By Rudy Nielsen

Bronco Stuck

I remember when my travels to look for NIHO’s next property took me to the beautiful Queen Charlotte Islands back in 1984. The Islands were an area that time had forgot. Before November 1980, access was only by float plane, and if you wanted to drive on the islands, you had to barge your car in.  But once you stepped on to the island, it was magical. Gigantic Sitka spruces, 4 inches or more in diameter, soared 180 feet into the sky. Underneath, a lush carpet of deep green moss so deep that every step you took sank you deeper into the forest. It was truly breathtaking.

Darin, my youngest son, and I camped at Rennell Sound, located on the west side of the island with its access road coming in from Queen Charlotte City. NIHO would later purchase our campsite there and the properties surrounding it.

Even though those properties have long since been sold, I still have fond memories of our time here. Darin and I set up a tent camp, blew up our 13 foot Zodiac boat, took out our fishing roads and crab traps, and went fishing for a couple of days.

I must digress here to talk about a bit about our old Bronco truck that we took on the trip. It was a very special vehicle. It had large wide all terrain tires, a lift kit, and a supercharged motor. These three items were the only things that let our vehicle go anywhere in the backcountry. We soon would be very glad that our vehicle was that customized.

After spending a few days fishing and crabbing, we decided to explore the north end of the island. We drove our Bronco up to a  small access road on the north coast, and we entered the beach. We waited until the tide levels peaked and started to recede, and then we drove onto the wet sand. Our goal was to go from Tow Hill, just past Massett to Tlell along the shoreline as the tide was going out. As soon as we hit the beach, we just opened the Bronco up, and drove at full speed, tearing down the sand. The beach at low tide is flat, and you can go as fast as you want, because the sand there is hard and packed, rather than the soft sandy dunes on the other side. We continued to drive at full speed up the beach towards Rose Point, the most north-eastern part of the Queen Charlotte Islands, where we stopped and had lunch with several very attentive deer, who never took their eyes off of us. Now, I believe that Rose Spit is one of the most unique settings in British Columbia.  After lunch, we took a long walk, totally in awe of the natural beauty of the area.  Getting back in the Bronco, we continued driving due south along the shoreline, still thinking we could make it to Tlell before the tide came in.

Getting out of the Bush

I knew from looking at our map that we were coming to our first obstacle, the Oeanda River. As we got close, Darin said, “Dad, stop the truck, we can’t make it!”

“Of course we can,” I replied “We’re gonna go through it. We’ll get to the opposite side.”

“Dad, we can’t make it, we CAN’T make it….STOP THE TRUCK!!”

Well, I thought that Darin normally is up for a good adventure, and knowing he was very good at reading maps and four wheel driving, I thought that I should listen to him. I slammed on my brakes and stopped right at the very edge of the river bank. After we got out and took a look, we found out that Darin was right- we never would have made it. It wasn’t just a normal river bank- the river had eroded, creating steep banks on both sides. If we had attempted the jump, our truck would have been totalled, and we would have had to walk back to civilization.

We had to decide what to do because the tide was starting to come back in again. We thought that it would be best while the tide was still out, to retreat, turn the car around, and try to make it back to where we had started, because it is very difficult to get to high ground due to the bank that was most of the way around the beach.

Back in the 1980’s, trucks went out to Rose Spit, and some got stuck the sand. There is a special tow truck service up there that only deals with those stuck cars. But once you get stuck, and if the tow truck can’t get to you, that could be the end of your car. The sand can get into your truck’s system, clogging it completely. If the tide takes the truck, well, if the strong currents of the Pacific Ocean didn’t sweep it out to sea, the salt-water would corrode the truck so that it would be a junk heap littering the pristine beach.

After we made to decision to turn around and go back, we got back in the Bronco, and I began to turn it around. But as I was turning around, I got off the hard wet sand into the soft sand. We got stuck. In fact, all four wheels could not get out of that soft sand. We thought about using the winch on our Bronco, but there were no big trees or anything else around to winch to. Using it was out of the question.

Having been in many similar predicaments in the past, we had learned to sit down, think, and have a beer. It’s like being lost…when you are lost in the bush, don’t move around or start to pace, don’t panic, sit down and think things out. I find that I can relate all my outdoor experiences back to my business world. When you have a problem, go into your office, close the door and think. So we drank several beers and tried to think of how to get the truck out of this predicament before the tide came in.

We decided that the only way that we were going to get out of this predicament was to use a technique called “throwing it off the jack”. I don’t recommend this, as it is very dangerous and it is easy to break your wrist if you do it wrong. In this method, take a big jack- called a “Jackall”. Then the first guy jacks up the back end of the car to the very end so that both the back wheels are off the ground. The other guy will be steadying the teeter-tottering car. Once the car off the ground, the guy who was steadying the car takes a ten foot run and hits the car with his shoulder, throwing it off the jack. Continue doing this for three or four times. Then go to the front end of the car, and repeat the procedure.  It will take several throws, because the car will move only inches each time. But eventually, the car was sitting back on the wet sand again.

Breakers

By this time, the ocean was right to us. We had no chance to go anywhere. We were not going to make it back to our starting location.  The only chance we had was to drive forward and make it up over the bank. I turned the car around very carefully, so as not to spin my wheels, drove into the ocean and turned around, and drove full speed, hit that bank, and jumped the Bronco into the trees.

We landed right in the middle of a great big pile of brush and debris, with the big spruces all around us. I kept the Bronco moving, and drove into a small grassy clearing beside the ocean.

Unfortunately, that is when the storm, which had been on the horizon during the last part of our trip, hit the island. It was an unbelievable storm, just howling right around us. And we were caught right in the middle of it. When we got out of the Bronco to set up camp, we were soaked instantly. The wind was gusting so hard that we had to tie down our tent with special ropes to keep it from being torn away.  By this time, the wind and the rain had completely wiped out the tracks and the ruts where we had been stuck on the beach. If we hadn’t gotten out when we had, we would have lost everything, and had to walk all the way back to the main road. While we had our Zodiac, tied on top of the Bronco, the size of the breakers hitting the shore would have capsized our boat within minutes.  

After setting up our tent, we got into it and took our food and beer in with us. I took out a little propane heater that we used for cooking. We lit it to heat the tent, tied some rope lines inside the tent, took off our clothes, and hung them up to dry. We had some hot rum to take away the chill from the damp clothes, ate some supper, and settled down for the night. I had brought in a little radio from the Bronco to get some music into the tent. When we turned it on, we were horrified to hear a newsflash telling us that more than 300 people were dead, and the town was completely levelled. The announcer did not announce the name of the city before the commercial was played. Keep in mind that this was during the Cold War. We thought a nuclear holocaust had finally begun, and that North America was in ruins! We were stuck on the Queen Charlottes for good! For the next hour, we started plans on building a raft to get us across Hectate Straight, which was very rough sailing, so that we could get back to the mainland to find our family. As we were planning this, the announcer came back on and explained that it was the earthquake that had hit a city in Mexico. While this was still devastating for us to hear, we were relieved that we didn’t have to build that raft!

We spent a couple of days in our very remote campsite, exploring the area in the eastern part of Naikoon Park. We saw numerous deer every day at very close distances. The most surprising thing that we discovered in the remote eastern section of Naikoon was a couple of herd of wild cows. They were very easily spooked, and would stampede off into the dense forest. Later, we learned that settlers at the turn of the century had turned the cows loose. They had survived very well on the lush grasslands of the Naikoon area.

After three days, we packed up camp, and headed out as the tide was going out, and drove back to our original starting place. We had travelled a grand total of 35 kilometres.

We have never made it to Tlell by our shoreline road…at least not yet.