I Need a 'Kaboom'

Funny how when the noise of one location can be invasive, so suddenly the utter silence of another can come as a shock to the system. The lakeside location of our B&B in Clearwater is so remote that hardly a sound can be heard from our room and for some reason that prevented me from getting off to sleep last night. Clearly I did nod off at some stage since I was woken in the early hours by the unmistakeable sound of ..... rain:-( Rain that persisted throughout breakfast, and only started to abate as we togged up to make what we could of our day in Clearwater. As it turned out we had a gentle, restful yet once again scenically different day without too much concern for the residual dampness in the air. 

On the advice of our hostess we set out to take in the 'highlights in a day' which found us first of all en route to Spahats Falls. After a short drive to a roadside carpark and a 2 minute walk there it was, in all its gushing furious glory, a 240ft high, 25ft wide waterfall cascading from a hole in the rock face. Most impressive. Spahats Creek was long known as Bear Creek before being officially changed. Spahats is the First Nation translation of bear. 

Equally impressive was the geological explanation of the forming of the falls, a three stage process over thousands of years starting with the repeated eruption of underground volcanos (the strata of lava can be clearly seen but not so clearly photographed), followed by an ice age that laid down a layer of frozen water over a kilometre deep on top, before the sheer weight and force of the ice carved the deep crevasse we see today as it began to thaw and move.

View from behind the falls clearly showing  the depth of the glacial crevasse, complete with low hanging cloud.

Next stop was a few kilometres further down the road. This time we were headed for Dawson Falls. Already we were beginning to think 'groundhog day?', another waterfall? Couldn't have been more surprised. This natural attraction is so very different from the previous one and, nicknamed 'Little Niagara' you can see how.

350 ft wide but at just 59ft high Dawson Falls crashes through the valley of the Murtle River over lava flows dating back 200,000 years.

What's more, the 10 minute stroll in each direction to reach these falls led us through thriving cedar woods with impressive specimens of immense size and signposts warning that we were very much in bear country. These tantalising mentions of bears were everywhere. The bears, sadly, were not.

See ... Impressive specimens. Like I said. 

Back to the car where our route now took us rather more 'off road'. That's to say, the 'road' carried on but the surface didn't. Ever the adventurous on we went. Next stop on the 'highlights' hand-drawn map was a spot called Bailey's Chute. We'd been told that this was the place to see salmon jumping. We didn't like to mention to our hostess that we'd already seen a mass of salmon swimming upriver in Ketchikan and figured it was worth a look anyway, it being on the Clearwater River, after which the local town is called. And how pleased we were that we did. Another quite different experience, here salmon easily 2 feet long hurtle themselves against the vast flow of roaring water supposedly to obey a primeval instinct. It's a strange instinct though, let me tell you, because not only do very few make it up the chute it turns out they were not even born there, but rather half a mile back downstream where the exhausted fish end up being swept back to having failed the leaping contest. Seems odd to me that they should feel the need to try in the first place since from birth until now they were unaware of the treacherous battleground just upstream. Bizarre .... but beautiful.

See dat fish? It's a foot out of the water and big enough to feed a family of fifteen.

One final stop for the day, Helmcken Falls. By now we had learned not to pre-judge and so drove willingly to what was described in the info-blurb as Number 3 in the list of "Wonders of the World You Never Hear About". Helmcken Falks are the 4th highest in Canada and this illustration will give you some idea of the scale.

So there we have it. A little gentle exercise walking to each of the hotspots, during which thankfully the majority of the water seen was, in the end, flowing, not falling and nothing too taxing to remember our day in the Wells Gray National Park.

What a shame, therefore, that we were still feeling deprived of the bear necessities of life. HRH too, having missed out on his orcas, was wistfully accepting of our destiny not to see the native teddies in the flesh and in the wild. Don't get me wrong, the waterfalls had been impressive but I had visions of this day's blog being something of a somewhat repetitive damp squib. I was craving a highlight, a 'kaboom' to finish on (yes, I know - probably being greedy). Nevertheless as we started our drive back to base I'd just been thinking of the old adage about how you wait for ages and then two come along at once and so, in trying to make us both feel better, threw this out as a suggestion, that maybe bears are like buses. 

"What," says HRH, "big and red?" Very funny. And so we were somewhat distracted when suddenly, whoosh. There, not 2 feet from my car door as we passed them at the side of the road, not one, or two but THREE black bears. 

By the time we had pulled over and quietly emerged from the car we were perhaps 50 feet beyond them (as luck would have it the recommended distance from these wild creatures, especially nursing mums). So there we have it - today's exclamation mark to finish an otherwise back to nature gentle sort of day! So chuffed.