Wenatchee - June 22/23

Surf is up on the Wenatchee! Its the second time in my whitewater kayak this year... glad I still remember how to paddle. I only have some pictures of Pete (on Gorilla or whatever its called) but I got plenty of wave time too. We had Turkey shoot wave all to ourselves for an hour. Too bad the yellow Balsamroot flowers have come and gone already but Saskatoon berries are ripe and deliciously sweet.

Surf is up on the Wenatchee!

Bears!

When I first came to Canada I kept a list of yearly bear sightings, with numbers around 12 or 15 each year. I haven’t kept record lately, but this year it seems worth starting up again.

On a drive up to Pemberton in spring I saw four bears grazing on the fresh grass along the highway. That’s where the snow melts first and the grass grows early, so the hungry bears come to the table. There were several more road-side sightings over the next few weeks.

But I had the best (and longest) bear watch experience while para-waiting (for better flying conditions) on launch in Pemberton. First one and then a second bear showed up, doing their best to keep the grass short. Elsewhere people have goats to do this. The second, smaller bear was rather skittish and kept its distance. Pretty cool to watch them feed and interact. At one point Pete came in on his paraglider for a top landing. He didn’t want to spook the bears and yelled. The yelling didn’t faze the bears, but when the fabric thing flew close over their heads they scrambled off.

A few days later while retrieving the car after a Rainbow Mountain hike&fly in Whistler we watched a bear mum and her three cups inspecting driveways in search of food. We even ‘rescued’ a woman who was walking her dog in the neighborhood. The two had just run into yet another bear. The dog got rather excited and the woman thought it wise to avoid another bear encounter, especially with a mum and her cups, and we loaded dog and lady in the car and drove them to safety.

Vegetarian Bear

Supervising the lawn mowing crew

Bear on landing strip

Whistler bear family

Walking Among Giants

I was looking for new hiking destinations at low elevation (in early summer there is still lots of snow up high in the mountains). Since I always wanted to check out the remainder of old growth forest around Vancouver I made finding the BIG trees my objective. Here are a few photos of my explorations.

There are spots close to Vancouver where big old growth trees still stand. They have escaped logging and wildfires and matured into century-old giants, providing a glimpse of what this world looked like before western civilization arrived. Some of the trees are celebrities, like ‘Grandfather Capilano’, an 800 year-old, +60 meter high Douglas fir in Capilano River Regional Park. Others are tugged away deep in the temperate rain forest and faint, hidden trails lead to them. It is an awe-inspiring moment to catch first sight of one of the giants among their smaller cousins, to walk up closer and let the eyes travel along the tall trunk up to big branches and crown high above.

Hollyburn Fir, 1100 years old

Big Red Cedar with some regular trees for size comparison

Nurse Log

Skid roads - left over from the logging days

Another big Red Cedar near Mosquito Creek