1949 Beaver - Hunlen Falls

Nimpo Lake, 22nd September 2009

1949 Beaver

Another beautiful day in paradise and not a cloud in the sky greeted us this morning and we decide to go flying. We go up to the office and order a latte and a one hour flight of Hunlen Falls and the Monarch Ice field.

We meet the pilot "Sid" at the dock 20 minutes later, a nice young man.

The plane we board was a 1949 Beaver, made in England. The motor is Canadian made 450 hp, 9 cylinder Pratt & Whitney and it is pretty loud as it takes of. Actually you have to have ear plugs on the whole time.

 

This old plane just fly like a dream, with just Liz, me and the pilot, only 70% throttle is needed to takes off the lake. The production of Beavers ceased in 1967. A total of 1,657 DHC-2 Beavers had been built at that time. The Beaver was designed for flight in rugged and remote areas of the world. Its short takeoff and landing capability made it ideal for areas normally only accessible by canoe or foot.

Take off is as smooth as can be and we are headed for Hunlen Fall located in the southern part of Tweedsmuir Park.

Hunlen Fall is the 3rd highest water fall in Canada, dropping more then 1000 feet from Turner Lake in to Lonesome Lake. The fall is only accessible by foot, 6.5 hr hike in Grizzly Country or by float plane, we thought float plane would be a good idea after seeing the Grizzly bear move yesterday.

Turner lake is also know from the "Turner Lake Paddling Rout" a canoe route encompassing Turner Lake, Cutthroat Lake, Vista Lake, Junker Lake and Wildgeon Lake. The view is just spectacular. See our video below

After circling the Hunlen fall a few times shooting 257 pictures :)

we check in with Liz, she gives us the thumbs up and we are flying to the Monarch Ice fields and Monarch Mountain at 3533 m or 11,000 feet give or take.

The Monarch Ice fields are outside Tweedsmuir park to the south west. I'm not sure how many thousands of hectares the ice fields cover but it totally blew us away, it is massive.

 

From there we can see further to the south east, another even larger Glacier, the Kunaklini Glacier that is about twice as large as the Monarch Ice fields. Further to the south east is the Franklin Glacier and to the south east of it is the Homatbko Ice fields.

In the Franklin Glacier is the highest mountain in BC (where the whole mountain is in BC) Mt. Waddington at 4016 meters or around 13,000 feet. As we turn back toward Nimpo Lake the wind comes up a bit and we get bounced around pretty good. Once we are out of the high mountains and back over the plateau it smooths out, we fly over Charlotte lake, a very large lake and then in for a smooth landing at Nimpo Lake. What a fantastic flight. Don't miss it if you are out this way or anyway close.

The rest of the day we hanged around the camp ground, cooked up the rainbow trout for lunch, poached in tinfoil on the BBQ, stuffed with onions, lemon, tarragon, salt and pepper.

Added some water and white wine for poaching. It was fantastic. We later hanged around and talked to all the other campers, had an ice cream, and watched the sunset.

Tomorrow, depending weather we might stay another day or head to ????? Have to check the weather and we'll let you know.

Hugs and Love,

Anders and Liz