Well last night I downloaded an alarm clock for my computer to wake me up but it didn’t work so I woke up at 9:30. Guh…  I got up and lit a fire in the wood stove and ate some breakfast. After I brushed my teeth and walked around the yard for a while I decided to head out to take some photos of the river and Allison flats. Here’s what I came up with:

the tulameen is melting!

AHA! deer sign

ice on the river

gotta look for rocks!!

mini ice flow

whispers of birdies once past

the brown bridge

yes i found a rock!!

rocks!!

amazing white stone right out of the ground!!

rainbow water stream. it was awesome, from different angles it would go throught the hole spectrum.. really something

green slime!

red slime!!

peek-a-boo!

looking from the side of the old bridge towards the ice rink

ice jam

personal icebergs

princeton BC

another nice deer track in the middle of the city

and a temperature reading

Later on I went out driving with my dad and we got some fishing in down old Hedley road. I fell through the ice and then my dad really fell through. I cut down a nice maple stave and then it was time to head home.

Right now I’m sitting at the fire and warming my legs. What a fun day so far I got three of the things I wanted to do done! Now I’m heading out to the wild to build myself a snow shelter. If I don’t come back you’ll know that a cougar ate me.

 

 

Well I wasn’t eaten and I didn’t get trapped in the dark snowy wilderness. I made it out alive but I have to say I did a very poor job of “surviving”. I think I probably would have froze to death had I not been 15 minutes away from the road. While I was out I found a well-used deer trail and a few cat tracks. I don’t know if they were small cougar tracks or bobcat tracks. It was very peaceful out there with the soft rain patting on the trees. My footsteps were deafening while at the same time almost muffled.  I followed the narrow track until I ran into a trail that a couple of people had walked earlier on, at some point after the last snow fall. At one point underneath a huge spruce, there were pitch stalactites.

bobcat track

clay bank

either a sap sucker or a shotgun

sap-lactites

more spruce sap

 

I walked the track and then went to            1111111111111111111111

---

             v SSAQZS                        ha-ha Maully sat her head on my keyboard.   Anyways I walked the trail and then saw an opening in the creek ice so I thought I’d look for some knappables.  Here’s what I came up with:

Later I found this guy stuck in the ground underneath an over hanging tree in the riverbank. When I hit it with my rock hammer it threw a shower of sparks so I successfully found a sparking stone, which would be a potential life saver.

This is around the time where I fell into the creek the first time. My left foot was soaked up to my calf so I took my boot off, rang out my sock and put it all back on again. It wasn’t long before my foot was warm again but I knew that it was only temporary warmth.

As I was walking, I was keeping an eye out for potential bow trees and shrubs. Around half way through my walk I found this bad boy, a beautiful bundle of maple sticks and this one straight branch just begging to be turned into a bow. I chopped ‘er down and I had a walking stick for the rest of my trip. I walked along my little valley until it got a little dark, and then I headed up one side to find a place to make a snow shelter. The first thing I did was to build up the walls of my snow fort and to dig out a patch for a floor. I made the end bit all covered up but the light was dying. After getting about a quarter of the way done I had to stop and head home. If I am to survive in the snowy woods ill need to get an earlier start and find a more efficient way of making a shelter. So In short my foot was wet and I had half a shelter. I would have been rained on and I would have had a very cold night but I probably wouldn’t have frozen to death, purely do to the fact that now in the pitch black it is still 3 above.

On the walk back I was racing for daylight, the little valley that I had walked in from was now shrouded in darkness. It was still relatively light out on the ridge that I was walking on and I was trying to get home as fast as I could. I crossed through a thicket of underbrush with my bulky pack and into a clearing. I walked past a little shrub and made it about 7 or 8 steps past when I heard a whooping sound that was as loud as a helicopter from right behind my back. I spun around as fast as I could, thinking it was some fierce animal but found nothing. The shrub I had passed was rocking up and down as if something swooped in and pushed it down without leaving any tracks in the snow. I had no idea what it was so naturally assumed a witch or a ghost did it. It was most likely a ruffed grouse perching in the shrub that I scared up, but I think I would have seen it.  Needless to say I sped up considerably after that and was down on the final stretch of creek before I knew it. I just had to cross the creek one last time. “Not a problem!” I thought to my self. I took one step heard a faint pooping sound and then I was in the creek with both feet. Soaked up to my knees on both sides. Buuuurrr!! Pure snow melted frozen over creek water. Man that was a surprise. After I leaped up and across the creek I scrambled up the steep muddy slope and onto the safe road. “Ah made it out alive.”

