I have tried everything I can think of to track down the cause of the Volvo’s mysterious hissy fits. Will not go into it here, other than to say nothing I do has any impact on the problem. Finally, in desperation, I take the car into the ace Volvo repair shop. I know exactly what is going to happen. Cars have gotten so complicated nowadays that nobody understands them any more. Instead of mechanics, now there are technicians with magic wands and meters that they plug in to your car, and the magic meter tells them what parts to replace. On an old car this basically means everything.
If I hired an auto shop at $100/hr to go over my car and replace everything that the magic wands said needed replacing, I could easily spend $100,000, and still maybe not find the cause of the sputters and stallouts. The shop tells me that the problem is my ignition wiring, so I tell them to go ahead and replace wires, plugs, rotor, etc. $500 later the car idles better, but on the way home it stalls dead again.
I am gonna have to learn to live with this. The only plan I have left is simple: Whenever the motor dies I start praying to the Great God of Volvos. Seems to work most of the time.
The GGoV seems to be on my side, so I head out on another trip to the interior. Again I take the late ferry, drive up into Manning Park, and sleep in the Volvo Hotel. In the morn I put on my waders and try the Sumallo R again. The water is much lower now, and there seem to be less trout. A lot of the ones that were here a month ago have probably moved down into the Skagit. I catch a couple 10-12"ers. There is a massive bug hatch going on. But no fish rising. Why?
On my way to the Okanagan I stop in Princeton for gas. There is a tourist brochure about the Hedley mine tours, so I ask about it. The tours leave each day at noon, and if I scoot I can get to Hedley by then.
I have driven by the old Mascot Mine, hanging off the edge of the mountaintop, for almost 40 years. The BC government decided it was a hazard, so they were going to burn it down. But the Similkameen Band intervened, talked the govt into changing their mind, got a bunch of grants to rebuild the footings and build walways, and now they are running tours of the mine.
The entire Boundary Region (referring to the boundary between BC and the US – Washington, Idaho, and part of Montana) of BC is rich in minerals. Proximity to US smelters and markets led to a mining boom in the 1890s, which was largely played out by 1910. The mineralization in Nickel Plate Mountain was so bold that it was impossible to ignore. Here you can see the bright pink bands, folded and bent and twisted into the sheer face of the bluff.
This was such a giveaway that it drew the attention of The Dewd himself. The mountain was first staked by Edward Dewdney, during construction of the Dewdney Trail – the first path along the N side of the BC/US border. But The Dewd had other interests, and his claim here lapsed.
In the late 1890s more exploration was done. There was good news and bad news. The good news was that the entire mountain top was laced with mineralized veins rich in gold. The bad news was that the veins were 5,000 ft above the valley floor, and the edge of a steep cliff. Over the course of the first half of the 20th century a mine was drilled and blasted – a few mines actually. Eventually the miners constructed a fantastic assemblage of crazy wood buildings attached to the edge of the cliff, and a tramway was constructed to move the ore from the mountain top to the valley almost a mile below, where the little mining town of Hedley bloomed. In 1949 the Mascot Mine closed for good. Later, big companies bought up the claims and dug up the entire top of the mountain, turning it into an open pit. But the old Mascot Mine works are still clinging to the side of the mountain, and I want to see them. Here you can see the mine buildings perched on the edge of Nickel Plate Mountain, high above Hedley.
The buildings clasp onto the rockface like living things, or like something out of an old Walt Disney cartoon.
Yosemite Sam probably worked here.
For the first years of its life, the Nickel Plate Mine – the first mine on the mountain – was accessed by a narrow twisting trail. It took 2 days with a horse and supplies to get from Hedley up to the mine. In 1937 this trail was improved into a road. A very steep road with a zillion switchbacks.
This is the road I started up a little ways in June, on my last trip to the interior. It seems to wind all the way up to the top of the mountain – yikes, I’m glad I turned around!
I get to the Similkameen Band office just before noon. Can I get a ticket for the tour? Turns out the tours are usually sold out days or weeks in advance, but somebody just called in and cancelled. There is one space open – for me! I am a little fazed by the cost - $40 – and the time involved. 4 hours just to see an old mine? We all assemble in a meeting room, where we are given a 15 minute overview of the history of the Similkameen, and the mine. This history is more interesting to me cuz it comes from the natives point of view. Then we are packed into a little school bus, about 15 of us, and off we go.
The road is very steep, with 29 switchbacks if I remember the tour guide. She is a native lady about my age, when I was a little younger, very knowledgeable, and really good at her job. It takes almost an hour for the bus to crawl up to the mine. Our guide tells the story of a car that got too close to the edge of the road. The driver got out just before it rolled off the edge, and he said he counted as the car rolled over 13 times before it stopped, 3 switchbacks down the mountain.
We are up on top the mountain now, past the open pit mine, currently undergoing reclamation/restoration. The driver has a key that lets us into the private road thru the mine complex around the pit (no – the public is not allowed in to the Mascot Mine site except via this tour). Eventually the road ends, and we have to get out and walk. This is the way all the supplies got into the Mascot Mine – driven up this crazy winding road up to this spot, and backpacked in from here cuz it was too steep to build a road any further. We start walking along the trail.
After the mine was running, most of the workers did not commute this way. They rode up and down from Hedley to the mine by hitching rides in the ore tram cars.
The trail snakes along the edge of the mountain. You would not want to slip off the edge.
First we come to an old loading platform, extending out into deep space.
Now we are right on the edge, directly above the Mascot Mine. In the background are bright seams of mineralized rock, and this whole mountain is hollowed out like swiss cheese. Here our guide is telling up about the next phase of the tour.
