This trip was intended to be a grizzly bear hunt. We were packed for hunting and headed up for our spot a few days before the opener but the weather had other ideas.
August 30 we left Pitt Meadows in the morning headed for our first stop at Nimpo Lake. We had a beautiful and uneventful flight up to Nimpo via Whistler/Pemberton and on through Gun Lake and then up to Nimpo with the only excitement being the forest fire at Kleena Kleene which we kept well clear of. When we made our position report in that area we immediately were answered by the lead plane for a couple air tankers coming in from Williams Lake. He wanted to know if we could see the fires and how the vis was on our side of the fire. We took on fuel at Wilderness Rim Resort at Nimpo. Great place and super nice people.

From Nimpo we carried on to Tyhee Lake near Smithers where we topped up the tanks and filled a few fuel bags to get in to our hunting spot and back. Alpine Lakes Air sells fuel at Tyhee and they provided great and friendly service. The weather was still looking great at Tyhee and we were making great time so we carried on to our hunting spot but the weather had other ideas. We flew into heavy winds and a lot of rain with the ceilings lowering steadily. We came to a cloud bank up the Bulkley Valley and even heavier rain and decided it was time to divert and put down on a lake to wait the weather out. The lake was called Kitwancool and we wound up parked at some sort of highwayside campsite for dirtbags and degens, covered with litter and ruts from burning out with 4x4s.

We spent a night at Kitwancool and the morning dawned with very little rain or wind and we were ready to give it another go. We took off for our lake and once again hit deteriorating conditions and once again we set down on a lake to wait out the weather, this time at Bowser lake, a milky coloured lake with log choked shores and steep densely wooded sides, I didn't even bother taking pictures. After waiting the better part of a day at Bowser conditions had cleared consideably, we now had room in the wing tanks for our bags of gas so we put those in and headed for our destination lake but again the weather had other ideas. At his point the decision was made to head back to Smithers, with the winds we'd had to buck, the diversions, and the weather going so poorly we didn't want to exhaust our fuel supplies on any further attempts. At Smithers, under clear skies, we made the tough decision to change our hunting plans and head down to Tahtsa Lake where black bears were open.

The weather at Tahtsa was not nearly as nice as Smithers but we did find a nice camp on a gravel estuary which we assumed only got flooded during spring runoff. We camped the night and headed into the bush the next morning. After a day of hunting bears unsuccesfully we went to sleep under cloudy skies. Then it started to pour rain. It poured for 14 hours and by morning the estuary was mostly under water, our tent was at the highest spot and stayed dry throughout. Eventually the weather let up, we got about 1000 feet of ceiling and we decided to move on. We only made it as far as Eutsuk Lake before once again the weather forced us to land. We landed at a remote fish resort and spent the next 24 hours there waiting out the weather. It was a beautiful spot and there was only one other party there on a self outfitted fishing trip renting one of the cabins, we used one of the other cabins.

After resting up a day at Eutsuk and wanting to get home before the weather trapped us we took off into sunny skies, for a short while, by the time we got to Nimpo we were really squeezing in under the clouds but we made it. We took on fuel for the last leg home and walked up to the Dutchman for lunch and to wait out the weather. All the cloud cleared off by 2pm that afternoon and we flew home via Tatlayoko, Homathko and Bute Inlet. Home September 3rd.

Nice scenery. It is too bad about the hunt, those things are scheduled so far ahead, you wait for a year and hope all the stars align. Any chance to give it another go this year?

Steve

Very nice scenery. For sure too bad about the hunt. Heard they are shutting down te grizzly hunts over there, was this your last opportunity to get one?

David

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The scenery was great. We saw some great spots and I have to say my feelings about the trip are all positive despite not hunting grizzly. I think I'll get another crack at it although not for a few weeks. They haven't banned the grizzly hunt outright but this will be the last season where you're allowed to retain the hide.

Great read over a morning coffee! Great country to have to hold up in. Good luck next time.

Nice to have floats and options, were you headed up towards Dease? Lots of PNR planning with weather and rare fuel if you're stuck on avgas, a little better for boat gas. I was around there on wheels in June and there are a lot of miles of no sign of civilization. Part of the attraction.

Hard to imagine bad weather anywhere around here after the summer we've had (I can't see across Squamish today for smoke) but it is a big province and that part is particularly rainy. We usually fish up around Kitwancool and always plan for rain.

I won't rant a out the cancellation of the grizzly hunt but I really, really hope you connect this year.

Great photos. Makes me a bit conflicted about my decision to stay on wheels this year.

