So, the nature tour season having ended about two weeks ago, I said to my better half, lets go for an outing this afternoon.  I suggested we go and see if the Sockeye Salmon were spawning in the Taylor River. So after lunch we hopped in the car with the dog and took the twenty-minute drive to the Taylor Arm rest stop.

I thought there might be some fish spawing right close to the picnic area. But I was wrong. The habitat was a little too deep and the water was a little too fast. We decided to work back along Highway 4 toward Port Alberni. We stopped several more times along the river. At only one place we found fish. It was a shallow area away from the main current with pea to toonie-sized gravel. I said to Patti, “Boy, it seems that the Sockeye have really had a bad year!”

However we went on a little further. I noticed a small turnoff the highway with a concrete abutment at the end. We sat there on the curb and wondered if it was worth getting out and going the short distance to the end of the track. In the end I was glad we did. This was where the best show was! And literally at our feet. There were about two dozen Sockeye in a 100 meter stretch of a side channel to the main river. A beaver dam was at each end. And there were all these bright red fish with green heads swimming around. I was surprised at how much they varied in size. There were a few that were no bigger that the average trout. We figured these were the Jacks, or males that had returned after spending only a year at sea.

The dog, a golden retreiver, wanted to get after these fish so badly he was quivering. I had to be quite stern with him to prevent him crashing into the water and sending off in a panic. As it was they were pretty skittish. The stream here was no more that 8-10 feet wide with lots of gravel and spots where the fall leaves had accumulated in the water. After I had taken a bunch of pictures we let him go and be a dog. But not for long. We didn’t want to prevent the fish from spawning.

Here are a few pictures.

Male Sockeye salmon

This was taken a couple of years ago near Combers Beach parking area. I love how the walkers have their shoes in their hands. And how the flock of gulls are nearly hidden in the fog. And how she has turned to watch a gull flying. The peace, tranquility and agelessness of the beach.
This walk will be part of a tour offered by Rainbird Excursions’ partner Scott Walking Adventures next September 2009.
http://scottwalking.com
RainbirdExcursions.com

Picking Chanterelles near Port Alberni Vancouver Island

Planning an experience like this can be a little nerve-racking. There is a good spot about half an hour out of town that is exceptional for the numbers of Chanterelles. Few people know about this spot. However, one old fellow and his young associate does! And that’s when the nerves start racking!

I like to go into the area about a week ahead of the tour to make sure there are enough mushrooms and to confirm that access is still OK. I went in and found a tree down across the road and thought, “Good, no-one has been there yet.” I came back three days before the tour and found that the tree had been bucked and removed and a seriously beat-up old school bus was parked in the place I park in. Harumph!

I walked in and found that a good part of the area had been picked already. fortunately they had missed several good patches, and didn’t pick all the Chanterelles where they had picked. On the way out I noticed that the road was getting very grown-over with young alder, and that many of them were still bent over from a heavy snow-load from the previous winter. So the day before the tour I went in again to check on the remaining patches, and to clear an easy path through the alder.

Well, the school bus was there again! And this time I ran into the pair of them walking down the road. The old guy said there wasn’t much left, and that he had gone way in there. “Why I’ve been coming here for 35 years,” he said “I know this area backwards and forwards” Disheartening to say the least! But i went on and found the patches intact. I Also went further up the road to another excellent couple of spots and found them intact. Thinking about it now, I think the guy was an old bullshitter. For one thing, 35 years ago, this second-growth Douglas fir forest wouldn’t have been able to produce Chanterelles.

So I was able to get enough mushrooms for the chef at Batstar Café and Picnic to produce the meal and have some left over. Everyone had a great time. No one got lost. Everyone was able to bring home some mushrooms to try some recipes with.

Here are a few links to Chanterelle Recipes

http://home.budget.net/~woofer/chanterelle_recipe.html

http://www.gigaflop.demon.co.uk/mushcook/chant.htm

http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/240/CreamofChanterelleMushroom62326.shtml

The more I go to Stamp Falls, the more I am convinced that this Provincial park is the best place to see salmon migrating on Vancouver Island.  And by way of a photo essay I will prove it to you.

It is a little off the beaten track. Those of you who are fixated on getting to the Tofino, Ucluelet and the Pacific Rim will doubtlessly be irritated that you need to drive 20 minutes along Beaver Creek Road out of your way. But in September and October, it is worth it!