We have to walk down the new stairway, built by the band and its contractors so that tourists would not fall off the mountain.
497 steps.
One of the guys on the tour is limping already, and we are not even halfway down. "Oh, it’s just my artificial knee swelling up."
This is gonna be a real grunt to climb back up.
Finally we get down to the mine. Looking back up I know I have to climb all those stairs.
We are looking up here at the cookhouse and bunkhouse (R) and dryshed for changing clothes (L).
There are many miles of tunnels that radiate out from this hole in the mountian. The tunnels of the Mascot Mine eventually connected to the shafts of the Nickel Plate Mine, and all the ore come out here.
I tried to strike up a conversation with these 2 miners, but they didn’t have much to say.
The tours usually take you way deep into the shaft, but not today. The generator they use to light the tunnel for tours has suffered water damage. This is a tough place to get a generator into, unless you use a helicopter. So today we only go in as far as we can see. It is deliciously cool in the mine, while I am dripping sweat just standing in the shade as soon as I get out.
One of the mine buildings is set up as a museum. There is a scale model in here.
Now we are led into the room where the tram cars were filled before being sent to the valley below.
Miners had signals with which they could communicate with the town below. They could signal Rosie down in Hedley that Jake was comin down in the tram, lookin to take her out for a good time at the saloon tonite. Rosie would have time to get all prettied up before Jake got down to town.
Here is the exact same scene today. You can see the cribbing for the tramway directly below, I don’t know about riding that tram…
There is a cool walkway that leads to nowhere.
I forgot what its purpose was, but it is fun to walk out and look over the railing – a mile down.
In addition to tours, apparently they band will rent the mine out for honeymoons or private getaways. You would want to be careful walking around here after you had a few drinks.
Well – the party is over, time to head back to the bus. Back UP to the bus. I highly recommend this tour with one caveat. Make sure you are physiclly able to climb 500 stairs in sizzling heat before you buy a ticket.
This is great cardio exercise, if you survive. Everybody on our tour makes it back up to the bus, even the guy with the artificial knee. Sometimes tourists are not able to make it back up, but this is not a problem. The tour guide can just push them over the edge, and they are never seen again.
On the way back down the switchbacks we stop at an overlook. Here we are looking up the beautiful Similkameen valley towards Princeton.
And here we are looking down towards Keremeos and the US border.
Our guide, who is a member of the ancient Similkameen Band, tells us that this is a sacred spot for native people. When young men go come of age the go off on a "vision quest". When young women come of age they perform a different set of ceremonies. One of the female rituals involves climbing up on top of a prominent place in this sacred area and placing a rock or small boulder on its top. The practice is still followed today. If you look across the draw you can see a number of rock pinnacles. One of them has flat on top, and on the flat spot there are a number of rocks, obviously carried up and carefully placed there.
Everybody knows what the rocks are there for, and what they signify. The odd thing is that none of the members of the band have any idea of how to climb this pinnacle. No one in living memory has ever done it.
Yet the rocks on top of the pinnacle abide.
Everybody knows what they signify, but nobody knows how they got there, or when.
Back down in Hedley again. I survived, but barely. Must rush out to find a store, any store, where I spend $7 on a slurpee and bottle of wild cherry cola. Damn these tourist trap towns. But if I do not have an immediate injection of ice water I am going to keel over, so I pay the price.
On the bus trip it occurred to me that the road up to the mine was very steep and twisty, but fairly well graded. Now my old Volvo has been many a weary mile over pavement, but I usually avoid long trips over gravel. But dammit, if a school bus can handle this road it is an insult to the Volvo Nation to think that I can’t.
I have a full tank of gas. Rumor has it that if you keep on going past the mine you eventually come out in Penticton. The basstravaganza needs to know. So I head back, crawling up the first couple switchbacks. And what is this beside the road? We just passed here an hour ago in the bus, and now there are 3 mountain sheep here. They are standing atop giant boulders looking back at me. I am shooting out of my car window. You can see the rearview mirror on the edge of the frame.
Very tame.
I have never been able to get this close to mountain sheep before.
The sheep are browsing on bushes that grow up between the rocks.
This one is really curious about the grey beast with the pontoon boat on top.
At the next switchback the road is blocked by rocks that have rolled off the scree slope above. We just came by here in the bus minutes ago and the road was clear, so these rocks were probably knocked loose by the sheep, on their way down.
I get out, roll the rocks off the road, and head on up. At one spot I stop to take a pic. Now there is not much clearance on this road, certainly nowhere to pull off. But there is no traffic either so I walk down the road with my camera. Sure enough, there is a truck coming down. I get back in my car, but there is room for the truck to pass, so he does. I chat with him. Turns out he works for the reclamation project on the open pit atop the mountain. As we are talking, another truck comes down, another brand new 4x4, his buddy from the reclamation work. The first guy pulls over to let the second guy pass. Then he gets out and we talk. He looks at his truck. It is on the very edge of the road, and you can see little grains of sand starting to roll out from under his outboard tire. If he so much as touches the throttle the whole rig might roll right off the road. I remember the story about the car that rolled 13 times. These guys know the road better than anyone, and there is no way they are turning a wheel until they hook up a big rope on the second truck to pull the first one back up on the road.
I leave them as they are getting set up, and go ahead to warn any downcoming vehicles about the congestion below. Hope the guy does not come to grief cuz he had the courtesy to stop and talk to me. Further up now, I stop at a switchback looking SE down the river.
