Goats on Morrice Mountain

old hound said:
love your posts H, brings back memories. Worked on the bridge across the Ominica (not sure of the spelling) river at Germanson in the early seventies.
Was a new steel bridge for mining exploration. There was an old wooden one there but it was not sufficent for the heavy equipment.
Took the drivers a full day to bring in the girders (two at a time)over the road from Fort St James and somedays they didn't make it.
Beautiful country. The old quy at the post in Germanson shot a very nice moose one day which I accidently chased out to him.
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Jack, I first saw the historic center of Manson Creek and Germanson Landing in 1940. This was in the heart of the more modern placer gold rush. Mrs. Tate, the wife of a doctor from Prince George was a big time operator in this. She had prospectors working on every creek in the area, as well as a camp where she operated a stamp mill on some hard rock. I talked to probably a dozen men who worked for her, so I learned quite a bit about the area.
They were still using the old, original store at Manson Creek, the one they have put so much effort into replacing it like it originally was. The original gold rush at Manson Creek was always in the shadow of the great rush at Barkerville, and all the placer mining on the Frazer River, resulting in all the named bars on the Frazer River. Thus, Manson Creek, Germanson river never got the publicity it deserved, In spite of the fact it was the largest placer mining event in the province at the time.
 
I'm flying a trip into that general area day after tomorrow looks like, Bear Lake (not the PG version), north west of Bulkely House / Takla Lake. H4831 you'd probably be amused how little has changed in some ways, like the planes and some of the places, and shocked at others. Some places time stands still and others it sure changes.
 
Hmm, I guided up there for a couple seasons on the Driftwood. Nice country but a little too much night time activity for my liking.
 
Don't imagine it's changed much, just more plastic. I carry a fly sheet, air cell sleeping pad (rolls up to the size of a couple grapefruits), Glock 10mm, mora knife, lighters, chocolate and food bars plus a mountain house or two, water filter, lightweight metal mug you can cook in, leatherman, good boots, warm clothes and a waterproof jacket. You want as little weight as possible so I don't do the hatchet and all.
 
In the winter time the regulations called for a down sleeping bag for every occupant. It was common to use silk from parachutes for wing covers. These made excellent lean-tos, or any other way you wished to shape them as a tent. Worst part was cinders or sparks from a fire ate holes in them.
I always wore a down filled coat of the best variety, which was made by Jones Tent and awning, Pioneer brand. From the time I was ten or twelve years old I have been constantly out in the most severe cold of those very severe cold winters of yester year. If anyone is interested I can send a copy from the weather office at Prince Albert, for the month of January, 1937, showing the complete, official weather. Yes, it was cold.
We had a much better type of leather top, rubber bottom shoes,
than the super clumsy shape of the modern variety. One just had to be very careful not to let the feet sweat. Two pair of heavy wool sox fitted the shoes to the feet.
I have never frozen any part of me, which is not much to brag about at this day and age, where most people are not exposed to the cold. But I have had many years of my life in severe cold weather, including flying.
I guess I had better tell a little secret about winter flying. In severe cold winter weather there is always a huge, high pressure mass over the entire area, which is always subject to an inversion, meaning the temperature at ground level is much colder than it is higher up. We could not have flown in that cold weather, had it not been for it greatly warming up as height increased.
This was a known fact since WW1. In 1922 the Canadian air force got the veteran pilot, Punch Dickins, to fly all winter in the cold air of Edmonton, to learn about this high pressure area and inversion.
If the weather is forty degrees below zero, F, what might it warm up to? I have taken off at minus forty below zero and had it warm up to well above freezing at five thousand feet ASL
There is no way we could have done that winter flying, had it not been for the great high pressure area and the inversion associated with it.
 
theeasterner said:
I'd like to get a copy of your book. One thing I've wondered about is a list of gear that a bush pilot would carry flying over wilderness.
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Well, we've shown the clothing and personal gear carried.
Best place to get the book is from the publisher, Hancock House Publishers. The shelf price is $17.95, plus GST and they give free shipping. I like to point out that the book, Outposts and Bush Planes, was copyright in 2005, 12 years ago and is actually selling more copies now, than it did to start with. So a non-solicited book to run 12 years is a bit unusual in its self and it is actually selling more copies now than it did to start with.
Info@hancockhousepublishers.com should do it. Put in either my name, Bruce Lamb, or the name of the book, Outposts and Bushplanes.
 
conor_90 said:
H4831 thanks for the posts, especially the last one in this thread. I work in some of those areas pretty interesting to hear how remote they used to be.
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Thanks for that, C_90. One has to remember also, that for every tumble down old cabin, there is, or once was a man to go with it, usually a man with a lot of stories and a great character.
If you want to learn about a strange country, look for a cabin by a creek, or river and knock on the door! At least, it once was like that.
 
