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Bella Coola is a town of about 900 people located at the head of the North Bentinck Arm about 100kms from the outer Pacific in the Bella Coola Valley that extends to the East to the start of the Tweedsmuir Park. It was in this valley that Alexander Mackenzie encountered the Kwakiutl Indians a linguistically isolated group of Salishian Indians in 1793 when he was trying to make contact with fur traders on the Pacific Coast. Today this group make up about 60% of the town. The town is very quiet with very basic amenities.We started off by checking out the flood plain and then travelled up the valley through Hagensberg to the Tweedsmuir Park. Hagensberg was established by Norwegian settlers and the very pretty and well tended farmsteads make you think you are in a fjord in Norway.
On the way we saw hanging glaciers in the high mountains on either side of the valley. We entered the park about 45 minutes after leaving town and spent about 5 hours scouring the river banks for brown bears. A group of Canada Fisheries people were netting salmon, killing the females and extracting their eggs to be fertisiled with male sperm and then redeposited in streams for restocking. At 4pm a bear viewing site is opened by Parks Canada where you can view bears from the safety of a river bank protected by an electric enclosure and a warden with spray, a hooter and a gun. this where we saw three bears meandering up stream. It was very rewarding to see these so close and as they ambled off we thought that was it. We decided to go back home since it was getting late but on the way spotted a sow with two babies feasting on salmon..............luckily we were the only ones on the river bank and I got some great video of this.
That was very exciting and we got back to the hotel and grabbed a bite at the Bella Coola Inn (the only restaurant in town!!).
Tomorrow it's off to Nimpo Lake up "The Hill."
Woof!
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