At the top of the mountain is a rock cut. This is where I am going. The old Volvo is patient as a mule, slow and steady. The pounding on the washboard gravel seems to aggravate the stalling problem. Every now and then after a bigger jolt the motor will cut out (praytothegodofvolvos) and then start again. The most annoying part of this one or two second hiccup is that when the motor stops so does the power steering and power brakes. This is great fun when you are just coming in to a steep hairpin curve.
I finally make it up to the rock cut. Looking back here, down on the winding way o’er which I wandered.
Eventually I see dust on the switchbacks, and 15 minutes later another pickup makes it up to the rock cut. Yes – the reclamation guys got out of their pickle. Whew! I feel better. And the guy in the pickup says, "You don’t see many Volvos on this road."
I keep climbing, and finally make it to the restoration site. A big area of the valley bottom is buried in tailings from the open pit. There are a series of treatment ponds that try to remove toxins from the mine runoff.
Wells are drilled at the base of other tailings slopes nearby, and the water is piped into these ponds for treatment. Mining generates huge expanses of rock that used to be underground, now suddenly exposed to rain and snow. The rocks react chemically with the precip. Rocks that have sulfur in them produce a lot of sulfuruc acid, among other things. Fish do not get along well with sulfuric acid. If you want proof, dump the fluid from your car battery into your aquarium. Acid mine waste is a huge killer around the world.
It is evening, and I am on my own now. Past where we went with the bus earlier today. Further up I pass by miles of tailings. Somebody dug up a lotta rock around here.
Way back in off the hwy now, and I come upon a herd of moose.
I am an hour in off the hwy now, in the absolute middle of nowhere, when suddenly the gravel road T’s into pavement, and I am surrounded by megamodern condos. The effect is shocking. This is the Apex Mountain ski resort. Almost deserted now in July, except for contractors working. Must be a madhouse here in winter.
The Kettle River is listed as the #1 most threatened river in BC. Whatever that means, but a number of people told me that. It is easy to see that the river has been hammered by development. Logging off the riparian forest causes the banks to erode, and destroys critical shade. Massive groundwater withdrawals for crops, along with legal and illegal irrigation pipes sucking directly from the river, create extreme low water in late summer. It is really hot then, and coldwater fish like trout really struggle. In the surrounding mountains, piles of old mine tailings leach toxics into the streams.
Well, it is smoking hot today. Fry an egg on the pavement hot. In downtown Grand Forks the Kettle River is joined by the Granby River, and there is a big deep pool under a bridge just downstream from the confluence. If you look down carefully into the 30ft deep water you can see a trout.
Then another. They are hanging around the same spot, and every once in a while they will see a bug on the surface.
Very methodically they rise up, sip the fly off the surface, and slide back down.
I wait and watch. Another, bigger trout appears, and pushes the smaller one off to the side, almost physically, shoulder-to-shoulder. Then it takes over the good spot for a while.
It is hard to find public access to the river here in town. I find a big pool, and sit by the bank. This river is full of introduced species. The shoreline here is swarming with small baitfish. The ones around 2-4" seem to be mostly redside shiners. The larger 6-10 inchers seem to be pikeminnows (aka squawfish).
The river slides over a ledge of bedrock here.
Looks like a way cool spot to run in a pontoon boat.
But it is always important to check and see what is downstream before you get involved with water like this. Downstream from the slide the river is confined by vertical canyon walls. The old RR bridge runs over the canyon.
Well, things look a little rough below the bridge. I think I will bail on the plan to run this canyon in the pontoon.
Evil Knievel couldn’t make it thru here alive
This is the site of one of the first hydroelectric projects in N America. It was the second hydro plant in BC, after the nearby plant on the Kootenay R below Nelson. In 1897 mining was booming in the Boundary region, and the mines were ravenous for a newfangled, world-changing technology - electric power. The Cascade Power & Electric Co built a 30 ft high wooden dam across the rock ledge above the falls (where the "Slide" is now). This flooded a lake above the dam. The sediment deposited behind this dam created the huge gravel and sandbar that burned my feet.
The company also blasted a channel thru the bedrock beside the falls that lead to a tunnel blasted thru solid rock leading to a huge pipe that ran down over the bluff into a brick powerhouse they constructed on the shore of the big pool below the falls. The powerhouse would have been in the lower R of the previous pic. Here is an old pic looking up from the river.
A small town developed around the falls, but the powerhouse was not very profitable, and went belly up a few years later when the bottom dropped out of the mining biz. The plant on the Kootenay survived and prospered – the foundation stone of the ginormous hydropower industry in BC today.
Also flowing into the big pool below the falls is the creek that drains 25 mile long Christina Lake. The top end of the lake is pretty remote, but the lower end near the hwy is party central. On this hot day there are folks sitting in the lake in folding chairs, trying to stay cool. There is very little public access on this huge lake. One park with a swim beach, another park with the only public (not free!) boat launch about 10 miles up the E side, and this tiny park with about 50 ft of waterfront, where I can launch my pontoon. To the middle you are looking up the big lake. To the right is the outlet creek that flows down to the Kettle River below Cascade Falls.
Most of the lake is deep with rocky shores. Used to be famous for huge wild RB trout up to 25 lbs. A few of these giants still lurk in the lake, but the majority of its fish are now introduced species, especially LM and SM bass. On the upper R in the last pic you can see the giant weed bed that extends for a half mile up the E shore.
There is a big gravel bar that extends across the lake outlet, so shallow that I can walk across. Turns out the big weed bed is made of tiny lily pads, whose leaves are only about 4" wide. I have never seen lily pads this small covering this much area. This bed covers many acres. It is highly touted on the internet as a good spot for bass. Is this a native or invasive water lily? I launch the pontoon and go exploring down the outlet creek, tossing a black Yum worm. Lots of weed, docks and sunken wood here. Looks like LM territory, and it is. Even in the sizzling heat there are a few around. This is about the biggest I caught.
