“She, I am missing a food bag. Have you seen it?”
“I put everything in the cache. Did you look there?”
Having made two trips already to the cache, I was now determined that I was missing something and proceeded to unload the whole cache piece by piece. It was obvious that it was there and moving the bags around was not enough to discover the food bag containing breakfast. I was going to make pancakes, but nothing was going to happen until I found the bag.
Having emptied the cache and still not finding it I again shouted out to the wife, “It’s NOT in the cache.”
“What colour is the bag?”
“Green”
“Green?”
“Yes”
“I thought green bags were cloths?”
“Yes, all but one. The green bag marked breakfast and dinner contains food.”
“Found it!”
“Where?”
“In the tent.”
It now became apparently clear that my side of the tent was baited for some unapparent reason. It could be the conversation we had a few days ago as we were settling into the tent?
“Where is my bear spray?” Asked my wife as I turned around to get comfortable in my side of the sleeping bag.
“I don’t know where you put it.”
“It was right here.”
“Then it should be right there then.”
“Help me find it.”
“It don’t matter, there are no wild animals here anyway.”
“How do you know. It has to be here.”
“Did you look in the pile of cloths? Under the sleeping bag? What about outside?”
“Yes, yes, it’s not here.”
“Don’t worry about it and go to sleep.”
“You don’t care do you? You would sooner have us eaten and attacked then”
That’s my queue that I better be careful what I am about to say but of course being the insensitive guy I am.
“I think it’s attacked then eatened.”
The lights went out and I don’t remember much afterwards…
So this is how day six started. From being worried about having all the protection and taking all the precautions before we went to bed every night like it was a ritual that must be adhered to, we going and sleep with a food bag over our heads.
While it did prove another thing. THERE ARE NO ANIMALS HERE! There is some Ranger going around stomping animal tracks around the camps and throwing poop in various spots to get our hopes of and idea that there are wild animals around. They even went to the extent of hiring a mom and her two cub grizzles at the entrance to get us all excited about seeing more! I am sure we would have seen a moose if it was not for the fact that it was down for mechanical repairs!
“Hey! That moose is swimming across the lake again!”
Hearing that I snapped out of my petty fit and ran to grab my binoculars.
“Where?”
“There, about half way down the lake. See?”
I raised the binoculars to my eyes and started to focus on the dark object slowly making it’s way across the lake.
“That’s no moose. It’s a pair of loon’s swimming together!”
So this is how day six started…
Breakfast done, we loaded our stuff for the last time into the kayaks. We were committed now to complete the trip today. We have completed 92 of the 116 kms and all 10 kms of portages. Our score card was O for 5 for seeing any wild animals, but today was a new day. We were very optimistic because the area we will be paddling through is prime moose country. Marsh land, swampy and full of sweet cottonwoods. I am not sure if cottonwoods are sweet, I added it to the sentence because it sounded good, so don’t quote me on the sweet cottonwood thing.
Leaving the camp in the morning, the group of guys from the states showed up. We had a chance to return the bottle to them that we had found earlier. It turned out that they had dumped in the river as the canoe was not as stable as they thought. They asked several questions about our rigs, the main one being "How stable are they?"
The weather was no different than most days...cloudy with some sunny periods.
Spectacle Lake about a kilometer up to the right is Deer Bay. It looked too good for exploring to pass up. Man, if I were a moose, this is the place to hang out. I just drifted in the area and stopped and listened. Birds singing with the wind gently blowing through the trees adding the rustle of leaves to the chorus. Nothing…
About a third of the way up, the lake takes a s-curve to the right and then left past Pat Point. If we were going to the original plans, this is were we would have spent our last night. It is one of the finest campsites on the circuit. The campsite contains large sites and a shelter. Also there are two cabins for more comfort.
Continuing on you eventually come to Pavich Island. Originally called Deadman’s Island because of the many Takullis that died there from smallpox. The story goes that they got the disease for retribution for murdering a miner. There are several campsites in the area, on both sides of the island. We decided on number 51, a medium sized site for rest and snacks.
Having a break and a snack at "Area 51". No unusual sightings...or Unidentified Floating Objects
Past Pavich Island, although it is hard to tell, you are now actually on Swan Lake. In no time we passed the last campsite (53-54) before entering the Bowron Marsh or Slough area. This is the last opportunity to stop and camp in preparation for Bowron Lake. No stopping us now, we had home on the brain and it was one stroke after another until we reached the north shores of Bowron.
