An ungodly sound unlike anything I've heard before sweeps through the valley. It conjures images of primitive flying reptiles that screech as they swoop to grasp you in their claws and carry you off into the craggy mountain mists. The blood-chilling shriek stops. Silence. Deep silence. Then out of the night a low rumble rolls up the valley. Someone yells "the horses!" as the thunder of a hundred hooves stampede past camp unseen.
David Dorsey fades into the blackness with his rifle, heading in the direction in which the unknown waits. Wanda Williams and two of her wranglers leave the circle of firelight and with knives drawn head into the night to cut free the few staked horses, and, if possible, bring them into camp. The rest of us stand looking into the dark asking each other: "What's happening? Can you see anything?"
Two shots ring out, more thundering hooves, silence. Wanda, Ginger Dowd, and Francis Wilmets all come back with horses and tie them up at the edge of camp. David re-enters the circle trembling with adrenalin. Joyce Dorsey has stoked up the fire and had coffee brewing. We gather around the fire and await David's account of what happened or is happening, whichever the case.
David and his wife, Joyce, run Rainbow Mountain Outfitting, the exclusive guides for trail riding in the southern part of Tweedsmuir Provincial Park, 480 kilometres by air northwest of Vancouver. Covering an area of more than 981,000 hectares. Tweedsmuir is British Columbia's largest provincial park. Most of it, particularly its northern section, is deep wilderness. Its southern part, which is intersected by Highway 20, is more accessible and the focus of my interest.
David's connections with his country go back to before there was such a thing as parks anywhere. His great-grandfather, old Squinas, an Ulgatcho Indian, looks out from a photograph and I see David as a man in his 70's. His grandfather, Thomas Squinas, trapped, hunted, guided, and, as Joyce says, "generally lived here." David's other grandfather and Wanda's father, Lester Dorsey, established trails and camps now used on the rides in the Beef Trail area. The Beef Trail, which runs parallel to Highway 20, enters the park from the confluence of the Dean River and Beef Trail Creek.
In 1952, Lester Dorsey and Thomas Squinas blazed the route Highway 20 takes from Anahim Lake through Heckman Pass. That arduous undertaking ended Bella Coola's isolation by connecting it to the interior (see our Summer 1989 issue.) David, in his turn, guided with his father since he was a boy. With all that considered I figure we would get a pretty informed opinion of what is going on around here.
David explains that he had been able to make out two forms moving on the other side of the creek. He had fired shot over their heads and they disappeared. He knew that the Ulgatcho people were gathered at Tanya Lake, 16 kilometres down the valley, for their annual fishing and that probably they had pushed the bears away from the animals' fishing. So it wasn't a pterodactyl, after all, or even a cougar. In David's considered experience that incredible sound had probably come from a grizzly cub.
It's decided an all-night vigil is needed, and the wranglers agree on turns. David encourages the rest of us to get some sleep. The rest of the night passes, blessedly quiet.
It had just been that morning that I had flown in from Bella Coola with Rob Skelly of Vancouver Island Helicopters to join the 10-day trail ride during its final three days. The flight had afforded me an eagle's eye view of the Rainbow Mountains and the Beef Trail Valley through which the horsemen had already travelled. The Rainbow Range, a prominent feature of Tweedsmuir Park, is the remnant of major shield volcanoes that were glaciated in the last ice age. Its 2,500-metre-high peaks stand above the surrounding plateau. Its rock bluffs and scree slopes show an astonishing palette of reds, oranges, yellows, and lavenders.
In that great expanse of country we had spotted the smoke from the campfire. As we descended into the Mackenzie Valley, I counted 29 horses grazing in the emerald green meadow adjacent to camp.
I had arrived just in time for breakfast and marvelled at the wonderful contraption Joyce was cooking on. A heavy mesh screen was slung with chain from an iron rod and supported by two adjustable poles allowing the rate of cooking to be expertly controlled. This is not unimportant when one is cooking for 16 people twice a day over a campfire in the mountains.
David and Joyce introduced me to their company of wranglers, numbering five, and their customers, eight of whom are from Vancouver and two from Bella Coola. Testimonies were enthusiastically given for the gourmet fare served over the previous seven days. By all accounts, too, the trip so far had been thoroughly relished.
As these dishes were being done and lunches being made, Wanda's 12-year-old daughter, "Punky", was bringing horses in to be saddled. I commented that it looked as if she had been born on a horse. "Almost," said Punky. "Mom brought me home on a horse."
A few of the folks planned a lazy day in camp. The rest of us rode north up the valley turning east and climbing for an hour until we were above tree-line. The landscape opened and we came upon Crystal Lake. We spent the afternoon contemplating this wondrous country, bird watching, and hoping to see some of the caribou that graze in this part of the park. From around the lakeshore we gathered a fantastic collection of rocks, some enclosing intricate quartz patterns that dazzled in the sun.
The next morning the horses, having been stampeded the night before, are found at the far end of the valley and brought in to be packed or saddled. It's time to move on.
Travelling south up the Mackenzie Valley we follow a trade route Carrier Indians from the interior used for centuries in trading with the Bella Coola Indians on the coast.
This is also the same trail that Alexander Mackenzie walked in 1793 as he became the first white man to accomplish an overland crossing of the continent to the shores of the Pacific.
In July, 1988, Tweedsmuir Park celebrated its 50th anniversary in combination with the dedication of the Alexander Mackenzie Heritage Trail. The trail, 420 kilometres in length, stretches from the confluence of the Fraser and Blackwater rivers, near Quesnel, into and through the park to the trailhead on Highway 20 and then to Bella Coola. The trail continues another 60 kilometres into Dean Channel where, at the entrance to Elcho Harbour, Mackenzie inscribed his feat on a rock. Using vermilion in melted grease, he wrote: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand, seven hundred and ninety-three."
Designated as the first heritage trail in B.C., Mackenzie's route is gaining international recognition with hikers. The 80-kilometre section within the park, which takes five to seven days to travel, is, perhaps, the most scenic of the entire trail.
At the valley's south end we pull into an old cabin recently fixed up by the Valley Ridge Riders Horse Club out of Bella Coola for hikers or riders on the trail.
From the Rainbow Cabin we gain altitude. At midday a chorus of marmots whistle at our progress as we cross a large snowfield and come to stop in the notch of Mackenzie Pass. From the 2,146-metre vantage point, we're afforded a commanding view of the Rainbow Range behind and the jagged Coast Mountains ahead. The ice-blanketed peaks seem to move, sliding in and out of view, as we ride across treeless alpine through the yellows, reds, and purples of the high-country wildflowers. Stone cairns mark the trail through this open country.
Our last day takes us down and into the timber. Near the junction of the Mackenzie and Capoose trails the forest opens and below we can see Sitkatapa Lake, its beautiful valley surrounded by fog-shrouded mountains. In the final descent, the trail knifes across near-vertical slopes and we steal tentative glances into the Bella Coola Valley far below.