The place is plugged with RVs, fifth wheelers, trailers, ATVs, and all manner of flashy trendy toys and gadgets to amuse the N American consumer. This reminds me of Sawmill Lake. Surrounded by campers and fishermen who spend tons of $ on the latest greatest fishing gear, head out to the lake, party all nite, and then sleep in till dawn while the trout are rising in glassy calm water. There must be 300 people camped here at Champion Lakes, and not one of them is awake and out of their mobile suburban universe before 9 AM.
This begs the question, what is the purpose of camping in modern day N America? These people know nothing about the lakes or the land here, or the history of the area. They pack up huge rigs and haul all their gear out into a place where they can plug in and recreate their suburban lifestyle in the middle of nowhere. They are not here to fish, or explore. They are here to listen to their boom box while they play video games and watch movies on their flat screens. Most of these people could just as well camp in a Wal Mart parking lot, and not know the difference.
My theory is that the fuzzy fungus furballs are growing out of animal droppings, maybe deer turds. If anybody can identify this fungus, or come up with a more farfetched explanation, please reply to the basstravaganza.
Lake 3 looks good. No campers with flat screens and ATVs here. But I am itching to check out the Salmo R, so I head back. There is an cedar stump beside the trail, once home to a big carpenter ant colony, which has been excavated and harvested big time by pileated woodpeckers.
I walk out on a gravel bar, and then wade back across a shallow backwater. I have to hurry, because the water is so cold it is not just uncomfortable, it hurts. I walk up to the first big pool, and sit on the rock above, sipping coffee, watching, trying to figure this river out. The water is very clear. You could read a newspaper on the bottom 15 ft down. There are a few tiny trout swimming among the rocks near shore, and one bigger fish about 8" that keeps rising to bugs. This is about what I would expect from a stream like this – sterile and cold, with hardly enough bugs to feed any trout bigger than a foot long.
Back at the pullout I meet a local. He says the fishing is incredible here. Now is the time. 10 days ago the river was 2 feet higher, cold and silty. Says that the big bull trout that the river is famous for are mostly further down, where there is no road access. Up here you are more likely to catch RBs and brookies. Says he caught a 3 lb RB the other day just down from here near the next bridge.
Public access is very limited on this river. I have already been over this area in great detail in Google Earth. Today I am exploring with my Volvo and tiny netbook computer, on which I can follow myself along, see every pool in the river, every potential access site, every road, before I get there. This is great. What a leap in technology for the wandering fisherman. In the past I would drive around till I found a side road, and head out thru potholes and washouts until it dead ended. Now I know where every side road is before I come around the corner, and where it goes, so I don’t have to follow down five roads that go nowhere before I find the one that goes to the river. I don’t even care about fishing. Too hot to fish anyway. More fun to drive around and explore this intriguing stream. Volvo, Google Earth, and grape slurpee …
No Basstravaganzas Allowed
Further S the Salmo R turns to the SW, while Hwy 3 turns due E over the skyway. Looking down from the bluff, you can see the Salmo here heading down into some really wild country before it reaches the Pend Oreille. Sure would be nice to be out on that river in my pontoon boat right now.
I head down the pool. Trout are rising steadily. But the water is very clear. Must creep low, keep quiet, and make really long casts to get the lure way out where they can’t see you. I get another hit. This one is about 10. A brookie! Such a gorgeous fish. First one I have caught in decades. Not bad for a bass dude.
Further down there are bigger fish rising. Big fish all over this river, but you never see one. You only see the rings they make when they rise. They keep rising, just out past where I can see into the water. I need to get my pontoon onto this river! I get another bite. This one turns out to be a bull trout, about 14". I have only walked a little ways down the bank, it is hotter than H, and I have caught 3 different species of trout already. Not bad for a bass dude.
This river blows my mind. I need to float it, but I can’t just jump in right now. I keep driving around, exploring, developing a plan. Wish I had brought my bike along. Then I could have parked the bike downstream, floated down, and pedaled back up to the car. Now I will have to walk back up. A few miles down I find a steep back where I might be able to load out if I float down from the place where I just fished.
I end up at the border. On the map there is a town here, called Nelway. But in reality there are just miles and miles of mountain and forest, and a small customs building on each side of the US border. I have heard about a road in to the Pend Oreille, that turns off near the border. But I am right up to the Canadian border post now, and there has been no sign of a side road to the W. Well, maybe I can ask the folks in the border post. Then I see a little dirt road heading off to the right, only 100 meters from the US border. Well, I have lots of gas, and a cooler with ice and juice. Time to go exploring.
After 15 minutes I come to the bluff overlooking the Pend Oreille. This is steep rough country. This canyon really stifled David Thomspon when he and his crew, with friendly and curious native Kootenay guides leading the way, became the first Anglos to see it in 1809. Thompson was looking for an easy paddling route so that he could move large packets of furs to the Columbia and the Pacific. In early October, only a few miles away from the river he had devoted his life to finding, he quit the rugged canyon and headed back to his trading post on Pend Oreille Lake. He returned again the next summer. Got farther down the canyon to Metalline Falls, where he gave up. This canyon - with its vertical rock walls, waterfalls and boiling rapids - was certainly not the route to the river he thought he had never seen. He never made it down to the last 30 miles of the Pend Oreille, where I am now.
If he had waited a couple hundred years it would have been much easier. The falls and rapids are long gone now. Flooded under giant hydro dams. And there is a nice gravel road, if you don’t mind a bit of washboard, that leads down to the river. Here I am still 1,000 feet above the water, looking down on the Pend Oreille.
