2 and a half years ago when I was 19 years old I had the wildest and most inspiring adventure in my life. It was the summer of 2004 and me and my boss had just finished building a house in Vancouver. This meant I had a pocket full of cash and no obligation to work, I was free. For me to be in such shoes at the start of summer was the best and most optimistic feeling that I have ever known. The summer is the golden time for oppurtunity in Canada. My only future plan was that me and my buddy James had already bought train tickets to leave from Vancouver to SanDiego on route to Central America but that was for the end of October and I had 4 months to kill. I knew it was time to have an adventure but I wasnt sure what kind, I didnt want to leave the city to hike up a mountain and then be back on Monday.

Things couldn´t have worked out more perfectly for me then that my good buddy Nick Moore was graduating from an outdoor wilderness course in Squamish. To celebrate his graduation him and a companion from his course named Gustav were heading north east into the Cariboo Mountains to Canoe around the famous Bowron Lake canoe chain. I packed my backpack with everything, more than Id ever had in it before. I knew that I wasnt coming back to Vancouver after the canoe trip but rather hitchhiking solo to somewhere in BC and into a wilderness park to hike and climb. It would be my first solo backpacking trip aswell as my first experience with true and I mean true Canadian wilderness and isolation. I was about to leave on a bus to the edge of the city to hitch a ride up to Squamish when my dad offered to take me. I met them in Squamish and we packed up to leave the next morning. We loaded into Gustav´s Truck and barrelled north bound on highway 99. Shooting through familiar Whistler and then along the winding road to Pemberton. When we passed under Pemberton´s landmark the grand table topped Mt. Currie I knew that we were leaving our backyards. The Lilloeet River meandered at our right and kept on going as we left it down in the valley and began the enormous hill climb towards Duffie Lake. At the top of the hill I was now in new territory. Lands seen and explored by many but totally new to me and that was enough to make me feel as if I was an explorer bound on adventure to see and find new lands. We passed by Joffree Lakes Provincial Park and a circle of glacier clad peaks towered into the sky above us, I felt compelled to explore them and knew that soon hopefully this summer I would be back there to do so.

We left the green and glaciated mountains behind and entered an arid region at 50 degrees north that is the farthest north reach of a great dessert that bands all the way up from Mexico. The desserts around lillooet were an enjoyable and intersting change of scenery but soon we were past them into an interior lodgepole pine forest. We passed through the logging city of Quesnel and onto dirt roads passing through pratically unpopulated pine forests visited mostly only by logging companies. We were entering the foot hills of the Cariboo mountains a grand range of snowy wild peaks that lies to the west of the Rockies. The peaks are not high but the valleys are very low and incredibly wild. The reality is that high peaks with deep valleys are often as stunning as high peaks with shallow valleys. Within our last 2 hours of driving on the dirt road approaching Bowron Lake we came across 5 bears on the road. Gustav was from this area, actually his family owned the main lodge on the lake that rented canoes. He assured me this was very normal but was surprised they were all black bears and we hadn´t seen one grizzly. Grizzlys? Me and Nick were from Vancouver and had never strayed far into northern BC , neither of us had ever encountered a grizzly before. We finally arrived deep in the wilderness at his families lodge on Bowron Lake so we were very welcome and givin free access to all his familys boats.

I dont want to recount the canoe trip in great detail as this was merely the prelude to my ultimate canadian adventure but I will say what it was all about. The beauty of the Bowron Lake canoe chain is that you start from Bowron Lake in the Cariboo Mountain foothills deep in the wilderness from where you paddel along a course of 8 lakes farther and farther into the mountains connecting the lakes via portages and down rivers to eventually arrive right back where you started. Because we were three we set off with them in a canoe and me in a sea kayak and began into the wilderness. We brought no bear spray but rather knives and hatchets. We decided to bring no stove and rely on fire for cooking meals. I had an excellent tent in my backpack but Gustav was keen to bring his dads ancient canvas teepee that required rope and to 16 foot long poles to erect. We were doing it old school and this definetly added to the level of ruggedness and excitement of the trip. A feeling was starting to build in me, an incredible sensation of independance and a enormous lust for adventure.

