Bison bison athabascae

Since Dee and Cal are still incommunicado this evening, I am going to take another little side trip, down the Liard River again to Fort Liard and Nahanni Butte, home to the Wood Bison (Bison bison athabascae), not to be confused with the Plains Bison (Bison bison bison), the other surviving North American subspecies. The highest point of the Wood Bison is well ahead of its front legs, while the Plains Bison's highest point is directly above the front legs. The Wood Bison is also heavier, with large males weighing over 900 kilograms (2,000 lb), making it the largest terrestrial animal in North America.

In contrast to the other mammals I have written about here, the Wood Bison is threatened to the point of nearing the status of endangered. Efforts to preserve these populations have been partially successful, but encroachment threatens them as well as hybridization with plains buffalo polluting the genetic stock. Another issue is that of habitat fragmentation, which makes the observation of wood bison crossing the Liard in summer as well as winter an important one.

The Liard River

Since the Verizon service seems to have disappeared for a few days, we don't know for certain, but by now Dee and Cal should have crossed the Liard River via the famous Liard Suspension Bridge (mile 496) in the Hot Springs vicinity. Had they stopped there, rented a canoe, and floated east on the Liard, they would have been in for the ride of their lives. The Grand Canyon of the Liard is a 20-mile stretch of Class IV and higher rapids. After descending into the foothills the river levels out and is joined by the Fort Nelson River on its way to the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories and on to the Arctic Ocean.

Instead of canoeing east, however, the trikers will have continued west on the Alaska Highway, which follows the Liard River for considerable distance (past the mouth of the Kechika River on the other side, for example). Eventually they will cross the Liard again as it swings north into the Yukon in the northern end of the Rocky Mountain Trench. The source of the river is the Saint Cyr Range of the Pelly Mountains. The name "Liard" comes from the French word for Eastern Cottonwood, which grow in abundance along many sections of the river. Because of the abundance of wildlife, the Liard River Valley and the surrounding area vies for the title of Serengeti of North America.

The Kechika River

Being just a vicarious triker, I am free to explore places inaccessible to Dee and Cal. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be with them, but since I'm not, I will take a little side trip. The Kechika River will not make it to our "river list" because the trikers will neither cross it nor follow it, but it deserves a blog entry nonetheless because: (1) it flows into the Liard River, which the trikers will cross (and then follow) soon, (2) most of its course is within the Rocky Mountain Trench, which I've already written about, and (3) its pristine watershed is home to moose, caribou, stone sheep, grizzly and black bear, timber wolf, (which we have encountered before) as well as elk and mountain goat.

In the image here, I have redrawn the Alaska Highway in red to make it more visible. The green balloon is where Dee and Cal stayed last night. The Kechica River rises near the lower center of the image and flows northwest before curving toward the Liard, which it joins at the Alaska Highway. You can click on the image to make it larger, or if you go to the Google map, you can zoom in and out as you wish.

What makes this river valley especially special are "the wildlife populations and ecosystems which flourish around and along the river. ... Not only is the river corridor pristine, but the valley as a whole remains largely free from roads, leaving the Kechika River as the largest remaining undisturbed watershed in British Columbia." I would love to quote the entire website, but you owe it to yourself to follow the link above. Also read about the Denetiah Provincial Park.

Rangifer tarandus caribou

The Woodland Caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) are threatened by habitat encroachment in Alberta and British Columia. They are not considered "endangered" because the species, Rangifer tarandus, is still widespread throughout the northern Holartic. But woodland and mountain caribou do not migrate over vast distances the way their northern cousins do, which makes them particularly dependent on their regional habitat. (See raysweb.net.)

