Outside of a narrow littoral that benefits from the moderating influence of the Pacific Ocean’s thermal mass, northern British Columbia has a brutal climate. Upon leaving Bella Coola and driving east on Highway 20, the interior climate of British Columbia comes suddenly. The Chilcotin mountain range looms up, and without realizing it, you are entering a radically different climate zone. Nighttime temperatures during winter can reach a low of negative twenty-seven degrees Celsius. And daytime highs average right around freezing in January. The cool summers and cold winters in this region, classified as the “Montane Spruce Zone,” result largely from its position in the rain shadow of the Coast Mountains and the high elevations. The low precipitation, dry air, and clear skies at night often create very frigid overnight temperatures.
The McGregor ranch was at a northern latitude where there were sixteen and a half hours of daylight at the summer solstice but only seven and a half hours at the winter solstice. The ranch was fairly close to the tiny hamlet of Anahim Lake, but the nearest good shopping and the nearest freight terminal were eighty-seven miles away in Bella Coola. To anyone outside the region, they used the shorthand of saying that their ranch was “near Bella Coola” because it took too long to explain that they were in the middle of nowhere. The ranch had 720 deeded acres with 410 acres of that in hay ground. (More than half of that had been muskeg swamp when the property was first staked in the 1930s, and then it had to be laboriously drained and cleared, originally with ditches dug by hand.) The property was off the grid, with a forty-two-year-old Lister diesel generator, and fourteen photovoltaic panels—which were useful for only nine months of each year.
The ranch house had been built in 1975, replacing the property’s original homestead cabin. The house was 2,720 square feet, with four bedrooms. There was also a machine shop/shed, two large hay barns, a calving shed, an infrequently used guest cabin, and several corrals. In recent years, their income had come mainly from selling hay rather than cattle. Some of their hay was trucked to Bella Coola and then loaded on barges and shipped as far away as the Aleutian Islands.
The McGregors heated the ranch house with firewood. There was also an oil-fired backup heater that they used mainly when they had to be away from the ranch house in winter, to keep the pipes from freezing. The big Lister generator was also run on home heating oil, since they found that it burned the heating fuel just as well as diesel and was often less expensive. Their diesel and heating-oil fuel tanks had a combined volume of 2,600 gallons, and they were nearly full when the Crunch occurred. They also had a 250-gallon-capacity tank of unleaded gasoline, but it had only 180 gallons in it when Phil arrived.
A lot of the roads were unmarked, so driving directions were often based on highway kilometer markers. Typical directions would begin with something like: “You take the road going north from Marker 37…” The off-highway road conditions ranged from fair to horrendous, with some notorious mud bogs in the spring and early summer. Surprisingly, some ranches were easier to access in the midwinter months, when the lakes and rivers were frozen, turning them into “snow machine” highways. Winter hospitality was legendary in the region. Because of the short daylight hours and long driving distances, a visit to another ranch was usually at least an overnight stay and might span a full week.
Seven miles from the ranch was the resort town of Anahim Lake, which had only two stores. One was called the Trading Store, but it wasn’t much more than a glorified gas station minimart. The other was McLean Trading, which was a combination grocery store, hardware store, dry goods store, and butcher shop. They also sold fishing tackle and hunting licenses. The store had been run continuously since it was established by the Christensen family in 1898—originally in a much smaller building. At the time of the Crunch, it was three thousand square feet. The McLean family was celebrated for their willingness to “order in” just about anything that their customers requested, which ranged from books and canned ghee to canoes and snowmobiles. They generously made their loading dock available for locals to take delivery on an amazing assortment of trucked-in merchandise—everything from pianos to navy surplus generators, even if they hadn’t been ordered through the store.
For most Anahim Lake locals, “going shopping” meant either a nearly two-hour drive (in good weather) west to the department stores in Bella Coola (population 625) or a three-hour drive southeast to Williams Lake (population 11,000).
In Bella Coola there was a Sears store, Moore’s Organic Market and Nursery, Tru Hardware, the Alexander MacKenzie Comemorative Pharmacy, and a fairly well-stocked Consumers Co-op. But the nearest HBC (Hudson’s Bay Company) and Walmart were in Williams Lake, which was a 206-mile drive from the ranch.
21
IN THE 1880s
(Translated:
Ray McGregor arrived at the ranch forty-three hours after Phil, looking exhausted. Everyone was greatly relieved to see him. After lots of hugs, Ray took off his coat and draped it over the porch rail, revealing his holstered pistol.
Alan chided his son, “I thought you still had your grandfather’s pistol buried in a PVC pipe out next to the scrap-metal pile.”
“I did, Dad, but I moved it a couple of years ago to a cache just north of the U.S. border. I just didn’t tell you and Mom. I didn’t want you fretting about it.”
“Okay. No worries, son. Just glad to see you got back here safely.”
The Crunch presented some immediate challenges for the McGregor ranch. Winter was fast approaching as the days grew shorter. Phil was amazed at how quickly the weather turned bitterly cold in the Chilcotins. After being acclimated to Seattle’s fairly temperate drizzle, he found that the dry cold in the interior of British Columbia came as a shock. Nighttime lows in late October were around ten degrees Fahrenheit. By early November, they had their first subzero night. The Canadian radio stations reported temperatures in Celsius, so it took a while for Phil to get used to both the difference in the climate and the difference in the weather reporting.
The McGregors no longer had any prospect of being able to buy fuel. All of the gas stations in the region and even the propane distributors had recently sold out. They assumed that they wouldn’t have enough fuel to run their Lister generator twelve hours a day, as they had been accustomed to do. In fact, running it just one day a week to do laundry might be too much. Nor could they run electric stock-tank heaters. As winter set in, they began a daily ritual of breaking up ice with sledgehammers.