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We are known as PaWingers or just The Wingers by our Geocaching friends. When we found our first cache we had to come up with a name to log the find. We came up with this name simply because of residing in Pa. and because one of our many passions is cruising this beautiful country on our Honda Goldwing. Aside from geocaching we are passionate about most anything outdoors including hiking, kayaking, snowmobiling and biking. We are blessed beyond words with a wonderful son and daughter in law. We're also blessed with some terriffic family and friends. We consider ourselves very fortunate due to the fact that after being married over 40 years we still enjoy these things together.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Action at Rearguard Falls

Often times I find it rewarding to go back through pictures from a couple years back, not just to re-live great times but so often I see something that I didn't see when I originally loaded the pictures.  Such is the case here and it motivated me to do a new entry in Whoda' Thunk. 

Back in August of 2013, we spent a couple weeks in the Canadian Rockies and British Columbia.  Our furthest destination in the northwest direction on that trip took us to Mount Robson which happens to be the highest point in the Canadian Rockies.  While we did want to see Mt Robson, we also had hoped to visit the Fraser River and more specifically, Rearguard Falls.  On our way to Mt. Robson our spirits were slightly dampened because of rain and fog.  Early in the morning we came upon an Elk feeding on some delicious red berries.  I remember this morning very clearly because I can honestly say this is the first time I was ever chased by an Elk.  He definitely got my attention but fortunately he stopped the chase once he realized I took his warning seriously.  Here is the Elk that almost caused me to soil my under britches.  Don't let his cute face fool you.


So after escaping physical harm from a charging bull Elk, we continued toward Mt Robson.  Here we are entering British Columbia.


 
After the obligatory photo we headed to Mt. Robson with hopes of some great photo opportunities.  Unfortunately a low cloud ceiling masked the top of the mountain but we could still see it definitely is a tall mountain.  We ate breakfast at a little diner at the base of the mountain and our hope was that the clouds would clear so we could  see the top but that just wasn't going to happen this day. 


 
As we left the beauty of Mt Robson we headed a bit further west to a spot along the Fraser River called Rearguard Falls.  The story behind Rearguard Falls is quite fascinating.  This falls on the Fraser River is 800 miles from the Pacific Ocean and each year Chinook Salmon will make the three month journey to this spawning ground.  This falls will mark the end of their journey and only the strongest will complete the journey and they will lose one third of their body mass as they swim against the strong current to this location.  This arduous trip to their spawning grounds will also be their last as they will die here and their bodies will provide nutrients to local fish, birds and other mammals.  Sadly, we were a couple weeks too early to see the Chinooks, which also draws lots of Grizzlies to this buffet. 
 
 
We may not have seen the Chinooks at Rearguard Falls but we did witness a group of rafters and whitewater kayaks trying to recover a large inflatable raft that was lodged up into the rocks in strong current.  They had to use all kinds of ropes and rigging to rescue that raft.  The water was quite rough but the short whitewater kayaks handled it with ease.
 
 
 
 

 

And finally this photo brings me to the reason why I chose my Whoda' Thunk Blog for this post.  Here we are over two years from when we visited Rearguard Falls on the Fraser River and only now did I notice in one of my pictures that there actually was a lone Chinook Salmon swimming alongside this kayaker.  The paddler was concentrating on the whitewater and had no idea that this Chinook was swimming right by him and somehow we never saw this until just lately.  Whoda' Thunk!!