There are loads of features that set this park apart as the place to go to see the salmon. There are 23 campsites of which 10 are right beside the river. There is a fish ladder built in the 1950’s to assist the salmon in getting to suitable spawning habitat. Signs are placed all along the river banks that describe the life cycle of the salmon, the five kinds of salmon, and how the fish ladder works. When the salmon are running the Canadian Department of Fisheries and oceans has a television monitor set up to allow the public to see the fish going through the ladder. And for safety, there is a chain link fence to prevent people from falling into the canyon below the falls.

The falls themselves are well worth seeing. More like a cataract, they plunge through a narrow rock into a canyon below. This is where you can see them jumping at the falls. In the canyon below, the water runs deep. And on sunny mornings shafts of light penetrate far into the water illuminating the bodies of the fish in these pools. They hang suspended in the water swimming constantly. Occasionally one will rise to the surface and even jump! The large old growth trees around the falls add to the ambience. Below the canyon the trail ends. But there is a jumble of rocks you can climb down on to get closer to the water. This allows a visitor to get right down to the salmon and offers views up the bottom of the and across the pool below the canyon where Deer Creek enters the river.

The photographic possibilities are also excellent here as they extend from moody misty views of the river to the bittersweet colour of the maples along the river in the fall. Or the lifeless carcass of a spawned out salmon floating in an eddy of the river watched by eagles and ravens attracted to the spectacle.

Forgive me if I wax poetic. Stamp Falls never gets old!

Photographing a Cassin’s Auklet

Originally uploaded by TheRainbird

I just got back from a really successful pelagic birding trip to northern Vancouver Island.  The American Birding Association (ABA) had a regional conference in Vancouver, which moved to Victoria on Vancouver Island. ABA conferences usually have pre and post conference excursions which explore the region the conference is centered in. Rainbird Excursions was asked to hold a cost-conference excursion. So I organised on to northern Vancouver Island. We were hoping to get to Triangle Island which is 40 miles off the north end of the island. Although the seas were quite calm the fog got thicker and thicker as we approached the end of the island to the point where visibility was less than 500 yards. At Triangle Island the other boats in the area said the visibility was zero. So seeing the birds around the island would have been an impossibility.

However, we were able to get great looks at many great birds. The highlight was a point blank lookat a Cassin’s auklet that surfaced right beside the  boat. Everyone rushed to the edge of the boat to have a look and take pictures while it cooperatively swam along side. And then to give a chance to the folks on the other side, it dove and surfaced on the other side.

Sandy McRuer

Rainbirdexcursions.com

The experience will start at 12:30 PM on Saturday 11th of October from the parking lot beside Batstar. You will be finished picking by 4:30 in time to freshen up in time for a 6:00PM dinner. The price for this trip is only $100 each including the meal and the GST.

A view of Sproat Lake from the Teodoro Trail

A couple of weeks ago Patti and I went for a hike along the Teodoro Trail in the Alberni Valley. It is a nice trail mostly through second-growth forest to a remnant patch of old growth. There are also a couple of nice views of Sproat Lake. What prompted me to do this was because I had recently bought a GPS (Global Positioning System). I had an idea.

One of the issues with tourism in the Alberni Valley is the lack of signage on the trail system. There is a pretty good little booklet available at the Chamber of Commerce and several other outlets around the valley that will get a person to the trail heads of twenty or so trails that vary in difficulty from easy to rigourous. But when you get out of the vehicle, you won”t see a sign any where that tells you that yes, you did follow the directions correctly, and you are at the trail head. But that lack of certainty all changes when you have a GPS with waypoints installed for the trail you are looking for in your hand. You know you are at the right place!

Anyway I thought I would test it out on the Teodoro Trail. And it worked really nicely. The link to Garmin GPS file is at the bottom.

This is one of 3 species of garter snakes found on the Island. There are no poisonous snakes on Vancouver Island.

The trail head is really in two locations. But the one shown in the booklet is the one I used. To get to it from Port Alberni, take Highway 4 west. After the big bridge over the Sproat River start looking for the Great Central Lake Road to your right. About 300 m after this road is a logging road that also goes to Great Central Lake. About 1.5 km along it is a dirt road to your left. Follow it until it dead ends about 3.4 km away. You’ll be at the trail head.