Looking upstream across the border into Washington you can see the Boundary Dam in the distance.
Further down, on the Canadian side now, you can see the pilings of an old bridge. A fishy looking spot.
There is a good flow here, so the turbines must be running in the Boundary Dam. These days, rivers like the Salmo and Kettle that rise and fall according to weather are anomalies. Most rivers around here rise and fall according to the electrical demands of cities far away. And this week the air conditioners all over the W half of N America must cranked up to the max, so the Pend Oreille is cranking those generators to meet the load.
You can see big underwater rock outcrops. This place is notorious on the internet for big SMs. But it is hard to reach so few people fish here.
Finally, the road gets down to the river. There are some nice free campsites and a free boat launch. I toy with the idea of going out in the pontoon. But this is big water with big current. You want a gas motor to explore here.
The road reaches the water right where the Salmo R enters the Pend Oreille. There is a bridge across the Salmo here, and 4 kids are jumping off it. It is unbefreakingleavably hot, and these guys are having a good time. I talk them into doing a mass jump, recorded for eternal history in the basstravaganza.
But I screw up, and click the shutter a fraction too early.
Just downstream from here is the 7 Mile Dam. So all the fish between there and the Boundary Dam, including all the fish in the Salmo R watershed, are restricted to this 10 mile reach of the big Pend Oreille. I talk to the kids about fishing. This part of the river is notorious on the internet for big SM bass. I can see huge underwater rockpiles and reefs, with slow powerful current rolling overtop. Looks like killer SM habitat. The kids tell me that are big trout in here too. But they want to know about pike.
The northern pike, Esox lucius, is native to BC in more northern latitudes. In fact, it is native all across N America, Europe, and Asia at high latitudes. But the northerns are new here, spreading downstream from the Pend Oreille R in Washington to the S. I learn by googling that the Washington Fish & Wildlife Dept have documented the recent pike invasion in the reservoirs immediately upstream. There are horror photos of pike caught there with their stomachs slit open to spill out a stunning pile fish they have just eaten. Here is one from the internet. This fish was taken by crews of the Dept and the Kalispel Tribe Fisheries, who are partenering to monitor and manage the pike invasion. In the pile of guts you can see pumkinseeds, bluegill, perch and black crappies. The gluttonous lucius has been chomping so fast the poor victims have not had time to begin to get digested before another one gets rammed down the piehole.
Multiply this picture times thousands of pike times a few years, and you can see how the fish populations in the river are due for a big change when Mr Esox comes to town.
It often happens that the pike will invade a lake or river, and quickly grow huge as they eat up all the fish that used to live in the lake. Then there is nothing left to eat, and you end up with essentially a monoculture of stunted runted pike, called "hammer handles" cuz of their shape. In Washington they first eliminated the catch limit on pike in the reservoirs immediately upstream from Boundary Dam. Now you are encouraged to catch and kill all you can, and then go out and catch some more. Then the Dept and Tribe set gillnets this year, aimed at culling 87% of the pike. They caught lots, but not all. Last summer the Kalispel Tribe held a derby with $3,000 in prizes for sport fishermen to come and catch pike. This is the biggest one that was caught that weekend.
I will have to come back here with the Bullship some time and try for bass and pike.
But tonite I head back to the hwy, and up to Erie Lake near Salmo. I fished here for the first time last year, and caught some nice LMs. But today I get nothing bigger than 2 lbs. There are some little LMs in a pocket near shore, where I make a little fire to boil coffee next morn. Bass do not seem to be interested in eating anything that is not moving. Unlike trout, they almost never bite on the flavored plastic goo known as "Power Bait". I am trying to feed them little bits of pepperoni, but they will have none of it.
It is going to be smokin hot again today. I drive down to where I caught the big trout yesterday and load the pontoon and my fishing gear down to the water. A local guy comes down to fish. I tell him about my plan, and he agrees to drive me back after I park my car downstream. So I give him 10 bucks and an ice cold beer, and he is gone, my car is waiting 5 miles down, and I am in the pontoon, floating down the Salmo, 100+F, drinking an ice cold Kokanee. The cold water in the side channel where I waded yesterday was springwater. The main current in the river is not that cold. In fact, on this frying pan hot afternoon it feels deicious to dangle my feet off the pontoon into the river.
Now bass fishing is usually tough in the middle of a really hot day. But the trout are rising like crazy, and I start getting into fish right away. No need for the electric motor and heavy battery here. The current will take where I want to go. So I have replaced that weight with a cooler full of ice and beer. This is as close as it gets to trout fishing heaven. Before I get out of sight of the hwy I have caught and released a dozen nice trout.
Mostly RBs
No big ones, but very acrobatic.
Here is a pretty brook trout.
Then I go around the first bend and find trouble. This is why you want to explore new rivers during low water. Getting sucked into this mess during high water would be like getting squeezed thru a giant coffee press. The entire river is blocked off in a giant log jam.
You would not want to get sucked under that pile of junk. I can either try to carry the boat over the mountain of wood, or go around. There is an island here, and a side channel on the other side. I backpack the boat and gear about 100m into the side channel, and start down again.
It looks like there is some kind of strange creature around here that builds little colonies in the shallow water.
But it turns out the upland here is owned by the big ranch, that owns the locked gate I came to yesterday. Every summer they have a rave here, and the ravers wander among the river flats and make art. Next year there may be no rave, cuz this year somebody OD’d and died. I learn this from the only other people I meet.