"Mountain caribou are an 'ecotype' of woodland caribou that inhabit the deep snowbelt regions of the interior rainforest of British Columbia and parts of three US states. Their large hooves act as snowshoes that allow them to spend winters high in the subalpine and alpine forests, where snowpacks can reach depths up to four meters. The deep snows act as a barrier to predators, and as a platform that allows the caribou to reach their winter food source, lichens that grow on old-growth trees. Mountain caribou are the only member of the deer family to move to higher elevations in winter." mountaincaribou.org

"The main threats to caribou are habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation. Industrial logging has removed much of the critical old-growth forest that caribou need for food and for cover from predators like wolves and cougars. After old forests are logged, young shrubs and trees grow. Moose, deer and elk move in, attracted by the new growth. Their presence in turn supports more predators which incidentally and unsustainably prey on caribou. Before their habitat was fragmented by logging and other developments caribou were largely able to avoid predation through their unusual seasonal movements and by spreading themselves throughout extensive old-growth forests."

Caribou are unique in the deer family in that both females and males grow antlers. Caribou are larger than deer and smaller than elk, with males weighing approximately 175 kg (350-400 lb). Their hollow fur insulates them through the long mountain winters.

Sixty-Day Update

Dee and Cal have now been en route to Alaska for sixty days. Just for fun, I compared the first thirty days with the second thirty.

Days en route:	30	30
Days on road:	22	24
Rides 10-29 miles:	2	1
Rides 30-49 miles:	6	9
Rides 50-69 miles:	12	8
Rides 70-89 miles:	2	3
Rides 90-129 miles:	0	3
Miles total:	1123	1501
Miles/day mean:	37	50
Miles/ride mean:	51	63
Miles/ride median:	54	55

The three rides of over 90 miles is amazing, but more impressive, in my view, is the riding consistency. Out of the first 30 days, 22 were on the road (73%), 14 of which (64%) were rides of over 50 miles. Out of the second 30 days, 24 were on the road (80%), 14 of which (58%) were rides of over 50 miles. That is consistency. Since they are ahead of schedule, this is a great time to adopt a "slow down and enjoy" program.

(The "mean" is the average distance per day or per ride. The "median" is where half the rides were less than and half more than this distance. In the first 30 days, the outliers were on the low end, so the mean was less than the median. In the second 30, the outliers were on the high end, so the mean was greater than the median.)

The Rocky Mountain Trench

On the High Plains and into the Canadian prairie, the Terrain View of the map has, with notable exceptions, been mostly monotonous. Not so now. I have been watching the terrain ahead as Dee and Cal approach the Northern Rockies, and for a few days now I have noticed a feature that seems highly unusual, a deep valley in a perfectly straight line for hundreds of miles, the orientation of which is an almost uniform 150/330 degree geographic north vector. Today I discovered that this is the Rocky Mountain Trench, primarily the result of faulting (with minimal glacial carving). What you see in the image above is the northern half of the Trench, beginning at the Yukon/B.C. border. It continues at just a slightly different angle to the southeast all the way to Montana.

For orientation, Fort Nelson is in middle of the upper right quadrant (at the confluence of three rivers). The town of Watson Lake would be at the top edge (or barely above it) and toward the left. Prince George would be just off the bottom edge and toward the right. The large lake in the middle of the Trench is Lake Williston on the Peace River. To the northwest, the Tintina Trench continues on through the Yukon to Alaska.

The mountains east of the Trench are the Rocky Mountains, but to the west of it are the Cassiar Mountains in the north and the Omineca Mountains a little further south. We will check out the Trench again when the trikers come back through it a little further south on their way home.

Ovus dalli stonei

Enough about predators for now, although I'd also like to write about cougars and black bears sometime. Another North American mammal that Dee and Cal might see in this region is the Thinhorn Sheep (Ovus dalli), not to be confused with Bighorn Sheep (Ovus canadensis). As the name suggests, the horns of this species are thinner than those of the Bighorn Sheep. They also have a more open curl, which some consider more elegant. Two races of Thinhorn Sheep call British Columbia home. The white Dall's Sheep is found in the Yukon and in the extreme northwestern corner of B.C. The darker Stone's Sheep is more widespread, being found in much of the region the trikers are in now, especially at Muncho Lake.

Living as they do in some of the most remote wilderness in British Columbia, both Dall's and Stone's Sheep have not suffered seriously from the encroachment of human activities. There are healthy populations of both, and that is perhaps a solid lesson in the importance of maintaining large tracts of intact habitat.