The Long Awaited Push North To British Columbia

I've been in BC for the last 2 weeks and its been a bit of a Gong Show. I showed up to "Fraser River Raft Expeditions" with no idea what i was getting myself into. Shaun had landed a job here a few months earlier and his boss (Darwin) told him that there'd be work for me if i came around. No guiding stuff but all the other aspects of running a rafting outfit.
So a quick low down on the place: It's a family run, highly understaffed rafting business. The rafting headquaters is on the same piece of land as the family house and a B&B that they also run. It's one giant complex. Its on an awesome piece of land just next to one of the rivers we raft, tucked in right between a railroad track and the main highway!
I sleep in the changing rooms which is awesome cause its got no door so there's always a nice breeze and its dry (its been raining heaps here lately and actually snowed the other night). Work is endless "Work til the job is done" as they say, but the job is never done here and one of the bad bits about sleeping where you work is that as soon as you get up you're working. So i wake up between 6:30 and 7:30 everyday, get a cup of tea and then start making lunch for the Custies when its all said and done the day ends somewhere between 5 and 7pm and we finally have some time to relax.
The deal with food here is that we get to eat all the leftovers or extras that the customers or B&B people dont finish, and i'll tell you what, it's some damn good food. Local salmon, local breads, tons of meat, lots of fresh local produce - the whole nine yards. deeeelicious. Anyways, here's a heap of pictures some with good stories behind them some just to enjoy.

The Fraser River Valley

These are the motor boats. We use 40hp engines and drive them through the rapids. The Fraser is running at 3500 cumics, so like 125,000cfs (HUGE). The whirlpools would suck a raft under in no time so we have to use these giant pontoon boats that the US built in WWII to as bridge pontoons to drive tanks across rivers after bridges were bombed out. they're aweome, its like a water tank - 28ft long with 4 tubes.

The mighty Fraser


Shuan getting dominated by a training kite on a windy day in and airfield.

Lots of bears around here. I've seen a half dozen or more so far.


One of the local side creeks flooding

We drove 15k up this river and didn't find 1 single eddy. Unbelievable how continuous it was, this was one of the flatter sections of the stretch.


OK. So now for the pictures which have stories behind them.

We raft the Thompson river (and hour north, tribs into the Fraser) with normal rafts and oar outriggers. There's 3 other guiding companies in the area and one of them was having a 70's party. As it happened, i picked up some 70's suits at a yardsale on the way to BC and shaun and I went out in good form.

On the way north however, we ran into traffic. A truck driver had fallen asleep, woke up just in time to drive off the road, flip his rig and smash into a rock wall (he lived) but he made us impatient so in the middle of the line of traffic we got out of the truck, got suited and made the best of it. We also decided to push the truck rather than drive 100m stop the engine, wait, drive 100m stop the engine, wait, as they let sections of cars by the accident. So this photo was taken with the car in motion, me running backwards, no one driving and both of us in our suits.

This was what caused our delay. The cab being held up by the crane, the chassis on the ground, and the trailer smashed up with its load all over the place. Nasty.


The party is THIS WAY

You cant look that good and not get a nipple rubbing shot

Instead of taking the highway home we crossed the river and took the 4wd track back. To cross the river though you have to use this awesome ferry. Boaters will appriciate this. No engine, there is a cable rigged across the river and the ferry sticks its nose out into the current and actually "ferries" across using the push of the river, then changes the direction of its nose and goes back the other way. Brilliant!

So about halfway down this 4wd track we got a flat tire. No problem, that is, no problem if you jack works. As it turned out mine didn't. SO, we took the axe out and chopped a tree up, made a huge as lever arm and pried the bitch up, got the tire off, put the spare on and we were off. Fucken good.

The likely culprit for the flat ended up as our level arm.

Heave-HO

Happy As with the effort. only took us and hour.


We went up to an indian reservation and took a quick tour. This time of year they either dip net, or gill net the salmon as they come up the river. All the blue tarps are salmon drying houses.


We were shown how to cut and pull the salmon to prep them for drying. Once this is done it only takes 4 days to dry them.


Remnants of Old pit houses from 1500ad that the natives used to use in the summers around this region.

I tried my hand at fishing and look at the size of this thing!!! HUGE. see the fishing rod in my other hand? TINY. I got the sucker close enough then dove on it and wrastled the bitch to shore. Ever watch the WWF cag matche?, thats what it was like. It was either me or him/her and i wasn't about to let this pearl go. Actually we just got it off of a local native.


This is a bucket of salmon guts

This is shaun's foot in a bucket of fish guts. Poor dude lost at a drinking game :)


So one final story...Sometime early summer there was a landslide that cross the railroad tracks, it derailed the train and dumped two cars into the river. The cars were full of glycol (antifreeze). Darwin, my boss, was contracted out at $8,000 a day to use his pontoon rafts as a staging area to pump out the glycol and then cut up the rail cars. I got to join in on some of the action.

The wreck site. You can see the track above and how good of a tumble these things had to the river.

The raft is 28ft long...just for an idea of how big these cars are...lots of "product" as they called the glycol. We really didn't do too much, just watched and laughed at the idiots doing the clean up, they had no idea what they were doing and spilled a fair bit into the water.

Darwin sitting on one of the cars, thats an $8,000 a day smile right there folks.


Cuttin' her open to put the hose in to do some piping.


So yep, done a lot in 2 weeks. we'll be hitting the road in a week or two and heading west to Skook then up the coast to do some sea kayaking in the fiords, then back inland and maybe up to Alaska and then back down to the Canadian rockies for a few job interviews late Oct with ski resorts.