Pickig berries among bears and other misadventures

[Okanagan]

Having trouble posting any thread with pics or longer than a few lines.  The photo above from the end of a new logging road, too high elevation for berries yet.  Lots of bear sign when I found ripe berries down close to lake level.  Harrison lake is the big one, Harrison Hot Springs resort town at the lower end of the lake looking out to the town of Chilliwack in the Fraser River Valley.

Got locked in behind a gate when loggers quit early.  They lock public roads to keep vandals from their big machines.  Was able to phone and someone from a crew farther up the main haul road stopped and let me out on their way home for the day.  Surprisingly courteous since it was my goof, though I had talked with the crew and agreed on a time that I would come out ahead of them. 



This worked so will add a bit.

As soon as I started picking in one excellent patch, a raven started hassling some big animal forty yards uphill and kept after it for 20 minutes as it slowly traversed across the hill that far above me.  Keep picking.

On a grown over spur road, a bear had wallowed in a cool spring-fed puddle.  Huge berries this year, biggest I’ve ever seen though not quite as many as the past two years.  Bears lie down in the middle of a good clump and make a body print in the grass etc. while they eat all of the berries within reach.  They select the big berries and leave the rest, just like I do.

[FinsnFur]

What a view!
Wouldnt it be nice to plop down in a berry patch and relax while plucking berries and eating them laying on your back.

[Okanagan]

What a view!
Wouldnt it be nice to plop down in a berry patch and relax while plucking berries and eating them laying on your back.

That's livin!  I almost took a nap in the shade out there yesterday but drove home for it.

Went out again yesterday.  Stepped on a wasp nest in the ground and apparently my boot on their hole kept them from getting out till I finished picking that cluster of vines and moved on a step.  Wow!  Multiple streams zoomed up out of my footprint that had crushed a depression in some half rotten wood, all of them spiraling up counter clockwise like some WWII movie of Japanese planes swarming up to meet  an American raid.  I ran. 

Bushes higher than my head, vines, ferns, poles and sticks on the fairly steep ground all covered in moss and weeds.  I had an open bucket of berries in hand, didn't spill a one, didn't fall, got stung once on the back of my hand through the fabric back of a fingerless glove.  The stinger apparently only barely reached through the thickness of the stretch knit fabric and it didn't hurt much nor last long. 

I look silly when picking thorny blackberries:  fingerless gloves of thin leather with fabric back, knee pads, knee high gaiters, Micro Spikes on my hiking boots.  Hot sun and berries ripening so fast I may be done for the year unless I can find a pickable patch at higher elevation my next chance to go out, next week.

[JohnP]

Love the pictures and the story.  Knee high gaiters, snake proof?  I like the little lake, fishable?  Is it possible to park at the gate and walk in or is it to far?