chapter 21
Ginty had the knowledge of writing letters, and also a phone. Mum [Elaine Dester] can read and write but my dad [Mack Dester] was illiterate so if there was anything official to do from the government, anybody who needed help could go over and Ginty would sort out the problem. She was very good that way.
Now I am quite confused about this next thing. I had a great aunt in England called Isobel and Ginty used to phone her and have me and my sister talk to her. My cousin researched this later and found out that Great Aunt Isobel must have died long before. But in my memory we were talking to her. Whoever she was, she sent books and magazines from England, even clothes. One time we got blue jeans. We thought jeans were only for boys then, so we gave them to my brothers.
Ginty was a difficult person sometimes. When we went to Williams Lake she would ask us to pick up stuff for her. We’d have to go to all the stores. Trouble was, she wanted every little service for nothing. She said we were going to town anyway so it wouldn’t be a bother. That’s why people didn’t like her.
I left the Chilcotin twenty years ago because I wanted to further my education and get a better schooling for my children.
—Karen Dester
The spring flood, which usually peaks a few days before I go into the mountains for the summer, was late. The weather stayed unseasonably cool. The water eventually came up but it made a pretty feeble show compared with the spring floods of previous years. It never even covered the largest gravel bar. We thought we had received a reasonable amount of snow but it disappeared in a flash. Everyone was commenting on how quickly it had vanished. The swamps and meadows that usually carry water for weeks were instantly dry. It can’t have been the lack of frost, as some people speculated, because Gabe dug a hole to ground the electrical system. It was in the shade by the door and Bert had been unable to finish the job while he had visited because the soil had still been like concrete. It was the last thing Gabe did before he left at the end of May. He would dig a bit then wait for the next part to thaw. He kept hitting frozen soil all the way to the bottom of the hole, which was sixty centimetres deep.
During the summer, Highway 20 was closed again due to fires. Forest fires that disrupted our lives so much were rarities when I first came to the Chilcotin but now it seemed as though they were becoming a way of life. This time most of the activity occurred at the east end of the Chilcotin around Alexis Creek, where the blockades happened several times. Williams Lake, being downwind, was plagued by smoke. A great many people were evacuated, but for health reasons rather than because they were directly affected by the flames. Toward the end of summer another fire blocked the top of The Hill into Bella Coola so once again the central Chilcotin was cut off. Anahim Lake was only thirty kilometres downwind from the Hill fire, and the community was told to evacuate. Rosemary and Dave at the Precipice prepared to go out, too; they deemed it safe enough where they were but if the fire had reached Anahim their way out would have been compromised. In the end they stayed put. Nuk Tessli is quite a way south of the highway and I could see that I would not be affected; even the smoke had not been too bad there compared with a lot of places. The fire season finished dramatically at the end of August with a heavy rainstorm. Very often a violent storm builds up at the end of summer and this was very welcome. More puzzling were three more deluges throughout September, which usually has long fine spells. This year gloom and wet prevailed throughout that month. Usually, when it dumps like that in the fall, the lake in front of the mountain cabins will rise as much as fifteen centimetres, but when this September’s downpours happened, the water level stayed low. There was fresh snow on the mountains but it didn’t look to be a huge amount from my vantage point.
On my last morning at Nuk Tessli, I had an inkling that powerful things were happening. I was supposed to fly out the day before—Saturday, the 25th—but we had yet another twenty-four hours of torrential rain and the pilot could not see well enough to find his way through the mountains.
Sunday, September 26 was hazily sunny and calm, and I started to carry the outgoing freight down to the wharf. Sid would obviously have no trouble flying in, but when I saw the wharf, I was astonished to find that the lake had risen over seventy centimetres overnight. This was unprecedented. It was almost at spring flood level, but at that time of year it would take weeks to peak. The last twenty-four-hour deluge would not do that on its own. What must have been a great deal more snow than had been apparent from the cabins had obviously melted at the same time. I immediately thought of Bella Coola. My lake ultimately drains into that valley. The Hill had already been closed for a couple of days due to slides. What would this extra volume of water do down there? Most of the people in the area live on the flood plain—there is not a lot of choice in that narrow, steep-walled valley. They are always in terror of floods.
The pilot was delayed—apparently it had been foggy on the Chilcotin—so we arrived at Nimpo late morning and I spent an hour or so visiting with him and his wife, all of us winding down at the end of the tourist season. I had left an empty water container in the van and I went to the post office to fill it and pick up mail. I then called in at the bakery to buy a couple of loaves of bread. I planned to drive to Williams Lake first thing in the morning. After four months in the mountains there would not be a lot of food at Ginty Creek and I would have to do a major shop. I would not have time to bake.
