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Chasing Wild: Journey Into the Sacred Headwaters
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This title expires October 31st, 2027
Subject(s): Canadian Social Studies, Canadian World Studies, Environmental Studies, First Nations Studies, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous Peoples, Science
Grade Level: 6 - 8, 9 - 12, Post Secondary, Adult
Subject(s): Canadian Social Studies, Canadian World Studies, Environmental Studies, First Nations Studies, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous Peoples, Science
Grade Level: 6 - 8, 9 - 12, Post Secondary, Adult
Three friends set off on a 400km bike packing and packraft expedition through the heart of the sacred headwaters in northwestern British Columbia, birthplace of three critical salmon rivers, and home to the Tahltan people. In the wake of the devastating Mount Polley Mine disaster, the team’s goal is to understand what is at stake as a wave of new mines are developed across this remote corner of the province. Their journey offers an exciting and sobering window into this wild landscape as they pedal through vast boreal forest, paddle frigid whitewater, battle monster trout, outrun a grizzly, learn about the Tahltan’s fight to protect their homeland, and glimpse inside a massive open pit mine.
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Running Time: 13:00 Country of Origin: United States Captions:  |
Producer: Wild Confluence Media Copyright Date: 2017 Language: English |
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Chasing Wild: Journey Into the Sacred Headwaters 13:00
Three friends set off on a 400 km bike packing and packraft...
TRANSCRIPT
Close- [CHOPPER ENGINE]
- The catastrophic failure of the dam at BC's Mount Polley Mine sent millions of cubic meters of silt, muck, and hard metals into a sensitive salmon spawning area.
- At a packed community meeting, the company said it takes full responsibility but it doesn't know why it happened.
- Experts called Mount Polley one of the worst environmental disasters in modern Canadian history. Basically 10 million cubic meters of contaminated waste was dumped into a pristine watershed.
- As of yet, no one has been held responsible for the disaster that happened at Mount Polley.
- But Mount Polley is just one of many active mines in British Columbia. And in the time since that tailing pond failure occurred, the operating company, Imperial Metals, has opened another mine with a similar pond design named Red Chris.
- We heard about the mining boom in North British Columbia. But to really understand what was at stake, it's something you sort of got to see for yourself.
- So we planned this crazy trip starting at the entrance of Red Chris. And we planned out a route that would take us into the heart of an area known as the Sacred Headwaters.
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- So what's the plan?
- Biking 150 kilometers on an abandoned railroad grade and single track. Get down to the river. Inflate our pack raft. Paddle out another 250 kilometers. Get back to the trail. Ride back out to our truck at the mine entrance.
- Yeah. It was an ambitious plan.
- I mean you're going into here. And you think, well, everything looks good now. But the weather could turn really bad. You know? And one of you could slip and one of you could hurt yourself.
- Oh shit.
- And you're a long way from anywhere.
- We're just about ready to go here. The guy who owns the lodge here just came out and stared at us pretty confused, wondering what we were doing, and then spent about 20 minutes trying to talk us out of it, saying it was a bad idea.
- But we're going to go for it, even though he thinks we're crazy. He just couldn't get his head around the idea of riding our bikes in and then putting them on rafts and how we'd get the rafts in, how we would get the bikes out.
- Good sign. The one guy who lives here says it's a really bad idea.
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- It's raining. Still raining. But we're going to go back a little bit more. So we're going for the Starbucks Via [INAUDIBLE].
- Shoot it.
- Lance just discovered the--
- [INAUDIBLE].
- [INAUDIBLE].
- Day two. We're packing up camp. Their bear bags are intact. We think we had a bear come near camp last night but nothing got ripped down.
- The landscape itself is absolutely majestic. I've worked for many, many years with National Geographic an an explorer in residence. I've seen many wondrous things. But there is no place on Earth that I believe is more beautiful, more dramatic than Northwest British Columbia.
- If you think that in the lower 48 of the United States, the furthest you can get away from a maintained road anywhere is 20 miles, well, in the Northwest quadrant of British Columbia, the size the entire state of Oregon, there's one road.