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H4831 said:
Just north of Summit Lake, as I stated. I flew in a commercial operation out of Prince George, with sometimes several landings at Fort St. James in one day. In fact, Lamb Lake is named after me, for the trips we made into it and it is about half way between Prince George and Fort St. James.

Bruce Lamb
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Small world! I spent the labour day weekend camped out there on the east side of the lake as great beaver was crowded. Didn't even know it was named until we got back. Managed two ruffed grouse and a spruce hen. Neat, What type of work did you do in there if i may ask?
 
H4831 said:
In the winter time the regulations called for a down sleeping bag for every occupant. It was common to use silk from parachutes for wing covers. These made excellent lean-tos, or any other way you wished to shape them as a tent. Worst part was cinders or sparks from a fire ate holes in them.
I always wore a down filled coat of the best variety, which was made by Jones Tent and awning, Pioneer brand. From the time I was ten or twelve years old I have been constantly out in the most severe cold of those very severe cold winters of yester year. If anyone is interested I can send a copy from the weather office at Prince Albert, for the month of January, 1937, showing the complete, official weather. Yes, it was cold.
We had a much better type of leather top, rubber bottom shoes,
than the super clumsy shape of the modern variety. One just had to be very careful not to let the feet sweat. Two pair of heavy wool sox fitted the shoes to the feet.
I have never frozen any part of me, which is not much to brag about at this day and age, where most people are not exposed to the cold. But I have had many years of my life in severe cold weather, including flying.
I guess I had better tell a little secret about winter flying. In severe cold winter weather there is always a huge, high pressure mass over the entire area, which is always subject to an inversion, meaning the temperature at ground level is much colder than it is higher up. We could not have flown in that cold weather, had it not been for it greatly warming up as height increased.
This was a known fact since WW1. In 1922 the Canadian air force got the veteran pilot, Punch Dickins, to fly all winter in the cold air of Edmonton, to learn about this high pressure area and inversion.
If the weather is forty degrees below zero, F, what might it warm up to? I have taken off at minus forty below zero and had it warm up to well above freezing at five thousand feet ASL
There is no way we could have done that winter flying, had it not been for the great high pressure area and the inversion associated with it.
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Often over the boreal it can warm 15 degrees celcius in just a few hundred feet AGL. On the ground you might have -30C and if you get to three tree heights you may have -15. As mentioned it can keep warming drastically if you keep going. Big hills will often be drastically warmer on top in the boreal in winter too during stable high pressure systems / cold snaps, something to bear in mind when choosing a winter camp.
 
Hank44 said:
Small world! I spent the labour day weekend camped out there on the east side of the lake as great beaver was crowded. Didn't even know it was named until we got back. Managed two ruffed grouse and a spruce hen. Neat, What type of work did you do in there if i may ask?
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At the time I write of, about the mid 1950s, there was no road to Great Beaver.
 
H4831 said:
Well, we've shown the clothing and personal gear carried.
Best place to get the book is from the publisher, Hancock House Publishers. The shelf price is $17.95, plus GST and they give free shipping. I like to point out that the book, Outposts and Bush Planes, was copyright in 2005, 12 years ago and is actually selling more copies now, than it did to start with. So a non-solicited book to run 12 years is a bit unusual in its self and it is actually selling more copies now than it did to start with.
Info@hancockhousepublishers.com should do it. Put in either my name, Bruce Lamb, or the name of the book, Outposts and Bushplanes.
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Ok Thanx Bruce, I'll check it out for sure. Do you remember the De haviland Otter parked beside the big hanger at the Terrace airport about 1963 ?
 
