Weaver Lake trip W F Robinson

W. Robinson

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Anyone who hasn't taken advantage of our beautiful Indian Summer and chucked the housework or the gardening for a day in the great outdoors has just no sense of values. Never one to let drudgery stand in my way, I gathered up a couple of kindred spirits on a cloudless day last week and we Set Off for Weaver Lake. We stopped for a while at the spawning channels on the Creek to admire the scarlet Sockeye intent on procreating the species, but Our goal was further up the mountain road. When I say “road”, I use the word rather lightly. It's more like a washed-out creek bed— full of rocks and huge potholes. Only a four-wheel drive or a Volkswagen would be brave enough to tackle it. We didn't have a four-wheel drive but we had the next best thing, and after a few bone-rattling miles we reached the lake. The only sign of life was a canoe up at the far end of the lake with a pair of fishermen patiently waiting for a nibble. The quiet was so intense that when one of the men coughed, it sounded like a gun-shot. The water level of the lake had receded recently, probably when the submerged pipeline was opened to allow water to be drawn off to serve the spawning  channels downstream.

Bird life at the lake was meagre, some flocks of pine siskin and black-capped chickadees, a yellow-bellied sapsucker (red-breasted) and at the lake-edge, a dipper. The latter seemed almost oblivious to our presence and bobbed in and out of the shallow water almost at our feet. Only the click of the camera shutter made him pause and consider us as possible danger. The hills to the North of the lake, denuded by logging, were ablaze with Autumn colours.

The main intent of our trip was to investigate the woods surrounding the lake to see what mushrooms we could find. The forest floor was wall-to-wall moss—brilliant greens and softer than any carpet underfoot. Mushrooms were not exactly plentiful but we did find several which were new to us. One was a cluster of beautiful lilac-coloured mushrooms, identified as Cortinarius traganus. Another was a Strange Boletus with a huge swollen base. The others. equally interesting, we have not as yet identified. Dozens of tiny delicate mushrooms dotted the moss carpet in some of the moister places. These ranged from brilliant orange to pale colourless greys.

The vine maples, birch and willows are slowly healing the scars on the mountainside. We left the quiet little lake while the sun was still on it. and braved the rocky road down to civilization again. Cars were still funneling into the Weaver Creek Spawning Channels as we passed, and crowds of people lined the banks to watch the spawning sockeye.

I hope they never fix the road to the lake. The thought of that many people heading on to crowd its silent shores is appalling. “Progress” could only bring harm to such a place as Weaver Lake.