Bella Coola open for Business!!

The Atnarko River at Fisheries Pool

Today Highway 20 from Bella Coola to Williams Lake  was reopened with only minor pilot delays and no detours.  We are back fully connected to the rest of the province and thankful for that.  A lot of things will become fully normal now that we've gone from no road for 17 days to a road with 3 times daily openings, back to unrestricted access. If you've got business to do in Bella Coola or people to visit, then pack your winter driving gear (tire chains mandatory) and come on in!

Who wouldn't want to visit or live here on a day like today - it felt like a warm September day and seemed completely surreal looking around the valley and seeing the stunning fall colours - even the cottonwoods are golden - contrast with the perfect blue sky and a comfortable temperature of 15 C made it easy to forget about the last month. The Atnarko River while down to a more reasonable level remains amazingly still grey and silty, completely out of character from what it normally would be in October.  A lot of silty soils and fresh fine deposits were deposited in this highly productive watershed from the silty sandy soils at the headwaters of this drainage during the Great Flood of 2010.  It may take quite a few years for it to regain it's productivity for salmon and trout if it has been seriously impacted during the last month.  Grizzly