Rothenburger — What’s the weather forecast for Mount Polley?

COLUMN — Every morning, a dozen times or so, I’m reminded that Puntzi Mountain is in the Chilcotin.

That’s because, for reasons unclear, Puntzi Mountain in the Chilcotin is on the list of places for which weather forecasts are provided on CBC Daybreak Kamloops.

Whether it’s Shelley Joyce or Doug Herbert doing the hosting on a given day, the words “in the Chilcotin” are always attached to “Puntzi Mountain,” as if you could look on a Google map and find “Puntzi Mountain in the Chilcotin.”

I don’t fault Shelley and Doug for reminding us every time Puntzi Mountain is mentioned that it’s in the Chilcotin. That’s not ultimately my point here, and, bear with me, there is a point to this.

I’ve known since the early ’70s that Puntzi Mountain is in the Chilcotin, because that’s when I took my first road trip from Williams Lake to Bella Coola. I stopped at Puntzi Lake and snapped some pictures in connection with a book I was writing about the history of the Chilcotin War. I didn’t hike up Puntzi Mountain but they say you can get a tremendous view of the Chilcotin Plateau from there.

Anyway, when I listen to the weather forecast for Puntzi Mountain, I wonder why the listening audience — other than the few people who live close by — cares if it’s hot, cold, sunny or cloudy, since it’s not exactly a bustling metropolis.

Up until 1862, there was a major Tsilhqot’n village there but it was decimated by the smallpox epidemic. As many as nine out of every 10 people died. However, there is, today, a Puntzi Lake Indian Reserve.

Puntzi Lake and Puntzi Mountain aren’t the same thing but the names tend to intermingle. There was a Puntzi Mountain radar base during World War Two and for a few years afterward, and then an airbase until 1965 but its population was never more than about 100 troops.

The airport runway is a big one and shows up prominently on satellite photos. Nobody builds an airport on a mountain and this one is actually just off the road to Bella Coola a short distance from Puntzi Lake. It still has an unmanned weather station. It sometimes records the coldest temperatures in the province.

There surely is no more beautiful place on earth than the Chilcotin. So if knowing the temperature at Puntzi Mountain reminds us of that, OK.

The reason I got thinking about this at all — and now, hopefully, we’ll get to the point — is Mount Polley.

I don’t know about you, but I’d never heard of Mount Polley before last Monday. I knew about Likely (which, by the way, has an unmanned weather station maintained by the Wildfire Management Branch), but have never been there. I didn’t know it was close to Mount Polley, that there was a Mount Polley, or that there’s an open-pit copper mine at Mount Polley, next door to several precious bodies of water.

Mount Polley is roughly the same distance from Williams Lake as Puntzi Mountain, in the opposite direction. The media have been describing Mount Polley as “Mount Polley in the Cariboo” so people know roughly where it is. The Cariboo also is a stunningly beautiful place. If you look at the pictures coming out of the Mount Polley Mine disaster, you can see how beautiful the area is, and the parts of it that aren’t so beautiful anymore, as of last Monday morning.

We take our beautiful B.C places so much for granted that we don’t even know their names, for the most part, until something goes wrong. We just know they’re there. Mount Polley is a reminder that we shouldn’t take anything for granted, especially the beautiful things Mother Nature gave us.

I’ll remember that from now on when I listen to the weather forecast for Puntzi Mountain in the Chilcotin. And maybe wonder whether it’s sunny or cloudy at Mount Polley in the Cariboo.

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