The husband of the baker runs a mechanic shop next door. “Did you just drive from your place?” he asked me curiously. “No, I have just flown out of the mountains,” I told him. “Well I heard the road was closed near your turnoff,” he said. He could not give me any more details. Maybe the closure was on the other side. Maybe it was just a bit of extra water on the road that would soon go down now that the rain had stopped. Maybe it was just a rumour.
It was warm and pleasantly sunny as I drove along. The surface of the road was dry; everything seemed orderly and peaceful. Then, round a bend, I encountered a vehicle parked sideways across the road. It was an SUV belonging to the RCMP. A few metres beyond was a hole in the road. Not just a pothole but a five-metre-deep Olympic-sized swimming pool completely cutting the road in half. The cop pointed to two orange cones in the middle of the road. “Half an hour ago,” she said, “there were five.”
I still could not grasp what was happening. I went to the edge of the river. It used to be hidden by trees at that point but now a wave of brown water was smashing head-on into where the highway had been. Every few moments more soil would avalanche in with a hiss of falling stones and gravel. The soil was mostly glacial silt, easy meat for the pounding water. Despite all the rain that had fallen, the soil a few centimetres below the surface was dry and as it fell it gave off a scent that immediately transported me to my childhood when I had a summer job harvesting potatoes. What weird things one thinks of at times like these.
It was the noise that was so extraordinary. Not just the roar of water and the whooshing rattle as more stones fell in but the booming and bumping of big rocks and logs, invisible under the brown soup, being bowled along by the flood. Worst of all were huge cracks and detonations as trees were broken by the wild water’s force.
The big fall flood of 2010 destroyed Highway 20 in many places.
By now several people were beginning to congregate—all locals in their town clothes on their way to Williams Lake. One of these was Len Lamothe who owned the earth-moving equipment that had dug my basement. He would obviously get a good chunk of work out of this. There was a big smile on his face.
Some of us eyed the side of the road, which was a shallow ditch that might have been driveable in a pinch, but more stuff was falling into the hole all the time and the ditch probably wouldn’t last long. My turnoff was perhaps five kilometres further on; the cabin was a further four kilometres and I thought I could probably walk home. The cop, however, would not let me leave my vehicle anywhere near there. I didn’t know what to do. Then two distant figures appeared on the steep bank above the washout. They were Ken and Sylvia Dyck; Ken is the foreman for the Tatla Lake division of Interior Roads. If they could come across, I reasoned, I could go back with them.
One of the locals said they would take my van back to Nimpo. What should I take with me? The van had quite a lot of food in it but there was not going to be much that I could carry. I grabbed a few things, a bit of dog food, some edibles for myself (including the two loaves of bread), the smaller daypack containing the computer and modems, the mail, and the few vegetables I had flown out with me in a small cooler. Sylvia said they would help to carry them. The items in the van had been packed for the plane. Space had been the priority for the flight so odd things had been crammed into corners of unrelated boxes and trying to remember where things were and imagine what I would need was not easy.
We had just started up the bank when a yellow Interior Roads helicopter landed on the highway. Ken turned back to consult with them and that delayed us a little more but finally we climbed above the flood. The steep bank was saturated and extremely slippery. I wondered if the whole lot would slide in while we were up there. If anyone had tried to drive in the ditch they would have been instantly bogged. I carried the backpack and hung onto the rope I was using for the dogs’ leads: I didn’t want to let them loose in case they took off on some adventure of their own. Sylvia wore the little daypack with the computer in it, and Ken took the cooler.
I thought that we had only this washout to worry about but around the next bend about half a kilometre of the highway was under violently rushing water. Trees had already been dumped onto the tarmac. Ken’s yellow pickup could be seen on the far side. We bush-bashed through forest and swamp and eventually drew level with the truck but in between us and the highway was a raging ditch. Ken and Sylvia had crossed it easily when coming the other way but that had been a couple of hours before. The ditch was no more than two or three paces across but extremely swift. The water was brown with silt and we could not see the bottom.