On the walk home there were a couple deer out nibbling on the lilacs in someone’s front yard. The yearling was quite curious about me but the mother seemed weary.

I was greeted at home with a delicious feast of chicken, Brussels sprouts, bacon, carrots and brown rice.  Nothing like eating a massive amount of food after trudging through deep snow for hours

Right now I’m warming my toes by the fire with a full belly and a big smile on my face. I’m going to go get a brownie!

Friday January 14^th 2011

I woke up early today, around 8 o’clock. I wiped the sleep out of my eyes, brushed my teeth and started to pack with a banana in my hand. The first thing I needed to do was to empty out my knapsack of rocks, dirt and garbage. So I filled my garbage can half full of the bag debris and started to gather up all of my things for the upcoming weekend. I decided to take everything that I would need to live in the woods except for an axe because I don’t have one in the city. This includes: my boppers a couple pieces of obsidian, some jasper, a jar, my artificial sinew, my trusty blue tarp, a pocket knife and of course 3 pair of extra socks.

here it is all splayed out for you to see

extra socks, a jar, artificial sinew and my notebook with a pen and pencil

my leather handpad(bottom), my pocket knife, my copper bopper, a file/rasp, snare wire, jasper and some obsidian

some leather, my large copper bopper (not necessairy) another bopper, my multi purpose ishi-stick, abrader and my trusty blue tarp

and finally wrapped up in my blue tarp is "How to survive in the woods" a great litte pocket sized book that is a timeless classic.

Hopefully I can get two full days of exploring out in the woods this weekend. So with my pack all put together and having eaten breakfast I decided to walk around aimlessly looking for something to do. I found that the garbage was full so I took that out…   and then I walked Maully down to the park and ran around with her for a while. I then decided to give my dad a call to see what he was up to. He was down at the studio working on some art and said that he would head home soon.   At this point it was about 11:10 and we were probably not going to get to Princeton until well after dark. Oooh well when I have my license I can get up and go however early I want! Until then I guess I have to wait. When my dad came home it was 11:30 and if we were going to get to Princeton while it was light we would really need to leave soon.

I went into my room and thought about all of the things I wanted to do this weekend. This is what I came up with:

I want to collect some pine pitch to make glue

I want to harvest some good bow staves

I want to go fishing

And I wouldn’t mind walking the Tulameen and Similikameen for some more rocks

If it’s still all snowy then I wouldn’t be able to find anything anyways. I think the weather is supposed to be warm and rainy so who knows what it will be like.

Jane got out of bed as I was talking with my dad and told us that highway one was closed due to a landslide. Aarrrrgh! Stupid mass wasting! The time they thought they would finish at was 12 noon and it was 11:35-ish then. We thought we probably wouldn’t leave until 12 anyways.

here’s the article:

The Trans-Canada Highway has reopened in the eastern Fraser Valley after a landslide closed it earlier Friday. The thoroughfare had been closed at the junction with Highway 9 due to debris on the road that had tumbled down the mountainside.Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/01/14/bc-highway-one-closed.html#ixzz1BB7djqJb

 

So on that note I left for my room and tied three flies. Hopefully I’ll be able to hook a couple white fish this weekend. I haven’t really used my new fly rod and I’m itching to try it out on my familiar river. There are a couple good pools that I want to try and fish, one up by the old trestle on the Similikameen and another behind the A&W. those are also prime knapping stone hunting rounds but again I don’t know how the river is looking.

