Back to Bronson
The battery on my Powershot G2 is no longer accepting a charge. In looking for a replacement, I wandered into Futureshop's and London Drug's websites. Both listed a replacement lithium - ion battery at well over $100. After calming from myself down from the initial shock, I decided to browse the internet even further to see if I could do better in the pricing dept, and better I found. It'll be my first purchase on Ebay, and hopefully it'll be here in a week or so. Until then however, any photos will have to come from my pda. Now, my pda, a Palm Treo 650, is a pretty neat unit, but the little camera that comes with it.....sucks.
So, flying, right..... This past weekend I took another trip up to Bronson Creek. The camp there has been quite full for the past little while so the diesel generators that supply the camp electricity have been sucking back a fair amount of dead dinosaurs. In order to replenish the diesel supply, I was to bring 34 45 gallon drums in from Bob Quinn, some 30ish miles up the river.
I left Prince George at 7:30 in the morning. Lucky for me, the forecast for Northern BC was for clear skies most of the day. A quick fuel stop in Smithers, then I was up and over the Coast Mountain range, passing by the Cambria icefields, over hwy 37A near Stewart BC, more mountains and glaciers, until I started my steep decent into Bronson. Descending down the Bronson Creek valley towards the strip I saw remnants of a once very active mining area. Way, way up in the alpine, above the tree line, was a full on exploration camp. Not just one or two wood huts like one would expect to see in the alpine, about 10 buildings that looked extremely out of place for where they were. The end of May, and they were still almost completely covered in snow. Further down the small valley was the Johnny Mountain Mine. This mine has a landing strip beside it that is about 4000' long, about 4000' up the mountain. This gold mine shut down in the mid 90's due to the high cost of operations (being in the middle of nowhere, halfway up a mountain), and the low cost of gold at the time. Most of the buildings are still there and the facility is owned by Skyline Gold Coporation. I'm not sure what they plan to do with it.
In the span of the day I flew 5 loads from Bob Quinn to Bronson Creek. Each time I flew back to Bob Quinn, the empty Caravan climbed with ease up above 5000' of mountain, direct from Bronson. However, fully loaded she didn't quite have it to climb up in time to get over the mountains, so it was down the Iskut river we went, offering a different look at the scenery.
The kind folks at Bronson offered to feed me and let me spend the night. However, hearing a rumour of rain in the forecast for the next day, I decided that, after the fuel was delivered, I would head off back to Prince George. At 17:30, I lifted off Bronson for the last time that day, up the Iskut River valley. Once I was overhead the surrounding peaks, It was a right turn on course, back over the Coast Mountains, inlets, and Glaciers, to fuel up in Smithers. I was home before daylight was out (not a hard task these days) at 2100.