Entering the slough and the location of the last campsites on the circuit. There is also a Rangers Cabin to the right - we go to the left...
It was very cool to paddle through the slough. We spread out a bit in hopes that one of us would spot something or sneak up on a moose. Every paddle around a bend, with hope in our hearts we searched for the elusive Bowron Lake moose. Like any mystical creature, it avoided any sightings. But we carried on…
Entering and paddling our way along the Bowron River as it snakes through the slough. Somewhere here is a moose hiding.
We started to meet other people coming down from Bowron Lake doing this section in reverse. You can do this at half the fee, but can only go so far because of the Cariboo River current. The feeling of being alone, out in the middle of nowhere was gone. Today, we are part of the civilized world again.
The water was high and you could enter the lake earlier then normal, but we continued to the left hugging the marsh areas.
The slough or river section is 4 kms long and when you get to the end you are greeted by a sign that says, no powerboats past here. We now have just over 7 kms to go and the activity has really picked up. There are canoes and power-boaters seen in several places ahead. But the weather was holding, sun was peeking through on occasion and the lake was glass. You could not ask for anything more for this last leg…
Exiting the river and entering the Bowron Lake. Only 7.2 kms to go...for some reason my butt stopped hurting??
“Hey!”
“What?”
“I see a something coming out of the swamp area across the lake. It…yes, it’s a herd of moose!”
I heard (sic) everything now but turned around to look in the direction that I was being directed to and sure enough there were several black objects in a cluster coming out of an area that was isolated from our paddle route through the river. Boy that was a long sentence – it was on the opposite side of the lake…
With my binoculars to my eyes and focusing on the herd…
“Yup, it’s a herd alright. A herd of canoes and paddlers that is. Are you sure those…”
I stopped right there because I have to admit that I too wanted to see that herd of moose too. I would have accepted someone pointing to a speck in the mountains and said that was a bear and I would have counted it! Alas…it was not meant to be.
The water was like glass and with the sun shining through at times, it made for some pretty good pictures. Now this is what kayaking is all about!At peace with the world...It don't get any better then this...Everyone gets a paddle by photo...Showing good technic...Celebrating the journey...Ok, it's a paddle by photo, not a stop and pose photo...McLeod and Tediko Peaks can be seen in the background.
At the end of circuit you have a choice. You can paddle to the right and go to the parks dock and portage to the parking lot. The other choice is to go to Beck’s Lodge to the left and there is a ramp next to the lodge where you can land and then walk to your car, bring it back and unload from here.
The Park's dock. It's not ideal for getting out and portaging. We stepped out on the docks and towed the empty kayaks to Beck's.
The best solution, which we took was to go to the parks dock, drop off the ladies, (at this point they sort of looked like ladies, but having put up with me for six days and working so hard to get here, they deserved some respect) and then tow the empties to Beck’s. At Beck’s we would wait for them while they walked to the vehicles and drove them to the ramp. We were a little worried that it would take longer then we thought when we realized that we left them with a full fridge of beer.
Yummmmm….beeeeer!
They were back shortly after we landed with beers in hand, they pasted them around and we toasted to the end of a great kayaking adventure!
We were sad to learn our home team lost the Stanley Cup and were even more shocked to hear that Vancouver got destroyed with some rioting. Nothing worse then sore losers…
Although we didn’t see any wild animals, we made it around without too many problems and in one piece and probably a little closer to our friends.
Best Friends Forever...or as my daughter might say BFF...smile! We made it!A little tired, a little sore and a whole lot happy although it maybe hard to see here...but we are. (left to right: Al, Donna, Jon, Diane, Sheila and me)
“What’s that smell?”
“What smell?”
“You can’t smell that!”
“Well sort of…”
“What is it? We need to air this car out…”
“I think it’s my neoprene boots. Kinda smells like blue cheese don’t it?”
“Not funny…where are they?”
“Behind my seat.”
“You couldn’t have put them in a plastic bag could have you?”
She is always so logical. How was I to know they would smell worse then us in a confined space of the compact Forester!
“Hey, why are the cars stopping? It’s a black bear…”