Here are a few pictures of the flies that I tied and how I make them. I think I’ll be putting up some tutorials on how to tie some of the patterns that I have written. Maybe that will be the next page that I put up on here.

how to tie a chironomid

a size 18 hopper hook with a metal bead head

next is to tie in some black chord

tie in a silver rib

next i wrap the black nylon to form the body

wrapping the silver rib up the body of the fly

whip finish to make the bead and the body the same width.

one last coat of head-cement over the whole fly

a nice little fly, should be able to catch some fishies

tie the thread onto the hook

tie in about 15 squirrel fibers

tie in and wrap two or three peacock fibers for a body

tie in and wrap your red hen hackle and make a head with a whip finish

white fish fly

this one i was pressed for time so i didnt take pictures of the making only the end product

this is the only fly patter i have ever tied (or fished for that matter) that brought me home a white fish

Here’s the flies i’ll be bringing to princeton:

and my disorderly fly box that i made

I tied flies until the last minute and got three done in about 20 minutes. We hit the road at 1:15 and the highway was still closed through hope.

a typical vancouver winter day

MAULLY!!

what a place for a caveman... :c

nothing primitive here..

and theyre bound to go higher...

First stop! The union hall! Seeing as nothing eventful happened there ill skip to the next stop TIM HORTONS! Mmmmm    I got a bowl of chilly, a trip chocolate chip cookie and a 7up what a nutritious lunch!

timmy ho's chilly lunch

We then stopped off at KMS tools and got some one-shot sign paint.  I looked around for some wood/bow working tools but they didn’t even have a planer much less the spokeshave that I needed.

After that it was time to wind our way through the flooded suburbs in order to avoid the traffic of an up-turned semi truck at the Vedder. At one stretch of the road the houses didn’t even have ditches they were so full. The side of the road looked like it was the same piece of land as their front lawn. A hazelnut orchard looked like the trees were all growing out of a huge mirror and if it froze you would be able to skate through the trees without any difficulty. These are the risks you take by living in a flood plane I suppose.

the grass around here takes any chance it can get to turn green again

We evaded the truck traffic and by the time we got back onto highway 1 the landslide had been cleared. Not bad timing it was about 3:30 when we heard the news.

suburban sunset

Not much happened in the time between getting back on the highway and getting to Princeton though. More flooded farms, gushing waterfalls. There were waterfalls where I have never seen them before. It’s quite the snow melt going on right now.

Manning park was under a cloud cover that hung half way down the mountains, hiding their peaks.

shroud of cloud

When we got to Princeton it was dark out and about a foot and a half of snow on the ground

here's the snow in the yard

icicles

At 8:30 we all went on a walk with maully in the snow. The stars were so bright and the moon was out in its full glory. The moon and the snow made it almost as bright as day time.the river was almost completely frozen over so I cant go out rock hounding..i thinki ill make a  snow shelter and search for bow materials this weekend. We ended off the night with a fresh batch of brownies.  MMM   deeelicious!!!  Thanks Jenne-fire pancake!

how to tie a chironomid

i put the bead on the number 18 hopper hook and wrapped my thread down to the bend in the hook.

a size 18 hopper hook with a metal bead head

i then tied in three strands of black silk like nylon string for the chronomid body

next is to tie in some black chord

the next step i did was to tie in some silver wire for the rib and extra weight.

tie in a silver rib

wrap the nylon up the shank until you get the desired body size and then put a coat of head cement all along the black body

next i wrap the black nylon to form the body

next i wrap the wire up the body of the fly in expanding segments until up at the head. i tied it off and cut of the excess

wrapping the silver rib up the body of the fly

i finish up the fly with a nice clean whip finish and trim the excess thread.

whip finish to make the bead and the body the same width.

i finish it all up with one last coat of head-cement over the whole fly and call ‘er done!

one last coat of head-cement over the whole fly

Well we got up undecided of weather or not to leave for home today or to go home in the morning of the next day. So we decided to say ” if we’re catching lots of fish and having fun then we’ll go home tomorrow morning…  if not then we’ll come home today.” so I packed a lunch (this time pre-cut cheese and salami) and we headed out to the same lakes as we fished the day before.

fresh snow on the road

We avoided the little lake that we didn’t get any fish at though.   Our first stop was the lake where we had caught the two fish the day before. I drilled two holes in our little spot that we fished yesterday and we dropped out lines.   After a good half hour grandpa got up and went with the auger to “find a better place”…    I kept fishing at my little hole without any bites what so ever. I finally got bored after a good hours fishing and decided to draw a giant fish on the snow with my feet. It was about 40 feet long and had fins and a tail and everything. I then drew a 3-foot hook with a big worm on the end and line leading up to a hole.  I then sat at my drawn hole and pretended I had caught a giant 40-foot fish.

