Spring Pack Trips are a Great Nature Connection
Pack Trips
In this newsletter, we want to focus on your nature connection with our first pack trips of the season and how you can make the most of a pack trip opportunity while investing in your personal development and contributing to the conservation of the Chilcotin Ark
Nature Connection
With the bears now waking up from their hibernation, it’s a good time to think about how to identify a grizzly and black bear – especially if you’re planning on spending anytime in bear country this season. Size and colour aren’t reliable methods – a black bear can be brown, blonde or cinnamon, a young grizzly is smaller than a mature black bear. So what do you look for? Tracks are a good indicator – the toes of a grizzly bear are in a straight line, whereas those of a black bear curl around the pad. Grizzlies have much longer claws so they will be out in front of the pad, a black bear’s will show up close to the toe prints. Grizzly bears have a distinctive shoulder hump that comes from digging for food. They also have “grizzled” hair (which is how they get their name), while black bears have a smooth and shiny coat. Black bears have larger, more pointed ears than a grizzly’s small round ears. But a bigger black bear’s ears are less prominent than those of a small black bear. There are lots of online quizzes to test your knowledge about the difference between black and grizzly bears – try this one!
First Pack Trips of the Season
Spring came a few weeks late this year, that didn’t stop two horse pack trips riding out to our lowest elevation camp and riding up to the wildflower meadows to see spring beauty (wild potatoes) and the first balsam root flowers. Although it was still a little early for many of the colourful wildflowers and deep snow made the journey more difficult, these early season pack trips give our guests great opportunities to see bears just waking up from hibernation and follow their tracks up the mountain. Whatever time of year you join us for a pack trip, there is something special to see. May is a great opportunity to see grizzly and black bears. June brings the red, blue, yellow and white wildflowers in full bloom. July and August is time to ride the alpine mountain tops and look for mountain goats or California Bighorn sheep.
Check out our pack trips here
Ready for a nature connection?
Complete the Wilderness Readiness Survey to help you gain clarity on your interests, goals and purpose for your wilderness experience. Then, sign up for the horse or hiking pack trip that meets your interests. Pack trips run until the end of August to one of our 25 mountain camps. In September and October we offer special, high calibre trips for experienced riders – ask us for more details.
Take your stewardship to another level with our membership
Already know you love the Chilcotin Ark and want to keep coming back, year after year? Our membership packages offer you the perfect opportunity to do this. We’ve introduced our stewardship membership to you in our last three newsletters, this membership will give you access to half price mountain and ranch accommodation, ranch based wildlife tracking and conservation trips and hut based wildlife tracking and conservation pack trips for the next five years, depending on the level of membership you purchase. You will make your contribution to the conservation of the Chilcotin Ark as your membership fees will be used for stewardship activities in this internationally ecologically important area. Learn more about our packages in upcoming newsletters or check out our website.
Other ways to invest in your nature connection
Are you ready to learn new ways to connect to nature? All of our hands-on training programs and guest trips are full of opportunities to connect with nature. Our partner training website, the Wilderness Training Academy, offers programs designed around the Three Pillars of nature connection, personal development and nature conservation. Whichever program you choose, you’ll learn tangible way to connect with nature.
Find out more
Community update
Our guide school team returned from a week at camp where they put their first week of ranch-based training into practice and developed more wilderness skills. Our graduates all returned with some good experience under their belts, ready for a busy season guiding pack trips and dude ranch stays.
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Do you need some calm in this world of turmoil?
Far away from world chaos, is a place in nature known as the real Shangri-La or Utopia of Canada called the Chilcotin Ark, our real and achievable connection to nature where there is no fear in drinking water from mountain streams, breathing crisp clean mountain air, harvesting berries from the alpine valleys, catching fish in the alpine lakes and being a contributor to nature’s natural order. There’s no cell phone, no traffic, it’s off grid and self-sustainable. You can join us in the mountains of British Columbia, Canada. Join us as a guest, an intern, a community member or as a community business partner.
Our community is built on our Three Pillar philosophy of personal development, nature connection and nature conservation. These Three Pillars are how we embody environment, social and governance factors, taking responsibility for our environment, both natural and cultural. We are a culture of equals where women and men take responsibility and initiative to be leaders, guides and mentors.
You can work in this community from horse care, mechanics, office and kitchen to horse logging, sustainable forestry and conservation projects to name a few opportunities. We’re a diverse business and you can get involved in any aspect from intern to management. Take a look at our intern page on our Chilcotin Holidays website and if you’re ready to join us, take the Wilderness Readiness Survey on Trails to Empowerment’s website.
Our interns applying for their Working Holiday Visas through Experience International Canada are getting their visas in very short times – some as quickly as six weeks. So now is the time to apply for your work visa.
We look forward to being part of your next nature connection wilderness experience.
Your Chilcotin Holidays Team