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CHRIS' PHOTO JOURNAL
Flood photojournals
- September 27th 10, Part 1
- September 27th 10, Part 2
- September 28th 10
- September 29th 10
- October 8th 10
- October 10th 10
- October 12th 10
Highway 20 floods
8th October, 2010
The bypass round the McClinchy washouts opened on Friday 1st October. I needed a brake job so there was no point in going to town until after the weekend. It was taking 1 and a half to two hours to go through the bypass; because of the heavy machinery working everywhere, we needed a pilot car. They were leaving every two hours. I wanted to be in Williams Lake as early as possible, so I arrived at the barrier at 6:00am.
The road was very dusty and soft in places, but not too bad.
It was weird seeing enormous machines looming out of the dark.
As we reached the eastern end, daylight emerged.
The bypass successfully moved traffic from Anahim to Williams Lake, but it went nowhere near my winter place.
However, now I had another three weeks' supplies.
The Wednesday was spent organizing all my gear,
and on Thursday 7th we loaded my two dogs and my friends' two dogs
into the back of a heavy 4 x 4 pickup in the hopes that we could find a back route home.
We had been told about these back routes by mushroom pickers (mostly first nations people)
but some said one thing, some another. All said I would never get my van in there.
Aileen is a local woman who works as a fencer and a logger
when she is not operating a small ranch with her partner.
We tried every bush road in the area. Some were quite wide but full of windfalls.
Some became very narrow and hard to find.
(Yes, Aileen is actually standing on the road.)
But all the first ones ended in logging blocks or petered out into swamps.
Our next attempt was from a road that branched off about 2/3 of the way along the bypass,
so once again we lined up at the barrier and endured the dust.
At first the turnoff was not too bad, but then it became extremely steep and narrow.
However, there were fresh quad tracks to lead us on.
It branched in all directions and got very rough. We steered downhill and hoped for the best.
At the last, we had to go through a spruce bog.
But I finally made it home.
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