Good luck!

Karmutzen wrote:Nice to have floats and options, were you headed up towards Dease? Lots of PNR planning with weather and rare fuel if you're stuck on avgas, a little better for boat gas. I was around there on wheels in June and there are a lot of miles of no sign of civilization. Part of the attraction.

You bet, with the floats there's lots of options to land but very few places for fuel. Mine does burn Mogas but I don't always know where I'll be able to find it. I think either way there are actually more options than the CWAS lists.
The no civilization is exactly the attraction.
I was headed into the area of the Lower Stikine a little south of Telegraph Creek and Dease, would have been nice if a guy could get fuel at Bob Quinn these days but no go.

albravo wrote:Hard to imagine bad weather anywhere around here after the summer we've had (I can't see across Squamish today for smoke) but it is a big province and that part is particularly rainy. We usually fish up around Kitwancool and always plan for rain.

I won't rant a out the cancellation of the grizzly hunt but I really, really hope you connect this year.

Great photos. Makes me a bit conflicted about my decision to stay on wheels this year.

Good luck!

I know it, sweltering hot at home and cold and rainy where I was hunting.
Rant about the grizzly hunt? You mean you're not in favour of the government caving to a special interest lobby and allowing a small but vocal minority to strip freedoms from British Columbians?
There's gravel strips in a lot of neat spots if you don't do floats this season.

One other fun part of the trip that I forgot to take a picture of was coming in to docks full of floatplanes at Nimpo and Tyhee. Turbine Otter and a couple Cessnas at Tyhee and at Nimpo on the return I parked my 1959 180 right beside a 1959 182 on floats with a 185 up the dock a little further. Get to shoot the breeze with some other pilots in beautiful flying country.

[/quote]Rant about the grizzly hunt? You mean you're not in favour of the government caving to a special interest lobby and allowing a small but vocal minority to strip freedoms from British Columbians?[/quote]

The tree huggers put the clamps on the spring bear hunt here many years ago, bear populations are up because of that move and so are moose calf kills, more cabins are being damaged. They recently partially re-instated the spring bear hunt in this part of Ontario (we still have the fall hunt), hopefully that will help a little. I would encourage you or anyone else that hunts bears to come here and blast one, there is a surplus supply.

Steve

Great write up!!!! I'm not a hunter so can't feel your pain but looks like the flying was fun and that's what counts. Definitely neat to be pulled up to the dock with the other float planes!!!!

While having the hunt sort of banned (silly restrictions on it) is a really big deal I don't view the lack of hunting success on this trip as a big deal at all. We still had a lot of fun and saw some amazing places. As it turns out I've got some extended family obligations I want to duck out of later this month so I think I'll take the kids and do a fishing/bear hunting trip one way or another. Fly if weather permits, truck and camper if not.

Different trip but I didn't want to start a whole other thread for these. Couple pics from today, my brother and I flew into the mountains for a bit of fishing.

Thanks for posting. Great TR's and scenery!

That ladder on the roof with the stove vent pipe through it is a real puzzle.

Edit

Mister701 wrote:That ladder on the roof with the stove vent pipe through it is a real puzzle.

Keeps the snow from sliding and ripping the stove pipe off.

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A1Skinner wrote:

Mister701 wrote:That ladder on the roof with the stove vent pipe through it is a real puzzle.

Keeps the snow from sliding and ripping the stove pipe off.

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Well thank you. We used to throw tires up on the roof to hold the tar paper on.

The majority of British Columbians want to end all forms of grizzly bear hunting, according to a new poll.

According to an Insights West poll – commissioned by Lush Cosmetics and the Commercial Bear Viewing Association – 74 per cent of people are in favour of the B.C. government banning all hunting of grizzly bears in the province.

Nineteen per cent were opposed.

The new NDP government announced in August it would outlaw the killing of the bears for trophies starting spring 2018.

And while 88 per cent of people polled support the move, Insights West vice president Mario Canseco said there’s clearly an appetite among the public for government to go even further.

“I wasn’t expecting as high a level of support to banning all kinds of grizzly bear hunting as what we saw,” the pollster told Metro. “I thought maybe this had more to do with the trophy aspect but now I’m starting to realize, looking at the numbers, it’s ultimately about the bears. There are a lot of people asking why we’re hunting grizzly bears. They’re looking at [banning] the trophy hunt as the first step to an eventual ban on all grizzly hunting.”

Even among the hunters that were polled, Insights West found 71 per cent support for the government’s ban on trophy hunting, and 58 per cent in favour of banning the hunting of the animal altogether.