Now this is fantastic trout fishing. On Van Isle people fish all day to catch what I caught here in a few minutes, and then they brag about it. This place would be crawling with trout fishermen if it were on Van Isle. Here on the Salmo I never see another fisherman all Saturday afternoon. But I hear voices. There are people coming down the river. Turns out it is a bunch of locals, beating the heat by floating down the river in blow up beach toys.
Now I have been bragging to myself about how brave I am to head down a wilderness river in my pontoon boat. Kind of humbling to see that one of the tubers is a young mother, with her 2 year old kid!
"This is his first trip down the river!", she says.
I am here to explore more than to catch fish. I try to keep ahead of the group of tubers, so that I can throw a cast into the water before they come down and scare all the fish. But as soon as I get ahead I hook into a big trout, and they catch up. The first time they get close one of the guys asks if I have had any luck. Just then a huge trout grabs my spinner. This must be on of those giant bulls the river is known for. But no. It jumps, and I can see that it is a 5 lb + RB. Like most of the fish I hook, this one soon shakes the barbless spinner loose and is gone. The tubers are stunned.
"Yeah," I say, "I have been doing OK."
I race ahead where the river splits. There is a big hole in one channel where I hook and lose an even bigger fish, probably 6 lbs at least, again a giant RB. This is like steelhead fishing, but the fish are way more aggressive.
Around the next bend is a "restoration" project gone awry. Somebody want to keep the river from performing its natural mission in life of digging into banks on the outside of bends and depositing the eroded sediments on the calmer inside bends. They want to stop the river channel from moving. They probably own something on the upland that they want to protect? So they have armored the bank. Laid down a layer of black geotextile cloth all over the bank, and then dumped boulders over the textile.
Now any 10 year old with a sliver of common sense could see that the rocks they dumped onto this steep fabric will not hold against the flood current of this big river, which rams huge trees around like toothpics. Any more than a sand bank will hold against a firehose. But the engineers who signed off on this project did not seem to take this into consideration. (If there were engineers. In Oregon this kind of riparian alteration is not allowed with a certified engineering design.)
The boulders are already washing off the fabric wall. What will happen when a big cottonwood rootwad scrapes along here during the next big flood? I probably would not have mentioned this in my blog, were it not for the fact the I learned another thing to hate about this site. My barbless spinner seldom gets snagged, but when I throw it across and let it sink just a bit I am instantly snagged into the tough fabric. Takes me 15 minutes of furious rowing and crawling back along the bank to salvage my lure, all the while thinking horrible thoughts about the Aholes who did this to the river.
Well I finally get my lure back. During the ordeal the tubers float on by. I have been racing down the river all day, cuz I have never been here before, and I don’t know how long it will take to get where I am going. I do NOT want to be out on the river when it gets dark. But I learn from the tubers that the place where I parked my car is just down around 2 bends.
I have lots of time, but only one more pool to fish. There is a deep slot where the rapid slides into the cutbank. If the rest of this river is any indication, I know there will be a big trout lurking there. I drag the spinner across and suddenly I am fast to another huge RB, leaping and slashing all over the water. I am catching all these fish on my little ultralite rod with 6 lb test line, and this is pushing it to the limit. If this fish were a bass it would dive into the trees and branches along shore and break me off instantly. I can’t stop the big RB with 6 lb line, but trout always seem to run out into deep water when they are hooked, away from branches and debris they could snag you off on.
The big trout is pulling my pontoon boat around like it thinks it is a tugboat, and the current is washing me into the windfall trees along the bank. Can’t get pushed into that mess, so I have to open the bail on the reel and row like mad for a few strokes, then grab the rod and see if the fish is still on. This happens 3 times. I need to get to shallow water, where I can hit bottom with my feet. You are helpless in a pontoon against a big fish like this, they just tow you around in circles.
I finally spin around a back eddy into shallow water, hop off the boat, and dig in with my flip-flops. Now I can fight back.
As the famous Greek philosopher Archimedes once said: "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the fish!"
Amazing that this rocketship RB has not shaken loose yet. I finally get it in.
24 inches, and maybe 4 lbs, worth of wild native RB.
I can see the road where the car is now. There is some excellent water between here and there, and the tubers are gone, and the sun is setting. Might be the magic hour for trout fishing. But I decide that it can’t get any better than this. I look back up at the pontoon, and the valley from whence I came.
Some other time.
I drift on down to the car without making another cast. The bank up to the road is very steep. Too steep to walk up. Must lean against the bank grab weeds to pull myself up. I tie a rope on the pontoon, climb a little way up the hill, stop, and drag the pontoon up behind me. Again and again. Finally I have the boat and gear loaded back to the car, and I look back past the 7 ft diameter cottonwood on the gravel bar, to the spot in the distance where I caught the big trout. This is the kind of fishing you dream about if you buy expensive guided trips to Alaska or New Zealand or Argentina.
I will have to come back here some day.
Well, you wanna talk about armoring the bank? Take a look at the Granby smelter site. This riverbank is NOT going to move.
After nearly a century, nothing grows out of the slag pile. In places it is crusted together, but mostly it sits in loose blowing piles of black sand.
I put a handful on the hood of the Volvo. You can see what it looks like.
It is gonna be 100F again today, and I have to run across the sand to find bare dirt or shade, else I will cook my feet like baked potatoes.
Luckily this stuff is mostly silica, so the site is like a big pile of broken beer bottles. Not particularly toxic, just a lot of shattered glass. Other residue from the mining boom has a lot bigger impact on the environment. Acid mine runoff from exposed mine tailings is a much worse problem, but it is an invisible killer.