I doubt we would have made it without the long rope I had been using as a dog lead. A few small aspens grew on our side of the torrent. I let the dogs loose; time was of the essence and the situation was sufficiently serious that they would have to fend for themselves. I fastened one end of the rope to a tree. Ken took the other and then waded uncertainly into the water; just then the helicopter, which had been rattling at treetop level above our heads, landed beside his truck. The men had come to tell Ken that another washout was happening further east and if he did not move his truck soon it would be stranded. Their arrival was timely because one of the men could take hold of the other end of the rope and pull it tight. Ken got over okay; I waded in next. The water was crotch deep. At the last moment my feet were swept from under me. As the man holding the rope grabbed my arm, the rope was slackened a little so I went over backwards. I landed on my backpack which hit the edge of the highway so I was not seriously wet above the waist; the camera that was slung over my shoulder was not so lucky. Fortunately Sylvia managed to stay upright. If my computer had gone in the water that would have been a disaster.
The dogs were yelling and yipping and running up and down on the other side but I could not ask Ken to hang around. I knew the dogs were good swimmers but they obviously recognized that this was not their normal water element. First Harry and then Badger plunged in and both emerged looking pretty scared and half drowned but none the worse for their ducking.
We piled into the truck. Ken and Sylvia had offered to drive me right to the cabin but it would have taken an extra half-hour to take me there and back so I told them to let me off beside the highway. I did not want to risk having the washout cut them off. I had two backpacks and a cooler, and four kilometres to walk to get them home. The sky had dulled over and it was beginning to look like it would rain again so I took the computer first. I figured I could use the wheelbarrow to fetch the cooler and the backpack. The road curves away from the river and the thunder and boom and crack of water that had filled my ears for so long gradually diminished until I approached the cabin. The river noise swelled to a roar again and I wondered if the building would still be there. It was a fair distance from the river but the soil that supported it was just the same loose, fine silt that had succumbed so easily along the highway. Trees grew between the cabin and the river on the upstream side but I had no idea if they would be able to hold the bank in place. The roof came into view first: it seemed to be at the right angle. When I got to where I could see the river, it looked no worse than the top of a high spring flood. For the moment, the cabin was safe.
It was already late afternoon and I thought it better to fetch water before I collected the rest of my possessions, as it would be dark when I came back. I thought briefly about the twenty litres I had collected from the post office, which was still sitting in the van. I took a couple of empty milk jugs and started to go toward the river, but I realized that the water had the consistency of chocolate porridge; I probably would not be able to filter it well enough to make it drinkable. So I went to Nedra Creek, to the place where Ginty’s ashes had been scattered after she had died. This was the stream that Ginty had used for her irrigation projects—and the water that Health Canada had rejected so adamantly as a drinking supply. It ran in a small groove in the land just past the Packrat Palace. The water would have to be well boiled before it was safe to drink but it was only slightly cloudy and I figured that most of the silt would settle out once the jugs had sat awhile.
It was amazingly hard work pushing an empty wheelbarrow up the hills and back to the highway. I couldn’t help but remember the similar rescue of produce at the beginning of my second winter at Ginty Creek. Before I loaded the backpack and cooler into the wheelbarrow, I walked along the highway to see the washout that the helicopter guys had warned Ken and Sylvia about.
About half a kilometre from the end of my driveway is a large, sprawling house. A sign by the road advertises it as “Moose Head Ranch,” but there is no vestige of a farm of any kind, not even a summer garden. Instead, the straggling yard is full of machinery and wrecked vehicles; I seem to be the only local person who wants to get rid of wrecks instead of collecting them. The owners are usually away during the winter and not there much in the summer as far as I can make out. They did not seem to be home now.
The house had been built right next to the river. The view from the living area is stunning; water rolls along in front of the window barely three metres away. In normal times it is fascinating and mesmerizing to watch. Beyond is a wet spruce riparian strip that is wonderful shelter for wildlife. Just upstream from the house is a sharp bend in the river. The water was now pounding against the bank and being flung around the bend in front of the house. It was driven with such force that there was an obvious slope to the surface of the river, both to the side as well as downstream. I was surprised to see that the bank was still holding its own, but if this kept up it would surely not last long.
Somewhere upstream of my turnoff the river had split into two. There was now a raging current on the far side of the highway as well as in the normal riverbed. Just past the driveway into Moose Head Ranch’s yard, the new branch of the river was in the process of cutting a ditch across the road in its efforts to rejoin the main stream. This was the washout Ken had been warned about. A ten-metre-wide waterfall was cascading into the yard before boiling in a brown roaring snake through the cottonwoods. Unbelievably it just missed the house on the downstream side. The building was now marooned on its own tiny island. I did not see how it could possibly survive.
The night was eerily pale as there was a moon above the clouds, and it was wild with noise. Not only was the water roaring but there were strange whooshing and tinkling sounds, rather like icicles falling off a roof. Periodically there were more cannon shots. The dogs kept barking at every strange sound; they didn’t know what was happening either.
