Into November

 

We've had mixed weather so far this November.  Between raining and melting snow the water levels in the creek valley came up again and there's been flooding all over the Cariboo.  

There's been another massive slide in the creek valley and Leo drove down to Frizzie Road and took some pictures.

Scout Island flooded again.  From Fox Mountain we could see the bridge was flooded again.

It was a lovely day but the wind was cold!

Another beautiful day we checked out Scout Island.

Still a few ducks around, including this female bufflehead.

We're still meeting in the park for our post-walk coffee get together, but that won't last much longer.

Thanksgiving

 Been AWOL at the blog since winter has set in.  But I finally found the Thanksgiving photos Leo took and Sybille sent me some of hers.

We hiked up to Malkow Lookout on a beautiful fall day.

Photo thanks to Sybille

Great colours:

Also Sybille

Great views of the mountains.

Sybille cooked up a great turkey dinner.

Admiring the veggies plate while we wait for the turkey.

Dinner included freshly harvested wild cranberry sauce and hedgehog mushrooms. 

Both were delicious (photo Sybille's)

And I contributed the pumpkin pie.

October

 

Wow, a whole month has gone by!  We haven't been up to much.

Fall came to the dairy fields.

We visited Scout Island and took in the views:

It may have been the first time it's ever snowed on my birthday!

I got lots of presents:

I harvested the veggies from my garden before the ground froze.  I found quite a few acorn squashes hiding under the leaves.

Leo made cherry tarts to celebrate Margaret's birthday on Sunday.

We ate them bundled up in the park after our walk.

I haven't forgotten that we went up to Smithers for Thanksgiving but I can't find any pictures.

Mahood Lake

 

This is Mahood Falls, I think

Our friends were going camping at Mahood Lake in Wells Gray Provincial Park so they invited us to join them.  We've been to Wells Gray many times but never to Mahood Lake, which is accessed from 100 Mile House rather than Clearwater.  

But Leo has a busy schedule so we could only go for one night.  Also, we sold our trailer so we had to sleep in a tent and organize camping equipment from the various piles we put our trailer equipment in.

Also we didn't bring a boat so we just went on a few hikes and checked out three waterfalls. 

This is Canim Falls. You can walk right up to the rim and peer over if you want.

There are falls everywhere in Wells Gray.

This one is Deception Falls

  And Leo went swimming. I declined, it's late September, too cold. We didn't take any pictures of the lake.

Leo and Mark posing near Deception Falls

And Patti and I acting silly: 

These last two photos thanks to Patti.

Back in Willliams Lake

 I still haven't found the charger for my camera, but Leo snapped this shot of a painted turtle he and Mark found in the creek valley.

Featuring Henry the wonder dog.

And the underside:

Also years ago they planted sea buckthorn bushes in the creek valley when they built some retaining ponds.  Bad idea!  They are an aggressive invasive species from Eurasia though they haven't really spread yet from where they are planted.  

This year they are laden with berries.  We'd eaten sea buckthorn jam in Finland, and it was delicious, so Patti and I went berry picking last week. It's not an easy job. They don't strip off easily and the bushes are very thorny.  The best way is to take clippers and gloves and clip off the stems with berries attached. 

Bucket of sea buckthorn berries on their stems.

Then you take them home and put them in the freezer. When they are frozen you can snap the berries off the stem with a fork.

So far I've made buckthorn apple jam and buckthorn apple sauce to eat with yogurt. Yum.  Tastes like apricots to me but maybe it's the similar colour.

Sea buckthorn jam

We've been out paddling on the Horsefly River several times this week.  Water levels are dropping and the surf wave at Fast Eddy is perfect.  Everyone's worried about the salmon run with the blockage in the Fraser River near Big Bar. We hadn't seen any salmon in the river yet, but yesterday just as we reached the takeout Leo saw a single lonely salmon.  We hope to see more when we return on Tuesday.

The smoke from US fires that's been plaguing southern BC has finally arrived, but so far we're getting off easy.  Yesterday evening visibility was down to 10 km (versus 2 km today in Victoria) but now it's up to 24 km.

If we can see across the Fraser River to the Chilcotin Plateau in the distance air quality is not that bad.

Compare this to 2017

or 2018.

More photos

Birgit came through with some photos from our paddling trips in Golden.

The beautiful Columbia River Valley.

Paddling the Columbia

Putting in on the Kicking Horse

The takeout on the Kicking Horse would make a fantastic campsite.

And here's a photo of everyone but Birgit on the mountain.

And the lodge from the outside.

Golden - Kicking Horse Mountain Resort

 Our last day in Golden we took the gondola up to the Kicking Horse Ski Resort.  

Once at the top we had 3 hours to hike before our lunch reservations in the restaurant.  First we hiked along the ridge to the top of Terminator 1 peak.

A photo for our mantelpiece

Then we came back and headed in the other direction up to the top of the My Blue Heaven ski run.  

Trudging up to the 2nd peak

Two peaks in one day!

Excellent views all around.

Including a long distance shot of our lodge.

Lunch at the Eagle's Eye restaurant was excellent by the way.

Thanks to our host Steve and his team at the Kicking Horse River Lodge for a great getaway.