The big slag pit is not visible from Hwy 3, and most people nowdays don't even know that there used to be a huge industrial complex nearby. Nowadays the economy in the valley is based on agriculture, growing trees, fruit, row crops and not-quite-completely legal weeds. Back around 1900 there was a gigantic industrial plant here. At the local museum they have a diorama.
Ore was brought in by rail from surrounding mines, and coal was from the Rocky Mtns. For a brief period this smelter, along with another in nearby Greenwood, were the hi-tech focus of the booming global copper industry. Electricity was changing the world. The telegraph, telephone, electric lites in homes and factories and even along city streets. It all required miles of copper wire, and this plant kicked out more ingots of copper than any other on earth.
The ore was offloaded from the inclined ramps. The molten slag was hauled out to the edge of the river on the lower track.
Here is what it looked like in 1900, when there was a rail bridge above where trains were hauling ore non-stop from the mines at Phoenix
The bridge was made of 12x12 wood timbers filled in with boulders and rubble. After the smelter went bust the city of Grand Forks bought the dam, but summer low flows were insuffient to generate enough power to meet the city's needs. So they tore the dam out. Next winter a huge log and debris jam clogged and flooded the canyon again. Then it broke and flooded the city.
All that is left there now are the powerhouse and bridge footings, and a killer trout hole.
I drive 20 miles up the river till the pavement ends, then another 15 miles on gravel. The Granby, like the Kettle beside it, begins high in the Monashee Mountains. The farther up I drive the cooler it gets, and that is fine by me. This would be a great river to float in the toon. I keep looking for access spots. Again, I have my little netbook with me, and I am having so much fun with Google Earth that I don’t have time to fish.
I cross a bridge, and I am reminded once again why it is important not to just hop in the pontoon and head down a river will nilly. I think this is still the Granby R, but in fact there is a fork just downstream, and this is the Granby’s major trib Burrell Creek.
Getting sucked into the cribwork of this old mining dam would take some of the pleasure out of your pontoon playtime paradise. Looks like less fun than going thru a meat grinder.
Way up the creek I try fishing in one spot. Only catch a couple runted little RBs. I am spoiled after the madness on the Salmo. I meet an old guy camped out with a kid, maybe his grandson. They are locals. I tell him about my tour of the Mascot mine. He tells me that there are big tailing piles from mines further up Burrell Creek. There are containment lagoons below the tailings, and twice in recent years the tailings ponds have overflowed during big rains. The runoff killed every living creature in Burrell Creek. Including all the bugs. No wonder I don’t see big trout rising.
Back down at the bridge again. There is a nice free campsite here at the confluence of Burrell Creek and the Granby R. It is really hot out, and there is a black bear across the creek, looking for a slurpee.
This is Mother Nature’s 7/11!
He climbs up on a boulder to get at the big juicy berries out in the sun.
Yum Yum Yum.
Slurp Slurp Slurpee!
Back to my campsite by the Burrell Creek, looking down to the confluence with the Granby R.
I wade down to the confluence with the Granby. I only get bites from a few small fish. Hard to get enthused about fishing in this creek after hearing the story from the Grandpa. I wonder what all that mining poison does when it goes down the creek and enters the Granby, and later the Kettle. The #1 most threatened river in BC. There used to be salmon here too, and steelhead. All killed off by dams in the US. The poor fishies are getting hammered from above and below.
In the morn I am lounging around making coffee. There is a shed roof here, with a counter where you can chop up a deer or clean a fish. A weird frog has crawled out onto the counter.
I think it is trying to mate with the hula popper that I left there last nite.
Instead of heading right into GF I go around the back side of a little mountain. I pass a lake, and of course I had to check it out. Turns out this is a reservoir, at the top of the draw between 2 mountains, built long ago by the Doukobors to irrigate their crops. I am curious about the Doukhobors. Lotsa them around here. I know little about them, except that they were exiled from Russia, and they have a breakaway sect that was known for raising hell. They have a couple of habits I respect: They work really hard and they do not fight in rich people’s wars. Especially for the Czar, which is why he kicked them out of Russia. I would like to know more about them. You can see there big old commune buildings on the hillside in places. I took this road cuz there was a sign pointing to a Doukhobor museum, but although I went by one old brick commune I can’t find a museum.
I am curious about the lake too.
Turns out the lake is home to a rare and endangered salamander. Now what if the frog mated with the hula popper, and their offspring mated with the salamander?
Some describe the Doukhobors as a religion, others as a sect, others as a cult. They are all right, and all wrong. What is certain is that they are all of Russian origin. In the 18th and 19th centuries Russia was ruled by the Czar and the Orthodox Church. Everybody was supposed to revere and worship them, along with trinkets or icons that represented them and all their might and holiness. Those that did not worship the icons were iconoclasts. The Czar and the church did not like iconoclasts.
Instead of secular government they believed in the community. Abhorred "private enterprise". They felt that individual family houses were a huge waste of resources, and robbed the kids from being around the knowledge and guidance of the elders. So they lived in big communal buildings and shared everything. All the land and buildings were owned in common by the community, and private ownership was scorned. You could almost describe them as communists, but you would be wrong, cuz Karl Marx had just been born and had not yet coined the phrase.
Here they built large communes and – again, as seems to be their eternal fate and toil – broke new ground to the plow. Their motto was: "Toil and a peaceful life."
By 1924 Peter Lordly Verigin commanded an agricultural empire that extended from Grand Forks E to the Salmo R valley and N to the Slocan R valley. Like many other groups dedicated to charismatic leaders (e.g. Jonestown in Guyana, the Bhagman of Rajneesh in Oregon, Brother XII on Van Isle, etc) the followers lived communally with much toil and little material wealth, while the leader lived a sumptuous life and got all the hot young babes.