Originally the trail crossed a foot-bridge off the end of this road. And this is what the trail book says. But the bridge was washed out a couple of years ago in a severe winter storm. So now you have to double back a bit and follow the hydro-line to a place where you can cross the creek easily.

The trail itself is rough, and has grown over a bit since it was built by Sproat Lake resident Chris Law. But red loggers ribbons mark the trail, and you have a GPS too! The elevation gain is about 200 meters. Some of it follows old logging roads.

If you are wondering what the name Teodoro is all about, it is named after an environmental activist in Mexico who was arrested, jailed and tortured for protesting logging in old growth forests there. They were arrested on fabricated drug and weapons charges in 1999 and were held for 2.5 years in jail. The Sierra club and other organizations fought to have him released.

Here is the Garmin GPS file Teodoro Trail

We met at their accommodation, Tigh-na-mara. We stopped at Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park, at Fossli Provincial Park to cross the suspension bridge and see the waterfalls, at Sproat Lake Provincial Park to see the Petroglyphs and at Winer Falls. They liked Winer falls the best because they had to climb down some ropes into the grotto at the bottom. At the end of the day we had a few minutes to stop at Cathedral Grove to see the biggest tree.

These kids had never see trees this big, or moss growing on trees, or a landscape covered in trees or even mountains.

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The other tour was a couple from Australia, where is quite dry and warm. They also were impressed by the big mossy maples and the huge Douglas fir. They also wanted to see waterfalls. So we went to Fossli, Winer, Sproat, and Stamp Falls. Although they were older, they were reasonably fit and managed to scramble down the ropes to the grotto at the bottom of Winer Falls. They were also quite impressed with the Trout Lilies or Erythronium Lilies that were putting on an impressive show at Stamp Falls at the time.

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It’s great to see the area you live in, and have become so familiar with, through the eyes of people like these from such different parts of the world.

My wife, some friends, their children and the dogs took a hike along it last Father’s Day. Of course, you’ll remember it was one of the few gorgeous days we’ve had so far this year. And the trail was in good shape. We decided to start at the north end and hike downstream.

The drive out to the trail head was pretty uneventful. We drove past the shoes on the power line marking the spot where the locals take the trail down to tube down the river. The end of Beaver Creek Road is one of my favourite spots in the valley. Because the large farm creates a large open area there are magnificent vistas of the Beaufort Mountains and the mountains of Strathcona Park and the Comox Glacier. Once we reached the end of the road, we followed the signs saying Angler’s Trail. It led us to a clearing in a young stand of Douglas fir. I tried following the road a little further, but had to back up as the road was a little too rough for the car I was driving. However if you are driving a pickup or an SUV you could park at the second clearing a little further on.

By the time we got started it was mid afternoon. So we knew we weren’t going to do the whole thing. You would need at least three hours just to do the trip in one direction. Very quickly we got in to some immense old growth trees. They are magnificent. Brad, who is a tree climber, was drooling at the thought of bringing his tree climbing buddies to go up some of them. We moved in further and they got bigger and more numerous! We stopped in one grove and discussed what name we could give to it. We came up with the ironic name of the “Seven Dwarves”. As we followed the river downstream, we stopped in several places where you could step right out onto the gravel of the river bed. Once we stopped so the kids and the ladies could walk out on a huge log that projected out into the river. Just before we turned around we found a nice spot to sit on the rocks by the river while the kids clambered out onto rocks further out in the river. We found an enormous crayfish, almost as big as a lobster and played with it. We showed it to the dogs who didn’t seem that interested.

All of a sudden we looked at the time and realized the afternoon was over. We hustled back in about an hour pausing briefly for a picture or two. It was 6:30 by the time we rolled in the driveway.

To me it was surprising that we only saw one other group on the entire trail. And they just took a short poke in and out again. By any name the Angler’s Trail is now one or my favourites.

Sandy McRuer

RainbirdExcursions.com

It was so cool though. I have only had a GPS for a short time. The area where the bird was, was hard to describe. And the coordinated worked like a charm! I had heard the knock on them was that they don’t work in heavily treed areas. Wrong! It works great! And being able to track down and confirm the breeding of a rare bird using a GPS was pretty neat!
With all the noises I was making, I attracted the attention of several other birds, a Dark-eyed Junco, a pair of Varied Thrushes, and a Robin stopped by for a look. In the distance I also heard many Hermit Thrushes and Band-tailed Pigeons. I also heard the ubiquitous Golden-crowned Kinglets.