we decided to do the hike.
Back in school a group of us students did the overnight hike; I was probably 13 or so at the time and I remember it to be not so trivial an excursion. We expected that this time it would take at worst 6 hours each way, barring any falling off cliffs or mauling by bears. An overnight trip was considered, but the wives vetoed that idea. So off we went: myself, Derek, and his dog Max.
We decided to drive as far as possible and then cheat and bike first rather than walk. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the access road had since been extended an extra 4km, saving us some biking. We biked for under an hour, stopping at the top of an incline so we could coast back down at the end of the day when our legs were dead.
The first part of the walk was along an old access trail to even older mine site, so it was quite wide (although a little muddy). Later the trail grew narrow but was still easy to follow.
Later still, some imagination was required to identify a trail.
There were many creek crossings to entertain us. Some were far too easy...
...and others a little less so...
The scenery was amazing. Just one example is a forest floor of invitingly thick moss.
We didn't see much for wildlife, although there was much evidence for our feet to avoid, like this nice pile of bear poop. Second-hand berries anyone?
Yes, I just posted poo on my blog.
Since there were no animals to take pictures of (other than the dog), I snapped some mushroom shots since we encountered hundreds of different types. Unfortunately the dog must have wanted his picture taken because more than once, I would bend over to do a macro shot of a shroom when suddenly Max would whiz by me and wreck my precious fungal target! It was as if he knew exactly what he was doing. Here's one that I fixed after he stomped on it. Just like new!
We got to the lake in just under 4 hours, well in time for lunch. Certainly worth the trek; it just doesn't get more serene than this.
There is a small campsite on the shore, but it's not maintained; that's the user's job. Permanently here are a picnic table, an aluminum canoe with paddles, and a hacksaw. We couldn't find an axe but there was cut firewood, some of which was split. We made a tiny fire.
Then it was lunch time. The time when you wish you had packed more food than just a sandwich. Oops. Luckily Derek had brought some soup. But still, a pack of hotdogs would have really hit the spot right then. After soup, the obligatory cigars. Meantime, my sock was curing nicely in the smoke... but more on that later.
After lunch we decided to take the canoe and search for a smaller lake that we knew was somewhere upstream. We took the dog and paddled to the west end of the lake.
We continued up the creek that fed the lake, but it was very shallow. After several instances of pushing the scraping canoe over the creekbed (very tiring) rather than actually floating along, we considerately threw the dog overboard to increase our bouyancy.
That did the trick, and on we went until the creek became too narrow to continue. Then we set out on foot in the general direction of where we expected to find the other lake, with the basic premise that the creek we'd been following connected the lakes. Since the creek was far from straight, we cut straight across to save some time. There were no trails, so the going was pretty rough. Lots of fallen trees and underbrush...
...and the occasional rapids got in the way.
Sadly, we didn't find the smaller lake before we finally ran out of time and had to turn back. If you click the map below, you can follow the trail we took from the campsite (green dot #1). We canoed about 3km to green dot #2, from which we walked about 1.5km to the end of the dotted red line (in my estimation). (Dot #3 is where the rapids from the above picture were.) If my estimation is correct, we quit painfully close to the elusive lake. A high ridge was between us and the lake there, so we were mistakenly expecting to find the lake downhill (north of us) whereas it was actually south. Oh well, I guess we'll find it next time.
Anyway, it was a memorable jaunt. One painful memory is my blister. Since I hadn't planned on doing any hiking, I had to borrow some footwear because my runners wouldn't have held up well on trails like this:
A couple of soakers (hence my drying the sock over the fire at lunch time) and an imperfect fit led to a nice blister on one heel. Let's just say the walk back wasn't as painless as I'd hoped. But we did make it back to the truck in 3 hours, thanks in part to a nice bike ride at the end.
At the end of the night, my white socks were ever so slightly discoloured (they actually still look like that after two washes).
Entirely by coincidence, a few days after the hike I found an old photo album of mine that had photos from the time our school group did the hike. For old time's sake, here are some shots.
Derek and I are on the right...
Me eating breakfast...
The cabin at the old mine site... then...
...and now... not so much a cabin as a pile of crappy logs...