By this time Verigin was a near deity, and "he was often accompanied by a choir of young women singing his praises". Among other things. His son from a divorced previous wife in Russia came to visit, and described The Lordly as a "crook and bandit, liar and cheat" who had no interest in "anything but young girls". The old man was caught between the Independents, who abandoned the faith and melted into the Canadian mass culture, and the Sons, who would sneak around at nite and burn their neighbors farm equipment if they thought it was too modern. They even torched Verigin's big mansion at Brilliant BC, the peninsula formed by the merging of the regions 2 great rivers, the Kootenay and Columbia - perhaps the most spectacular spot in all of Super Natural SE BC.
On Oct 28, 1924, Peter The Lordly, now 65, boarded the CP train in Brilliant with his latest squeeze, 20 year old Mary Streleaff. They crossed the Columbia into Castlegar and picked up M(ember of the) L(egistlative) A(ssembly) John McKie, and then headed up the long grade along Arrow Lake towards Grand Forks. At 1 AM a bomb under The Lordly's seat exploded. Verigin, Steleaff, McKie and 6 others were blown to bits.
Theories abound as to whodunit. The Sons? Peter's son Peter, who moved from Russia to BC soon after, and took over his father's leadership? The Bolsheviks? The Canadian government?
The Sons would sometimes show their contempt of material possessions by burning down somebody else’s new house. Peter the Purger tried to mend fences with the larger Canadian society, and kicked a lot of radicals out. The Sons of Freedom responded by evolving from arson to explosives, and from private targets to public ones like (allegedly) schools, powerlines and the Nelson courthouse. They were often in court, and the men and women were notorious for showing their contempt of secular government by stripping naked in front of judge and jury. The Canadian govt responded by changing the law for Public Nudity to a three year sentence, and sending a Doukhobors off to the pen for long vacations. In the 1950s the Wacky Bennett regime rounded up all the Doukhobor kids and sent them off to a residential school, away from the corrupting influence of their parents.
The great Doukhobor diaspora seems to have ended here in the Kootenays. The big communes have been split up and sold to private owners now, but quite a few of the old buildings remain. They are easy to spot, cuz they are all made out of reddish/brown brick, and they are usually 3 or 4 stories high.
In my limited knowledge of Russian culture, it seems to me that you can divide Russians into 3 kinds: evs, ovs, and offs. You have your Kruschevs and Medvedevs, and then you have your Molotovs and Nabokovs, and then you have your offs. The Doukhobors seem to be of the off variety of Russians. Probably 2/3 of the headstones in this cemetery and with the name off.
There are two words you can’t spell in English repeated on most of the stones. BEYHAR NAMRTB? You see this on many stones, along with the dove of peace.
Most of these folks were hardly bomb-throwing terrorists. They were just common decent people who wanted to grow and eat healthy food and not be bothered by phony greedy bullshit. Women’s memorials often contain the triad of bread, milk, and salt.
I drive down to look at the river.
What a beautiful stream to drift down. I should launch the toon and go for a float.
But I have problem developing. When I live in the Volvo Hotel for extended periods in really hot weather I develop heat rash in my crotch. It is time to head home, check my email and phone calls, take a long hot shower, and plan for another basstravaganza. Next time I will have my bike with me, so I can't pedal back to the car after I float down a stream. And next time it will not be hotter than the Bessemer electrodes in the Anaconda smelter.
Heading W out of town now, there is another old commune on a hilltop across the creek.
The big buildings are abandoned, but again there is a newer house nearby with people living in it.
There are no butterflies here that interest me. But there are a few day-flying hawkmoths, nebulous grey blurs hovering in front of a thistle. Then, quick as snap, gone to another. The hawkmoths are the only kind of butterfly or moth that can hover in place, or fly backwards. When they zip away from the thistle patch towards the forest they are almost impossible to follow with the human eye, like something out of Star Wars.
Suddenly there is one buzzing right in front of me. I make a miraculous stab with my net and snag it out of midair. Turns out it is a white lined sphinx moth, the commonest of the hawkmoths. Very carefully I start preparing it for a mount.
It is a pretty little lake. I stop to look, but not to fish.
During its first years the Anaconda smelter could only produce lower grade concentrate that was about 40% metal.. This had to be shipped to the Granby smelter for remelting and processing into 98% metal "blister copper". The blister copper was then shipped to New Jersey, where the gold and silver were extracted. When the power plant was built at Cascade Falls it sent 20,000 volts to the Anaconda smelter, which was rigged with giant electrodes that generated enough heat to produce blister copper in Greenwood. The zombies all came from their humble abode, to get a jolt from the Anaconda electrode. Like the Granby smelter, the Anaconda smelter went under during the economic crisis in 1919.
It reminds me of the steep walls of lava in the volcanic heart of central Oregon, near Davis Lake. You can see the slag piles from Google Earth. Here is the one I visited a couple days ago, the Granby smelter next to the Granby R.
It is blowing a small hurricane, but I drive down the spit anyway. I launch the pontoon. If I stay immediately against the shore of the spit it is windy, but there are no waves. Even in the wind it stinks. There are dead fish floating around in the lake everywhere.
I row around a bit, and toss a buzzbait. Nobody gonna catch no bass tonite. Fish just before the T-storm, huh? Well, it is starting to rain, and there is lightning flashing. AAnd if I get any farther from shore I will get caught in the wind and blown across the border into the US in about 10 seconds.
There are more dead fish floating in the tules. These are silver sockeye, the most delicious and expensive fish that swims in the N Pacific. Must be 100 of them floating dead here.
