May 6 2012

    Over the past few weeks I've been working a little bit on the section of the "Old Douglas Trail" that passes through the property, bucking up some overgrowth and running it into the wood chipper.

Lt. Palmer of the Royal Engineers wrote in 1859, of this very section, "....Upon leaving the 'Hot Spring House', the trail runs for one mile along a broad flat about 10' above the level of the Lillooett River, ...this flat is rather rocky and the soil light and sandy..".
The old Douglas Portage was the first route to the goldfields in 1858 and a Heritage Trail. There are sections of it left in the valley which I would like to hike this year and write a post about.
Every year since the mid 1970's groups of high school students from the lower mainland have hiked the route every May. This years batch are due in a week or so and I've always felt responsible for keeping up the section of old trail that enters the property line at the south, and comes up past the hot spring and continues past the Lodge to the north.



Last Fall there was some mining exploration going on way up one of the local watersheds, the helicopter crew was boarding here and you may recall mention of them on my very first post. They got snowed out at the end of the season in November up at the camp location. They had to abandon two trailers that were part of the camp complex due to deep snow and worsening conditions. It is located 14 km up a near by valley at about 670m (2200') elevation, and subject to heavy coastal snow pack conditions. I was eager to get up there to look when the snow receded enough and before they resumed operations.

The trusty Honda quad never missed a beat and the air conditioning worked just fine, looking down valley.
A week from now a comfortable tent camp will be set up here for the 2012 season.

Hard to believe the entire area was under snow weeks ago, enough snow to completely bury an RV trailer.

Both trailers got crinkled by the snow load. Ouch


Its that time of year again when my bear friends come to hang around and indulge on my grass.

It will be a pretty common occurrence to look out any time for the next month or so and see a bear grazing.

They paw around uprooting vast areas of sod digging up bugs. I wish they would go do it someplace else.

They supplement the grass with what ever lives in these little burrows. A wasp or something, note at the top of the frame how they deftly rake it out with their claws..

 ChUk and ChYk enjoy a walk down by the water.

New cat ChYk, trying out her camouflage.

Looks like the lawn is going to grow again this year, and dug out the push mower today. I had rather hoped it wouldn't, every year I try to ignore it, but it grows anyways. Once you start its a never ending cycle until the end of October. I'll get the ride 'em mower out of mothballs this week to do the airstrip.