- Got out into this open meadow and we started being able to hear the river.
- It just felt so nice to hit a river and know that we're hitting the next stage of our journey.
- So next, we're going to break down our bikes, inflate the rafts, put the bikes on the raft, and spend about 260 kilometers on the river.
- The riding days we had were hot and long and pretty grueling. So it just felt really good to know we were going to get on the boats and be floating down the river, going with the flow for the next five days.
- Being able to actually look down and see fish is just something that's so foreign growing up on the East Coast. And seeing trout come out of a river that are feet long. And these are trout that haven't been introduced via fishery. These are trout that just exist up there.
- We just had this dream of going to a place where the fish are really healthy and really big, not used to people fishing for them all the time.
- National parks became these bastions of wilderness. And by definition, they were places without people. Well, we don't have wilderness in Canada as a people. We have wild countries where caribou may outnumber of people. But the neighborhoods, nevertheless, where men, women, and nature have come to terms with each other. And those terms involved the luxury of open space.
- So the Sacred Headwaters is wild. But it's not empty. To the Tahltan people have called this place home for thousands of years. And the Sacred Headwaters wouldn't still be wild without the incredible effort the Tahltan people made to fight for their homeland.
- Our people used that country for thousands of years. And we're trying to protect it.
- The Tahltan story is not ours to tell. But as visitors in their home, we couldn't help but feel an immense sense of gratitude for the work they have done to protect this place.
- We're at the confluence of the Stikine and the [INAUDIBLE] River. And I've been working at this point on a map for over a year now, dreaming of being in this place. So it feels pretty amazing to finally get here and have my feet on the ground.
- We're over halfway on the trip. So that's good. We're not going to run out of food.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Now we're going to float down another 150 kilometers on the Stikine.
- Coffee. Hot cocoa. Rain. Cold weather. These are the things that we experienced.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Is that a haiku?
- It's been overcast and rainy for the past three or four days. But today, it is exceptionally cold. And we have a big storm coming in tomorrow. We expect a lot of rain. So we stopped. We started a fire to try to warm up a little bit before we keep going.
- The river definitely has a different character than it has the last couple of days. It's cruising now. We're hitting more rapids. And it's a big river.
- We have to go.
- There was a really sketchy moment just now. We were floating down the river. And we saw a grizzly bear on the far bank. So we pulled off across at a safe distance get a shot. And then it got in the water and started swimming pretty quickly at us. So we got in our boats and started trying to paddle downstream away from the bear.
- Eventually, the bear kind of pulled off. But it wasn't clear for a few moments who was going to be faster, us paddling or the grizzly. So it definitely got the heart going a little bit.
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Nice job, [INAUDIBLE].
- We completed the expedition, made it back to the Cassiar Highway. And before we headed home, we wanted to get up above Red Chris mine and see what it looked like.
- This controversial mine went into production just a few years ago, right outside the Sacred Headwaters. It's terrifying to imagine what a disaster like Mount Polley would look like if Imperial Metals fails again here.
- And as outsiders, we struggled to figure out where our voices fit into this story. In reality, we all share a little bit of the responsibility for these places because we all use the resources that come out of these mines.
- We should make it very clear, in terms of cross boundary issues, that whatever is coming out of Red Chris, if there is a disaster, will flow right through the lake [INAUDIBLE], right into the Iskut, right in the Stikine, and right across the Alaskan border to Wrangell, Alaska.
- There are a number of other mines being developed in the area that could also devastate Alaskan communities and fisheries.
- Our trip to the Sacred Headwaters was incredibly inspiring. But the stories of these places don't wrap themselves up into neat little packages.
- This is the whole issue of mines. It's not mines or no mines. It's how many mines, in what places, at what cost to the environment, and critically, for whose benefit.
- These places just won't remain wild if the outside world doesn't start paying attention to local voices and making hard choices about the landscapes we leave for future generations.
- It still is a vast country. It's still a wild country that can absorb multitudes. And the mine will come and go. But the land will still be there.
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
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