Lads Wilderness Weekend (Part II) Birkenhead Lake

Personally waking up after having had a top nights sleep (the other punters on tour having made the school boy error of not bringing an air mattress) we set about frying up some Canadian bacon. Those of you who have been to north america will know of course that bacon out here generates about a cup of fat per rasher and then shrinks to 1/10th of its original size !

Oh Joy !

Therefore you need to throw about six rashers per person into the pan to generate sufficient meat for a classic bacon butty !

By the way I won't even attempt to describe BC eggs ? Lets just say that there must be a chicken yolk training camp around here in the woods somewhere !

After loading up the F150 (5.4L) Ford Monster with our array of deck chairs and essential cooler box of beer we headed north on a blind search of something interesting.

Now obviously this is Canada and consequently it goes with out saying that there is more beauty and natural wonder than you can shake a stick at ! I cannot do justice in words to the bounty of stunning sights at every turn you stumble across out here.

One hour north of Pemberton and having consulted the girl at a tourist info shack we settled upon trying to find Birkenhead Lake. Mainly because we were advised this was one of the few non glacial lakes in the area and would not therefore kill us inside two minutes if we decided to swim in it !

So true to form after bouncing around on a 17km dirt track cut through dense forests we dramatically came out of the canopy at the end of the road to be faced with a truly idylic scene !

Birkenhead Lake has snow capped mountains on all sides, a grassy meadow at one end complete with sandy beach and rather bloody handily and conveniently a couple of glacial streams running into it that kept our beer ice cold for this super hot day !

Oh yeah did I mention it was around 28C that day !

Not wanting to tire ourselves out of course we settled into an afternoon of lounging on the beach taking occaisional dips swimming out to the floating barge and keeping cool with our supply of Heineken.

At this point Richard armed with $15 Walmart fishing rod under his arm announced that he was off to catch us dinner and promptly strided off to find a quiet perch on the banks of the lake !

Ahem ! mmmm ? Yes ! ........ one hour later Rich reappears with nothing under his arm but said $15 rod to anounce that the lake is indeed in his opinion fishless ! The lack out bountiful catch had nothing of course to do with his lack of fishing expertise and cheapo equipment that last looked like it had been used to hook ducks at the fair !

So much fresh air could only lead to a grumbling stomach so before the bears came out to snack on the pasty white english boys on display we mounted up into the gas gusslers and headed back down to our base camp at Nairn Falls.

Once there the fire pit was cranked up again and a hit of steak butties was fried up by chef (Rich) who is showing remarkable domesticity under tutiledge from the wife !

One seriously top day indeed - my only troubling thought being that a place of such beauty could be found by a plastic scouser and named in honour of one of the most truly ugly places on the planet !