Around this time grandpa packed it in so I followed after writing a massive 40 foot tall SNOW fish beside it.

The next lake on our hit list today was a little lake called round lake. I had never caught a fish in the lake so we decided to give it a try.  In short like the last lake after no bites and many holes over the period of an hour and a half, I got bored and decided to go out taking photos.  I got some really nice ones of the lakes when the sun came out to play.

frosty twigs

snow covered willow

round lake sunshine

After another half hour without any fish we once again hit the road.

the road to dry lake!

snow covered

The next almost futile attempt to catch a fish was made at dry lake. They stock dry lake with 10,000 fish and they all die out in the end of winter. We ran into a family in the beginning and they said they got some bites in the morning and pulled out two 4 pounders out of their little ice holes.   But hadn’t had anything since.Well it’s worth a try anyways. The thermometer only said -5 degrees today but little dry lake is right in the middle of a valley. Unfortunately this little valley has a little microclimate of it’s own. The wind rips through their super fast and often it will be completely calm in adjacent valleys.   So today the wind was blowing on the lake and it was colder than any of the other days. It blew right through all of my jackets and I had to fish with my back to the wind or else my nose would have fallen off.

grandpa is cold

here's his hole

More of the same in terms of the great fishing day, not a bite at this lake, and by the time we were ready to go we didn’t want to get out of the nice warm pickup truck again. “Well I think we could make it home if we left now”….      “Okay good idea”

the last view of our cold little lake.

the bull

two pines in a pasture

we cleaned up our little house we were staying at and it was time to head out.       I get in the truck and we’re just about to pull away when grandpa says “oh I put the fish in the freezer”

“Oh I wanted one or two of them for the city!” so I hopped out of the truck, unlocked the back gate and unlocked the house.  I grabbed two of he nice big fish from the day before, one brookey and my rainbow trout. mmmm they’re gonna be great!

I then ran outside locked up the front door, came out of the back gate and threw the fish in the back of the truck. I got in the truck and grandpa just looked at me…      and then he said “THE GATE!”  …    “Ooooops!”     All in good fun…   I locked up the back gate and then we set off on our final icy adventure of 2010.   The drive back.   The road was bare..    The mountains were pretty with the setting sun.

icy princeton

We made it home at around 6:00 not bad time at all, and grandpa got to head on home early the next morning.

What a trip! So many stories!  I love these trips with my grandpa I always have a blast.  Hopefully we will have another one soon.

i hope you liked it half as much as i liked it,  thanks for looking!!

We woke a little later this day, grandpa let me sleep until 7:30. When i got up i packed us a lunch and had a breakfast.  the lunch bag had cheese, cheese buns and salami, a well balanced meal by anyone’s standards. today’s plan was to head out towards merrit and fish all the little lakes until we either caught some fish or made it to Ludwick lake. so at around 8:30 we headed on out. the thermometer in grandpa’s truck said -10 C in town.

foggy windshield

the first lake we decided to fish at was the first little lake on the drive. the temperature was -12 C here. one time grandpa caught some little brook trout and rainbows there so we thought that was good enough reason to drop a line.    first test hole revealed a good 6 to 8 inches of clear ice. just the right thickness not to worry about falling through and not so thick that your arm got tired driling.   again we used the tried and true spoon with a worm technique but this time to no avail. we fished first in 10 feet of water then 15 then 25  fishing at different depths within our little holes.  at yellow lake we got most of our bites jigging about 1 foot under the ice. after about an hour of fishing we decided that those fish were FAR too smart for us.

the second lake

the next stop was a little lake that we had, had some luck fly fishing in the summer.before  i once got blown to the other end of the lake in a canoe and had to stop and rest up with some kind people who had a dock on the far end before paddling all the way back to the other end…     anyways that story can be for another time i guess.   we drilled a hole where we hooked some fish in the summer and before grandpa’s line hit the bottom, he had a bite..      after about 5 or 6 minutes of playing the fish out of a little hole out pops a NICE 18 inch brook trout!  we figured it was about a 2 pounder.   not a bad fish at all and definitely a keeper!

number one!

after about 3 minutes of me jigging in my little hole without a bite, i hear another hoot and a hollar  “I got another one!!  HAHA!” out pops his second fish of the day after fishing for about 12 minutes!  this one came out a bit bigger than his last one.