Ok, that post wasn't even long.
Carrie and I wanted to go see stuff one day, so we took our 3-year-old niece Andrea to Driftwood Canyon. This area is known for its fossil beds and my family used to go there fairly often back in the tape cassette era.
To our delight, Andrea was basically a miniature grown-up, carrying her own pack and never having to be carried. As a bonus, she proved to be quite the capable mountain goat as well as we made our way up the slopes.
The girls are ready. Awesome rental car huh...
No fear for this kid. There's not much shale on this slope; over the years it has been picked pretty clean. It looks much different than it did when I was a young'un.
The top of the main fossil beds. The rock lies in many loose layers, which have been picked at for many years. You're not actually allowed to excavate at the wall anymore, probably to preserve the area for future fossil finders. And maybe so the cliff doesn't collapse and squish people.
Standing under a tree. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Why is it always steeper on the way back down? And believe me, it was steep. It didn't help that if you grabbed a branch for support one of two things was likely: either said branch wasn't well (or at all) attached to the earth, or it provided you with a handful of thistles.
Back to being a little kid for a minute.
The upper half of this hill we slid down on our haunches; it was our best bet for a controlled descent.
Since we didn't expect to find any fossils at that slope, we headed down the unmarked trail leading to the much better section. When I was younger, someone exploring there fell and broke a neck or back or something fairly important, which resulted in a bad reputation for that section. I thought a few years ago there were signs warning people of this area, but now there's nothing at all to acknowledge its existence. So off we went.
Andrea wasn't shy at all about hanging out under tons of rock.
Very interesting formations... as seen from below.
Well, here's our haul for the day. Fish and fly fossils have been discovered in the past, but we had to settle for ferns and some snazzy patterns.
The view on the way home; who wouldn't want to live here?
We stayed with Bill & Martine (my older sister) for the week. They very recently had another baby, but they happened to have a guest room for us. Hank and Karin (my even older(!) sister) live far far away (or so it seemed back in the day... 11km) in Smithers; they didn't have room to put us up, but we bravely made the trek to see them on occasion.
Since Carrie's work currently involves the softwood lumber issue, we thought she should get a tour of the sawmill in Smithers, thereby ensuring that she knows a hundred times more about actual softwood than do her deskbound coworkers fighting for the cause. Hank works at the mill so he gave us a tour of the mill and planer.
All dressed up and somewhere to go. Do we look awesome or what?
I couldn't hear much of the tour spiel over the roar of machinery, but I'm an educated fellow. Each of these logs becomes a pencil, a chopstick, or a toothpick, depending on market conditions; extra-straight trees can produce two toothpicks!
I couldn't take many pictures there -- much less post them -- lest I be persecuted. Or was that prosecuted?
Playing that mandatory game of Settlers...
Enjoying a nice long evening of raclette...
Niece ready to play a sport (really not sure which one)...
The doting aunt...
The longsuffering uncle (will we never learn not to buy stickers?)...
I tracked down an old buddy in town and he told me he happened to be getting firewood that night, so I helped him out. We drove a short ways out of town and cut up some nice trees we, um, found lying around. I'm figuring that 10 years ago when he fixed up his '66(?) Ford he never dreamed he'd end up abusing it by (way) overloading it with firewood. More about him later.
Don't feel much like blogging today... oh wait, when do I ever? Not much exciting for part 3.
So this one's about our long and uneventful drive up to the Bulkley Valley after our weekend. For perhaps the first time ever, we went as tourists rather than merely as passers-through. I guess we miss unboring landscapes or something.
We considered going to Hell's Gate, a tourist trap at a remarkable gorge in the Fraser Canyon. Unfortunately their hours of operation didn't coincide with our driving plan, so we just stopped there for a minute to have a free look.
We then drove through tunnels...
past toy-looking trains...
along bendy roads (which used to be fun to fly along and cut corners except now they've put a continuous rumble strip along the yellow line - and besides, end up behind a transport truck and there go one's Formula One plans)...
along deserty Middle-East-looking hillsides...
past forests of bugwood with spots of green...
...and then through miles and miles (and did I mention miles?) of boring forest all the way to the thriving metropolis of Telkwa.
