2007/06 BC trip - Hope |
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That ferry took us into Horseshoe Bay, north of Vancouver, well after the rush hour so we had a fast drive in the rain back to Chilliwack.
Thursday July 19th
We were meeting Darwin, our contractor, at the lot in Hope. The day was showery and cloudy, not great for being outside, but a beautiful day for seeing the mountains. The clouds form about halfway up the mountain, and the peaks drift in and out of view, more beautiful, moody, and mysterious than on a sunny day.
The picture shows the confluence of the Fraser’s murky, silt-laden water and the Coquihalla’s icy, green snowmelt. Last year I showed a picture of this same junction, only we were parked in the middle of it with no sign of water! This year, the Coquihalla was moving very quickly on this corner, not a place to go paddling.
Darwin checked our measurements, looked at the terrain, and muttered a lot about government stupidity. He doesn’t think it makes any sense to preserve our little piece of river bank when every other lot along Hope’s river bank has a house perched right on it. It’s really government panic. After a hundred years of living with a polluted river, it looks like the salmon are disappearing, so the government has to be seen to be doing something, even if it is useless. He thought though that we would be successful in getting a variance from the District for the setback from the road.
We had lunch with Darwin and worked out some rough plans on what to do next. We also stopped by the District’s offices and spoke to Cindy, one of the planners. She gave us more information about other restrictions, related to flooding. The river’s floodplain line runs through the centre of our property, just about where our riparian setback is, so even if we hadn’t had the new riparian rules, we might have had to spend a lot of money on flood defenses if we wanted to build closer to the river. Also, we can only have a full basement if its floor is more than 40 metres above sea level, so it was clear we needed a detailed survey to mark all these lines and elevations. We’d need that for the variance application anyway.
We are thinking of camping next summer during the house’s construction at the Indians’ campground on the Fraser, just down the road, but we checked out Hope’s other campground too. That one’s also managed by Indians. It’s on the Coquihalla River, a bit more expensive, but it’s open for more of the year, so maybe we’ll end up using both. Hope’s post office confirmed that we could have a postal address in Hope next year even though we didn’t have a house yet.