happier than a pig in poop!

number two!!

i was using a spoon just about the same as his and with a nice, big, juicy, plump worm on the end, just like him.  my hole was about 7 feet towards the shore from his hole..   what was going on??     i got up and drilled a hle about 4 feet to the right of his hole and dropped my line…     nothing..    he didnt get another bite after that…       nothing..              and still nothing…   we must have fished those two holes for another hour after the two fish without any action.   i finally said ” ok lets go to another lake!”  to which grandpa replied “really??”   i kind of felt bad for a while after that but after about 7 minutes grandpa was ready to go to the next lake anyways.

the next lake we stopped at is called ludwick lake. the year before last i caught us a thanksgiving rainbow trout out of there that was 7 pounds and 23.5 inches from fork of the tail to tip of the nose.   a beautiful fish!! i caught it on my own fly pattern as well! to get to ludwick lake go from princeton towards merrit and after about 50 km turn off at the A.P. guest ranch sign.    then follow the signs to thalia lake and stay on the road.  eventually you’ll run into a campsite and that is where ludwick lake is.

winter poplars on the drive to ludwick

last year ice fishing we couldn’t drop a line in without a fish taking it on the way down. however it wasnt the most pleasant day fishing beacause we ended up standing in about a foot of slush. this time out there was no slush to be seen beacause it was -16 on the lake. so first off we went to our tried and true fishing bay, where we couldnt go wrong, but there wasn’t any fish!  we fished at our little place and looked through the holes (of which we drilled 7 or 8).   no fish…   i think we might have scared them all away with our drilling but then again the fish didn’t seem very hungry at all.

our secret bay

a look of Ludwick lake

after a good hour of fishing and looking trough holes without seeing any fish below them we mooved over to a place where we had seen some holes dug and some fish blood on the ice.   they seemed to have luck there so we decided to give ‘er a try as well.    we had two rods in the holes and i was jigging one of them.   on of the rods there was power bait on a lure and the one i was jigging every once in a while, had a worm on the end.  after about a half hour with a few nibbles..  i see the other rod dip down. “oh a bite!”  i grab the rod gently and wait for the fish to come back..   nothing…      i set the rod down and then BAM the fish takes it hard. i nail it and set the hook. ” FINALLY!” i yelled to grandpa who was walking out towards the toboggan. i fought the fish and let it run when it wanted to. it made it to the surface of just under the ice and i waited for it to angle up towards the hole.. if you dont it will pull out of the fishes mouth.   with one final tug, it came straight up out of the hole!!

my first ice rainbow

the second fish i caught was simillar i was jigging in my hole and bam the other rod dipped down..  i covered the 9 feet from where i was in less than a second and had that rod in my hand setting the hook.  i played the fish and out it came after about 3 minutes. a beautiful yellow coloured rainbow trout!  i’d only seen them in this lake this colour. this one was especially golden. we decided that the fish was too pretty to eat and let that one go. go live on and reproduce little fishy!

second ice rainbow

around this point we decided it was lunch time.  i pulled out the lunch bag and grabbed the block of marble cheese…   then I scrambled around looking for the knife i knew i put in the bag…    it wasn’t in there.   no knife to a ended up breaking chunks of the cheese off and eating it with a coke.   “you’ll never keep a job like this!”  grampa yelled…    oopseys!  hahaa..

we fished for another hour or so until i got bored and decided to go out looking for animal sign in the snow. i found some snow shoe hare tracks, and took some photos of the plants in the snow. i found a black birch tree with many potential bow staves but without an axe i couldn’t bring anything home.  maybe in the summer or some other time i’ll be able to head out and harvest them.

snow covered old mans beard

bright rose hips

the snow shoe's tracks

snowy branch over looking ludwick lake

after a long hard day fishing and playing it was time to head back to out little place and clean our fish.   the night before the obsidian tool i had was an excelent cutter but i needed a chopper for the hunkers i went out side and banged out a crude but effective biface to chop the heads off of our flash frozen trout

my fish head chopper!

the catch of the day

so with the dirty work all done and my stone tools all cleaned up it was time to sit in bed and read a book. i read about 60 pages of the traditional bowyer’s bible and shared some fun stories of being a rough-nick.

we decided that this day was so fun that the next day we should head out again and try to catch some big fish again!