3 lakes after the beggining we left the foothills and were below glorious snow covered mountains. Here me and Nick left Lanizi Lake where we were camping and headed for the alpine by following a creek towards some mellow slopes that were easy to acsend. Gustav warned us that here was real Grizzly country and that a couple were mauled by a grizzly here several years before. We started by bushwacking through dense pine and devils club( a horrid thorny plant that is found all over BC) until we found a trail. We followed the trail until we came a cross an enormous mound of bear shit, that of a grizzly. We had no gun nor bear spray so we carved heavy branches into spears and clubs and continued on screaming and singing to warn any bears of our prescense. We felt confident in ourselves and enjoyed the thrill believing that as long as we stayed together would be fine. No bears stopped us and so we reached the snowy alpine past the dificult bush wacking. We felt like nomads wandering across the snowy alpine with clubs and spears in hand, the views across the lake of wintery Mount Ishba was fantastic aswell as pristine Linizy Lake below. It was the middle of June but the weather was anything but summery and the mountains were still shimmering white. A cloud swept in and blasted snow on us for a few minutes as we reached a sub peak of Mt. Brian. We named our sub peak Nomad Peak and then headed down to the safety of camp via a diferent and more direct route to avoid the bear valley. It had been an incredible day and was an excellent taste of what lay ahead of me.

We finshed paddeling the last four lakes more quickly. We were right out of beer and very low on food, I could see that I had lost several pounds but more likely from the exercise than anything else. Coming up to the lodge we all felt very accomplished, after such a long stint of camping one is eager for a hot shower, a bed and a mosquito free environment. We relaxed a few days more and then I prepared to set off on my own, it was time to start my solo adventure.

I had met a lot of people in the two weeks since leaving Vancouver that knew the interior of BC very well. I had also been looking at a lot of photos in Gustav´s moms gift shop. Much as I had expected all signs for a true wilderness experience were pointing to Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. Tweedsmuir is located basically in the middle of nowhere in the heart of the Coast Mountains. Approximately 200 km due north of Vancouver but reached only by passing through Williams Lake in the interior as the coast mountains are absolutely not anywhere that you could build a road. Not that there is really anything on the coast anyway. Lund on the sunset coast is the end of the coastal highway and then after that only a few native communties and fishing resorts until hitting Bella Coola, the nearest town to Tweedsmuir Park, on the sea but 200km from the open ocean at the end of a far reaching fjord. The population in the Bella Coola Valley is around 4000 people and very few people know that it exists except for those who know that Alexander Mackenzie completed the first overland crossing of North America here in I believe 1783.

I said goodbye to Nick, Gustav, and his family and caught a ride to a small town half an hour away to where the pavement began. From there I soon caught a ride into Quesnel with a mother and daughter from there, they dropped me at a store where I bought a can of bear spray and a Gerber hunting knife. From there I lucked out and caught a ride with a young guy my age on his way to tree plant in the Chilcotin (just before Tweedsmuir) past Williams Lake. He was being driven by his nice but pissed off mother because her son missed his bus due to a late night partying. Unfortunatly she was fed up and dropped us both in the middle of nowhere once we reached the top of the Chilcotin plateau. We both sat happily watching the evening sky for atleast an hour as hardly any cars were passing buy; From here to Bella Coola is a very quiet highway and I knew hitchhiking it may be a problem with only a few cars passing in an hour sometimes.

I got dropped off below some hills just as night was falling, atlast my adventure had begun. I was thrilled but quite nervous as I hiked up into the hills to find a spot to camp near a tree where I could hang my food safe from the reach of bears. I had food for 13 rationed days and was planning to remain in the park for the duration that my food lasted visiting differrent areas of the park. My backpack was extremely heavy and lifting it to my shoulders was not easy at all. I pitched mt tent and for the first time ever crawled in to sleep alone and possibly as much as 75 km from the nearest person. The feeling was indescribable, thrilling but a tad bit frightning. I knew that cougars and bears at the least inhabited these hills so I put my knife and bearspray at the door of my tent to be ready should I need it. In the morning I was going to head into the park.

I woke up early and packed up camp, I took down my bear hang and had a light breakfast of oatmeal before heading down to the road side. I was very lucky to get picked up by a forest service worker heading to Bella Coola beacause it meant I would soon arrive in teh park and have the full day to hike up to Turner Lake. He knew the area well and when I told him where I was going he said I was crazy, "hiking up the Atnarko river without a shotgun is suicide." At this point I felt sure I would encounter a grizzly some where in the park. As we entered the park the smell of smoke hung in the air and as we neared "the hill" a dangerous descent off the chilcotin plataeu into the Bella Coola valley the smoke became very thick. I got dropped off at a picnic site down in the valley where a narrow gravel road veered off the main road. This 5 km road I wolud have to walk to get to the trail head for Turner Lake.