9th July 2016
Glaciers, and plenty of bears
!
After a chat with Hildegard
and Franz, we said our farewells as they head north to Alaska and I go west to
Seattle – And then met 5 minutes later down at the dump station where they were
doing one thing while I was filling up my water tank with drinking water ! I realized I didn’t have a photo of them yet,
so took one at the dump station ! They
could be coming out to Australia next year, so that might be the next place I
see them ! I then went up to the
Information Centre to get some wifi so I could book flights to Houston in 2
weeks time for grand daughter Olivia’s 2nd birthday, sitting outside
and admiring Mt Robson while I worked.
Very pleasant morning.
Just before I set off, a
group of tourists came over for a chat – They were Belgian and had seen the
Belgian stickers on my car ! Unfortunately they spoke Flemish so we had a bit
of a difficult conversation, although when I told them Janet’s maternal
grandmother came from Belgium, they were fascinated !
Then I hit the road – And
five minutes along, I suddenly noticed my engine warning light had gone out
! For a moment I thought Troopie had
fixed herself, but unfortunately my gauges tell me I still have no turbo boost,
so while she is certainly doing a little better on the hills than she was
yesterday, she is still only a shadow of her former self power-wise. But at least I don’t have to stare at that
engine warning light all the time now !
There were some big mountains
off to my left as I came down the road – Then I realized that of course I was
driving down the back side of the Rockies, almost parallel to the road I had
driven north on yesterday up through the Banff / Jasper NP. But the 3505m Mt Sir Wilfrid Laurier and 3219 m Hallam Peak were covered in snow and
glaciers, and very imposing. I kept seeing very colourful signs to a River
Safari at Blue River, with great pictures of bears. There were so many signs
that when I finally got to Blue River and the sign said “Turn Here”, I did
! I wasn’t sure what I would find, but
it was time for a sandwich anyway, so at worst I would just do that.
As soon as I turned off the
road, along with 2 or 3 other cars, we were held up by a very slow moving goods
train crossing the dirt road ! Eventually the very long and slow train went
through, and we carried on down the dirt road – To find a very substantial
facility with work shops for Jeeps (that do a land safari) and then a ramp down
to a big floating office and restaurant with lots of little kind of jet boats
tied up. It seemed to be manned mostly
by Aussies who work in places like this in the summer, and then either go
skiing or work in the snow in the winter !
They persuaded me that the adventure was worthwhile, so I signed up, and
after a while it was my groups turn, and off we went.
They kit you out with life
jackets and big ponchos for the rain, (and it was raining half the time !) and
then off we went. Just up the river was
an Osprey’s nest up in the top of a tree, and then we headed up towards Mud
Lake. While it is located “near Blue
River”, this area around Mud Lake is in fact the world’s only inland temperate
rain forest, and due to the lack of roads and other human infrastructure round
here, it is a prime place for (mainly) black bear. Not 5
minutes into the lake, we spotted our
first bear on the shore, and they shut the main boat engine off and use a small
electric trolling motor that allows the boat to silently follow the bear along
the edge of the water. This is fascinating because normally you can only watch
a bear cross your path and disappear again – this time we could follow them
along the shore – and we did, for 10 minutes or so. Fantastic !
Then we set off around the
lake, with a few intermittent showers to keep us company, although with the big
ponchos I have to say I didn’t get wet at all.
We found a waterfall hidden in the trees over on the far side of the
lake, and then 5 minutes later spotted our 2nd bear, wandering along
the rocky water’s edge looking for berries.
They force themselves through the bushes and sometimes dense undergrowth
as they make their search, occasionally stopping for a small feast when they
find a good bush. In fact, when you are
trying to spot a bear from the boat, you don’t look for a bear, but for a
shaking bush, because once they get in a bush there is no mistaking all the
movement they make !
It took us about 20 minutes
before we spotted our 3rd bear, and by then it was raining quite
hard, so photos were difficult, so we mostly just watched him as he fossicked
along the shoreline. Unfortunately it
was then time to head back to the base, but on the way past the Osprey’s next
(same as a Sea Hawk), he / she came in to land on the nest. Our guide was telling us that Osprey’s mate
for life and always come back to the same place each year to mate. (They migrate to S America in the northern
winter.) This spring, when the snow and
ice
(the lake freezes solid) melted, the people here found that the Osprey’s
nesting tree had broken and collapsed into the water. Hoping not to “lose” their Ospreys, they
climbed a nearby tree, chopped the top off it and nailed a couple of boards up
there as a platform. And sure enough,
when the Ospreys came back for S America, they built their nest on the new tree
!
This whole part of the world
is really so beautiful, and it is on days like this that the beauty and wonder
of nature is just reinforced. I
thoroughly enjoyed my hour or so out on the lake with the bears – Very special.
I then headed back up to the
road and continued south, even seeing yet another black bear and her 2 cubs as
they ran across the road in front of me !
She was so quick I never even got my camera turned on in time ! I am
heading towards Salmon Arm tomorrow, still some 200 kms away, to meet some
friends, but I was getting weary by about 5 pm, and as abput 5.30 saw a sign to
a camp site in the Northern Thompson River Provincial Park. Despite being a Saturday they still had
plenty of room, so I set up and cooked myself some Pulled Pork and veggies for
supper – Absolutely delicious and a good variation from my normally limited
range of cooking ! After my supper a
delightful family came over for a chat and we had a great time with dad Jeremy
and daughter Kylie. Kylie turned out to be a very knowledgeable young lady and
not only introduced me to some of the delicious berries growing on the bushes
all around me (no wonder the bears like them !), but also knew a surprising
amount about the oil industry that she had learned at school, even naming Mud
Engineers !! I told her if she ever
made it to Australia with her family to look us up ! Great meeting you all !
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