A flathead goes to the Flathead, September 2023
In September, 2022, I had the privilege to join the hunting party of my son and his two buddies and fish the upper Elk River for a week while they tried to fill their tags in the the surrounding mountains. This year the Mount Bingay wildfire in the Elk Valley prompted a change of plans. The boys switched their hunting trip to the Flathead River valley and I was invited to join them again. Maybe it was my pleasant disposition or conversation skills that earned the invite, but I suspect it was that I washed dishes, cooked many of the meals, and my wife sent along a bag of chocolate chip cookies! The Flathead River has a unique place among BC rivers. With the headwaters in the mountains below Sparwood, the North Fork of the Flathead flows south, roughly paralleling, and just a few miles west of, the Alberta border before entering Montana. The BC Flathead watershed has no permanent human settlement and supports an incredible abundance and diversity of wildlife. In the USA, the Flathead i