July11

21C Sunny. Wednesday pm, men's day bowling then back to Vic West for 2nd day of the tournament. We won  with all of us having a good game.


Continuing Riverboat:

An introduction to the lake itself is necessary to understand the events that follow.

Stuart Lake is in north central British Columbia, it is a major lake in the chain of drainages that eventually exit the lake via Stuart River then into the Nechako and on to the Fraser River. The lake is about eighty kilometers long (fifty miles) and runs in a north westerly direction. At the most northerly end it is about is about 4 kilometers wide and out the south end widening out to ten kilometers. It is subject to severe storms that usually but not always funnel in from the west, drawing cold air from the mountains and hills to the north. Most of the lake is deep and even in mid-summer is bone chilling cold. In the winter it freezes over with an ice layer up to a meter in depth. Many lives have been lost on this lake, just a year or so before my introduction to it a nine man Forestry survey crew were caught in a storm, their boat sank and they all perished of hypothermia, they were all still in their lifejackets when found.

The Ranger featured here was part of the recovery group.

The run up the lake was uneventful, we stopped once to refuel, the gas tank had no gauge so it would be more accurate to say; we ran out of fuel once and had to refill the tank.

We found the Tachie River mouth with no problem, the old cabin which had served as a trading post was in reasonably good repair although infested with mice and a couple of pack rats. That day we finished off by unloading the boat, packing in our supplies, cleaning the cabin and then took a run the fifteen kilometers up the lake to ensure we would find a starting point the next morning.

The next day we started our usual routine, up at six, cooked and ate breakfast and were on our way about seven. We returned that evening in the dark so decided to start a half hour earlier the next day. Back in those days when on a cruise you worked all the daylight hours you could squeeze in and you worked everyday without a break until the job was done.

The cruise itself was uneventful we finished it up in eight days but halfway through we knew we would be short on fuel so we flagged down a passing boat and sent word down to the ranger station that we would need more gas.  On the last day we finished up in the early afternoon so hustled back and loaded up most of our stuff. Our gas still hadn’t arrived.

That night a wind came up blowing from the south east, straight up the lake and when we got up it was still blowing a gale we could see out into the big bay to the south of us, it was covered in huge white capped waves. So we hunkered down, fed the old wood stove and put in time. The wind died down a bit towards evening so we took the boat and went over to the reserve to see if we could buy any gas (between us we had about twenty dollars). We did get five gallons and figured with the couple gallons we had left we would be in good shape.