Bears and tics and sun and snow – first fishing trip Apr 27-28

Yeah – lake fishing & camping season has arrived last weekend. I had a tough week at work, tough week paddling and was so ready to get out of town and leave all that behind for a couple of days. Jeff and I took off early Saturday morning to go to Little Pete. Weather forecast was for cold but mix of sun and clouds conditions with a bit of wind. Well the wind was a bit stronger than I had hoped for but the sun was out most of the time. We had the little lake’s camp spots all to ourselves and therefore picked the one at the south end since we didn’t know if we could get into our favourite spot without having to cut our way in like last year. Jeff off course was on the lake catching fish as soon as we arrived. I set up camp first and went for a walk to check out my favourite deer and bear spots on top of the hill. All I saw though was what looked like cougar tracks. I have never seen cat tracks anywhere around Little Pete. And I wasn’t too keen on running into one either. Cats are not like bears – you don’t find them, they sneak up on you. But none of that happened. Interestingly though I came across a couple of vultures sitting below the cliff I was on. So maybe there was something around that attracted them. They took off as soon as they saw me and I only got a shot from a fair distance. I found a nice spot out of the wind and in the sun to watch them circling the sky for a while and … ended up having a little nap. Only to wake up to a couple of tics crawling over my coat and hands. Yuck – I got them all off though; that time. I continued on with my walk along the cow trail to my little ponds that I always think are great for spotting animals but usually all I get to see is ducks. So I wasn’t really expecting anything when I circled the 2nd of the two ponds I always visit looking down for some early spring flowers. When I looked up – there he/she was, maybe 50m away looking right at me. My first bear of the season. Obviously he/she bolted before I could even turn my camera on. Up the hill he/she goes but then stops half way up to look at me again. So I did get a couple pictures from the distance at least before the bear wandered off over the hill. I followed the old track around the hill but never saw the bear again. I continued on to another couple ponds even further before hitting the dirt road that leads back to Little Pete. Back at the lake I checked in with Jeff and found a whole bunch of frog eggs and frogs in the shallows – pretty cool. All in all I was walking around for about 4hrs. I spent the rest of the afternoon cutting and splitting wood. Noticed that my right upper arm hurt like hell trying to cut the log I found near camp. Luckily we had brought some log pieces from home (which had been sitting in the garage for good 10 years) so I only had to cut a couple more pieces. Those pieces were a bit fresh though but split like butter. While the old dry logs were hard to split. At the end both of them burned really well. And we really needed all that wood and warmth. It was an almost cloudless evening/night and it got pretty darn cold! It was so cold that I even froze in my sleeping bag, my nose was the only thing sticking out of it. I hardly slept all night I was so cold. I don’t remember ever being that cold in my sleeping bag.

Beautiful Little Pete

Vultures – wonder what they were looking for

My first bear!!

The last of the 4 ponds on my walk

Frog story

Still producing more

She looked big!

Finally I fell asleep when I heard something like light rain hit the tent – that meant clouds and less cold. Only that it was not rain – when the sun woke us up again a couple hours later there was a dusting of SNOW on the ground. Welcome spring! The sun though melted it away in no time and a morning fire kept us warm. Jeff went out onto the lake again – he did okay the day before. I stayed in camp burning off the remaining wood reading my book in the sun. Now that is weekend stuff. When I got bored of reading I went for a short walk – no more exciting encounters – and then put on the waders and headed out onto the lake in  my float tube. It was still breezy and swirly out on the lake but my casting went really well. Did a lot of it too but only got a single fish. Oh well. I got out of this weekend what I needed from it. We even saw another bear on the drive home on the Coquihalla.

Day 2: Snow day

Butterfly on my walk – seemed so early for them

Jeff and buddy Julian

My catch – not a monster by any stretch of imagination

Drive out through the ranchlands – I love the Nicola Valley

The only not so nice part was the tic I found on my neck on the drive home…but Jeff got it off once we got home without trouble. Can’t wait for the next weekend.