Ardent said:
I'm flying a trip into that general area day after tomorrow looks like, Bear Lake (not the PG version), north west of Bulkely House / Takla Lake. H4831 you'd probably be amused how little has changed in some ways, like the planes and some of the places, and shocked at others. Some places time stands still and others it sure changes.
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Ardent, when you are flying north, down Williston Lake, do you ever think of all the history you are flying over, right from the Peace Reach at Hudson's Hope? There was no McKenzie until it was flooded. Maybe 30 miles north of McKenzie was the heart of the route between Finlay Forks and the Nation River. The Nation was a good marker on the route, half way from Finlay Forks to where it swung east, up the Parsnip River. Lots of sand bars on the entire Parsnip, made it hard to make a safe float landing. The good part was we could follow every bend in the lower Parsnip, even if boxed in by low cloud just at tree height. Actually, that part applied to the entire Parsnip River, right to the start of the narrow south end of the upper Parsnip River, where it was very narrow, appearing not wide enough for the wings of the air craft, until one was nearly down.
Tremendous history about old Finlay Forks. Roy MacDougall ran the Finlay Forks trading post for 26 years. He was a walking history on the north and lived at the post with his wife, Marge and they had a grand daughter who spent every summer with them at old Finlay Forks. She was also Marge; big Marge and little Marge. Finlay forks, through the McDougal's, was also the northern headquarters for the great Moccasin Telegraph of the area. I was always proud of the fact that I was fully indoctrinated in the famous news gathering operation of the north. I heard everything there was to hear about anybody in the north and sometimes I could advance the news at flying speed, instead of river boat speed or back pack speed.
When I was writing my book, Outposts and Bush Planes, (Hancock House Publishers) and Little Marge was still living, I wanted to have my considerable amount of writing about Finlay Forks checked for accuracy, so I called a phone number in Penticton, BC and a woman's voice answered. I said I was looking for Little Marge of old Finlay Forks. The voice answered, "Well you've got me," and without hesitation said how did you find me? I just said two words, "Moccasin telegraph."
Her quick response was, "everybody knows everybody!" I should have known. Little Marge then made two trips to our house in Salmon Arm bringing a large envelope full of her pictures and that is where the pictures came from that are shown in my book and marked, "Photo, Marge Donovan collection."

I'll edit this again, Feb. 10, to say that through a series of events, I now have the largest available number of pictures, from all the pictures that once belonged to the MacDougall's and the Finlay Forks trading post. This is how it happened. Little Marge died and her younger sister, who was too young to know anything about it, got the pictures and immediately gave them to the provincial library. That library, like almost every other large library, burries such material so deeply in some far off corner of the library, that no one ever seems to find them again!
A major problem is, of course, that there are so many people in the pictures that I have no idea who they are.
And I don't know a single living soul, who I could ask for help in identifying them.
Of course, there is quite a number of people in the pictures that I do recognize.

Bruce Lamb
 
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My great uncle was river hog in the crooked/parsnip/finlay areas between the wars, Ive always found the history fascinating myself as well. If I find a way to scan it i have an old picture of him poling there boat up some rapids somewhere along the finlay. Seeing the amount of fuel and crap loaded into those boats with them tiny engines is unreal, perhaps you even used some of it! Ive always been quite interested in the local history, your book sounds right up my alley I will pick myself up a copy.
 
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Hank44 said:
My great uncle was river hog in the crooked/parsnip/finlay areas between the wars, Ive always found the history fascinating myself as well. If I find a way to scan it i have an old picture of him poling there boat up some rapids somewhere along the finlay. Seeing the amount of fuel and crap loaded into those boats with them tiny engines is unreal, perhaps you even used some of it! Ive always been quite interested in the local history, your book sounds right up my alley I will pick myself up a copy.
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Hank, what was your great uncles name? If you don't want to tell it in public, then just send me a private message. I probably knew, or knew of him.


Bruce Lamb
 
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The white churches the Catholic people had all over the north.

I may have mentioned it before, but the many white churches all over the north was a great part of the history of northern BC, as well as much of all of northern Canada. They were always built on water ways, as that was the transportation medium of the early north. They were great markers for VFR flying, as especially in the summer they really stood out and helped make visual flying easier.
The one on the south end of Babine Lake really stood out and could be seen from a great distance.
 
Gatehouse said:
Where the heck have you been? Hope all is well. :)
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Thanks for that, Clark. I'm in excellent health, in spite of father time going in high gear. A major downer was after 62 years or so, of happy marriage, my wife had to go into a senior's home, to be properly looked after. I'm still active in the Fish and Game Club and still do a reasonable amount of shooting. About three years ago I was one of three old time members who were given life memberships for our work in years past for the Club, including my writing of the 50th anniversary of the club, which can be seen at, "Salmon Arm Fish and Game Club.
For keeping active, I enjoy writing. My book, "Out Posts and Bush Planes", published by Hancock House Book Publishers, has been copy write for twelve years and actually selling more copies now than it ever did. I have a second book, also being published by Hancock House, which should very soon be on the market and is basically about Saskatchewan, bush homestead days of the 1930's.
Guess who the ten year old character in the story is!
Bruce
 
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