It’s not the longest river in British Columbia - less than 30 miles from top to bottom.
Nor is it particularly large - for most of its length it’s around 100 feet wide, though it does sometimes braid into strands that can add up to many times that.
But it is - in my clearly unbiased view - one of the province’s most beautiful.
In the spring it is a fast, furious and awe-inspiring tumult bringing the melting snow gushing down from the mountains. Sometimes it carries whole trees torn up from their roots or ripped from undercut banks.
In the summer, when it hasn’t rained for a while, it turns a translucent blue.
And in the winter it reduces to a slow and modest affair, frosted at the edges by ice, its presence only betrayed by a soft tinkle of water amid huge banks of snow that seem to swaddle it.
The Lardeau - the origin of the name is unknown - is, then, a gorgeous river.
It is a rare day that I don’t count my blessings that it flows right along the edge of the 32-acre plot of wilderness I call home.
But it is also an ecological rarity, home to several unusual animals, many of them ‘indicator’ species that only exist in relatively untouched wilderness environments.
First off, and perhaps most notable among these, are the Gerrard Trout, a subspecies of rainbow trout that spend most of their life in Kootenay Lake further to the south but only spawn in the Lardeau.
They are officially the largest rainbow trout in the world, weighing in at up to 30 lbs and bringing fishermen from all over North America to try and lure them from their shadowy depths in the lake.
Then there are the Kokanee salmon, the main nutrient vector of our ecosystem. They come up the river every September and October. It is these fish that draw in the grizzly bears intent on late season feeding.
In a good year - and this past autumn was such a year - we have more than 100,000 red salmon in the river, all on the final epic quest of their life: to find a mate, and then die.
So seminal is the salmon to our ecosystem that the size of the run is the biggest single factor affecting the growth of the trees in our river corridor in any given year.
There are other animals too that thrive in our valley and are little to be found in less pristine environments. One is the American dipper, our only aquatic songbird.
The dipper may be drab of plumage and visually less interesting than some of its showy neighbours - the magnificent bald eagle and the pied belted kingfisher - but it is uniquely adapted to its environment.
Living off fish eggs and other riverine morsels it has such incredible water-proofing that it can run along under the water in search of its dinner.
But perhaps most awe-inspiring of all is the wolverine, one of Canada’s most elusive animals. It is rare for even a local to catch a glimpse of these unusual members of the weasel family.
Indeed in 20 years of walking in the wilderness and the mountains I have only once spied a wolverine in the flesh.
But I digress. It was not my intention to wax lyrical on the riparian fauna of the valley. I wanted to talk about the Lardeau itself.
Every autumn season - which we run through the month of October - we offer our guests a rafting trip down our river.
Sometimes in the sun, sometimes in the rain, and (only once) in the snow, we take them on a 12-mile float that lasts between two and three hours.
But, of course, in order to raft you need water. And this year, after weeks and weeks of sunny days, there just wasn’t much.
When I returned to Canada after a month or two in Europe at the end of August things were still looking fairly good. After two hot years there had been cooler temperatures and intermittent showers throughout the summer.
The river, if not exactly flowing vigorously, had sufficient reserves. But then, in early September, the weather Gods turned the taps off and the sun came out.
One day, two days, three days. One week, two weeks, three weeks. And still no rain. By the end of the month the river was lower than ever.
I looked up the water level online - there is an official monitoring station near the lake downstream - to make sure I was not imagining it. Alarmingly the reading was the lowest in 20 years for the season.
I thought through the options.
I could cancel rafting altogether - but then I thought of all the disappointed guests, some of who would have travelled half way round the world.
Of course there would still be the early morning walks, the grizzly bears and the animal tracking sessions not to mention the glorious meals and the sauna and hot tub.
But still.
Desperate measures, then, were called for. The first thing I did was hire an additional rafting guide, a strong young man called Kyle who had rafted some of BC’s most remote rivers and came highly recommended.
If I was going to bump and scrape my way down the river - having to hop out and heave four (sometimes sturdy) guests and 160 lbs of raft off the rocks - I wanted to share the punishment with someone.
The next task was to clear away any obstacles, both logs that had fallen across the river and large rocks which stuck out of the shallows like worn teeth blocking our passage.
For that I had a secret weapon - Tambet the Estonian - who had arrived with my brother-in-law Janek (Kristin’s brother) only a week or so earlier to take in the delights of the valley.
Tambet was not only skilled and capable with chainsaw, pry bar and shovel but he was imbued with his nation’s legendary work ethic. All he asked for in return was a few cans of ale to keep him company as he laboured.
And so, one day, I set off with Kyle, Tambet, a chainsaw, and a variety of metal bars, wedges and axes.
And steadily we beat a path down the slow-flowing river. When we came to a particularly difficult obstacle I fussed around on the sidelines as the two men puffed and panted.
Tambet and Kyle clearing rocks in the river. I held the raft.
It’s a good thing we made that run. Without it the rafting season would have been a giant aquatic flop. But, in the end, everything worked out - just.
We only had to cancel one rafting trip - after some especially inclement weather at the end of October threatened to turn a nice day out into a mass-hypothermia event.
True, once or twice we had to improvise, putting the raft into the river a little lower than usual - or taking it out a little higher.
But somehow we prevailed. And after a trip to the chiropractor my no-longer-young body is back to as-good-as-it-will-ever-be.
A small twinge in the knee and a tight shoulder. But that is a small price to pay for the hours I get to spend each autumn floating amid the salmon and the eagles spotting for bears.
NOTES
We are now booking our spring & autumn bear-viewing holidays for next year. Some spots are full but I still have four-night holidays available arriving on: May 27, June 1, June 7, Oct 3, Oct 7, Oct 11, Oct 15, Oct 19 and Oct 23. Drop me an email on julius@wildbearlodge.ca if you would like more details.
So wonderful to read this article. It’s almost like being there - not wuite, I know. Please keep writing❤️❤️Patricia and Liz, your Winnipeg friends:)
Wouldn't it be great to walk and run along on the bottom of a nice deep river like a Dipper!
Thanks for your Tales from the Riverbank, Julius.