In the morning, the river had dropped enough to show a bit of a gravel bar. I was to determine later that it had peaked between three and four in the morning. The sun shone at first, but accompanied by strong, warm winds and racing rags of cloud; the break in the weather would not last long.
I ventured out toward the river where it was hidden from me by the belt of trees. The tops of the closer ones were still visible but instead of a slope running down through them followed by a band of flat grass wide enough to drive along, there was now a three-metre-high cliff. Half the trees and a huge swath of fence had been swept away. The river had gouged out a new bay—right where the trailer used to stand before it was moved to the upper property. I estimated probably a third of a hectare was in the river. That was all the hissing and crashing and snapping I had heard during the night. The cabin was safe for now, but a couple more floods like that and it would be in a precarious position.
The Bella Coola Valley was receiving major news coverage all over Canada. It was declared a disaster area. I emailed Katie and Dennis down at Stuie, in the upper part of the valley, to find out how they were faring. They replied:
The road is gone in both directions in several places. The airport is flooded and closed. The water-powered hydro plant went, so the valley is back on diesel generation—but they have only a couple days of fuel because the fuel truck is out of the valley for maintenance, so no way to deliver it to the plant. We have stranded people staying here (thank goodness we got cabins cleaned out). Luckily we didn’t lose power for long but the river has done major re-routings and taken out large chunks of Highway 20 and several bridges. Still have phone and internet thanks to the microwave tower being close by here. We’ve been asked to take stock of how much food, medications etc. we’ve got for everyone here—they don’t know how long we will be isolated—could be a few days or weeks. Sounds like they are going to put on extra ferries to bring in supplies and equipment and hopefully take people out that way. If so we may get out to Rupert as planned but we don’t know yet when, and if, we’ll be able to get down the valley to Bella Coola to catch a ferry. Certainly the highway between here and The Hill is gone big time so getting out of the valley that way will not be feasible for a while.
First the damn fires, now floods. What will happen next? More heavy rain forecast for tomorrow on top of the “saturation point” we’ve got already. Today we tried riding our bikes up the road to where we would have to hike to see some of the damage, but we ended up having bears in front and behind us on the highway—they have nowhere else to go, I guess—so our neighbour escorted us back home, with a bear on one side of their car and us riding on the other whenever we passed them. It is quite crazy. What an amazing change a day can make. One day everything is quite normal then you wake up and find everything in chaos, bears confused and wandering through the yard trying to find a way through water where it has never been before, looking for food that is so important for them at this pre-hibernation time.
The following day was sunny. Waves of sound wafted along on the wind from the direction of the washouts: the mutter of trucks; the heavy drone of a big backhoe. In the afternoon I walked down to the highway to see what was going on. There was a new small washout right at the end of my road. The water on the upstream side was already a metre lower and I don’t remember thinking it a threat when I wheelbarrowed my supplies home but this was an indication of how much higher the water had gone before it peaked. The Nimpo side of the highway was good for about a kilometre but a new river ran across the road there. I could not see the bottom and had no idea if any of the surface of the road had been damaged but it was swift enough to deter any further exploration in that direction.
Going east, I didn’t even reach Moose Head Ranch this time. The highway was badly gouged on either side. What was left of the tarred surface hung over the remaining core like a mushroom. I had no idea what had been washed away underneath so did not dare go further. I called the dogs and put them on the lead; I did not want them breaking through and possibly getting washed into a narrow space and drowning.
Where the waterfall had cascaded off the edge of the road on the evening of the 26th there was now a large, jagged-edged ditch three metres deep cutting the road in half. On the far side of the ditch was a flatdeck, indicating the highway was driveable on that side, and in the yard was a Cat working although I could not see it. Unbelievably, the house was still standing. It now had a large bund of boulders where the river had been smashing into the bank. Although the water was much lower, the current was still very powerful. A huge logjam of shattered trees had built up at the point of the turn. I found out later that the owners of the house had been in Kamloops. They had received word of the flood late in the evening and driven straight home, arriving about 4:00 a.m. That would have been at the flood’s peak. There had been seventy centimetres of water in the yard. It had leaked inside the house and made the floors wet, and also washed away the steps of the porch, but otherwise there was no damage. The husband “borrowed” a neighbour’s Cat (knowing he would not have minded under the circumstances) and never got off it for forty-eight hours. Jan Petrie from the sawmill a little further down the highway was commandeered to help and he operated a backhoe until it was obvious that the house would be saved.