A Stay at Bear Lake Lodge

January 26th and 27th (Sunday and Monday)

We had a relaxing morning, and did a nice long Spanish session. At around noon, Kelly, the logging camp manager, showed up for a visit. We showed him our home, and chatted over a cup of tea. After he had left we got ready to head over to his place, as he had invited us over for dinner and to spend the night.  Since we did not want to make the trip home in our tender after dark it worked out well for us to spend the night there. We gathered up some more laundry to do, as he had suggested that we do as much as we wanted.  He understood that one of the challenges of living on a sailboat, especially in the winter, was laundry. 

 Bear Lake Lodge

When we arrived at the floating camp we all hopped into the camp's aluminum workboat, and went out into Cousins Inlet to get a log. Kelly had seen it out from the camp on his way home from our place, and he suggested that we go and retrieve it. Although he could tell from looking at it that it had been floating for some time, as it had been eaten by sea worms, he thought that it might still be worth some money, and that we might be able to get some cash for it as salvage.  As it turned out, after doing some research in the evening, one needs a license in order to get money for salvaged logs, but at least we removed the drifting hazard from the channel.

The log had drifted out on the ebbing tide, and we caught up to it as it was entering Dean Channel. It still had a metal chain and ring on it, from when it had been part of a boom, so we tied a line to it and towed it back to the camp where we secured it to part of their floating breakwater. It was fun going out looking for the log, and then securing it and bringing it back. I can see why people enjoy having a log salvaging license, and making some money that way.  

Jason and I headed ashore to the creek that flows out where the camp is secured.  Part of the lodge's water comes from this creek, but over the winter the water had stopped flowing. Kelly requested that we go up and have a look at the top end of the hose to see if we could figure out why their water supply had stopped. Although the logging camp had a great workboat, they did not have a good boat for getting them ashore, so our tender was perfect for that. 

We landed and tied up Kiki, and headed up the creek happily bushwhacking our way up. There was still quite a bit of ice in areas of the creek, but surprisingly it was not very slippery, because of all of the sand and gravel that was frozen into the ice.  

When we reached the top of their pipe, approximately 500’ up the creek, we found that they had used a bucket to stick the end of the pipe into and to keep it under water.  The bucket had become full of rocks, gravel, and sand, and so it was not surprising that no water was flowing. We emptied out the bucket, but we were not optimistic that this would fix the issue; we figured that the hose had probably become plugged along the way.  

Back down at the ocean we disconnected a hose barb-to-hose barb joining connection, and found that no water was flowing. We tried sucking from the bottom end, but clearly the blockage was too stubborn for that. We went back up to the top, and tried using Kiki’s hand bilge pump to force water into the pipe, but to no avail.  
As it was getting dark we made our way back down, and paid attention to all of the pipe joins that there were along the way. Unfortunately each join created a smaller diameter hole, and so created a likely place for the build-up of debris. Our guess was that the pipe was plugged at the joins, and that we would have to come back up tomorrow to deal with each one separately. Hopefully that would work. 

On our way back down the creek, we went and looked at an old cabin that was beside the creek. 

There were several of these old buildings around Wallace Bay, and they were all falling apart.

According to Kelly, these buildings used to be brothels that used to service Ocean Falls when it was a young town just getting started with the dam and the sawmill. 

Inside the Bear Lake Lodge we hung our wet rain gear in their dry room, and wished that that was something that our sailboat could have. The room had a constant, heated fan blowing in, and lots of room for hanging wet clothing in front of it. We then enjoyed a lovely, hot shower to warm up, before going to the kitchen to help Kelly with dinner. 

He prepared quite a feast for us; steak, prawns, potatoes, mushrooms, and broccoli, with garlic bread. We had a lovely evening of chitchatting and storytelling, and then went to bed after a bowl of “Island Farms Moose Tracks” ice cream.  

All of the bedrooms were set up for single people, so they all had single beds. It was the smallest bed that Jason and I had ever shared, but we actually found it quite comfortable, as long as we both slept on our same sides. We slept quite well.  

When I got up the following morning I enjoyed a morning shower, and when we went downstairs Kelly already had the kitchen smelling of breakfast. He made us a delicious smoothie, but he had also prepared bacon and hash browns, and he cooked us eggs to order. It was just like being at a hotel and restaurant.  

After breakfast, Jason and I headed back up the creek, this time equipped with a wire fish to help us clear the sections of hose. We started at the top, and over the next few hours we disassembled each of the hose barb connections, ran the wire fish up and down until we got water flow, and then put the connections back together. Unfortunately the connections were not designed for easy disassembly, and we had to cut each one out, cut off the pieces of hose that were already on the hose barbs, and then put them back together. We did all of this with the saw on my multi-tool, because it had a thick blade which made the removal of the old pieces easier, because it made a thick cut in the hose. It was a time-consuming process, but we were right that the blockages were mainly at the connections; although there were a few that were further along the line and harder to unplug.  
By the time we got back down to the ocean, we had water flowing out of our last connection. We reconnected it, and headed back to the lodge. Pulling the disconnected end out of the water, we were happy to find flowing water with good pressure. Yay. Once it was all hooked back up, and the filter was installed, we went inside to get dry and to have some lunch. We had some delicious toasted bacon, lettuce, tomato, and cheese sandwiches with some leftover turkey-noodle soup. Yummy. 

In the afternoon, we said goodbye to Kelly and headed home, so that we would get home before the wind picked up too much. When we got home it felt like we had been away at a hotel overnight.