From Vision to Reality: The Journey of Chilko’s Inception
It all starts with an idea…
Your mother has probably told you never to pick up hitchhikers. It’s too dangerous. I did anyway and it changed my life. The year was 1977. The Alcan highway was still gravel. I was just finishing a 16-month walkout with a road trip from the Midwest to Alaska. It was a wonderful experience.
Heading south on Highway 97 near Prince George there was a young man about my age hitchhiking. He didn’t look like a felon so I picked him up. He had been traveling in BC for a few months and asked me if I had been to the Chilcotin. I had never heard of it. He said it was a very special place and I should go. He said on the Dean River one catches trout with every cast. Three hours later I dropped him in Williams Lake, bought $20 worth of groceries and headed for the Dean River.
The Chilcotin is 50,000 square miles in size which is exactly half the size of Colorado and could best be described as Montana 1910 but better. More mountains, less people. The Chilcotin hosts about 1,000 hearty residents or one per every 50 square miles and it’s beautiful. I was in love but didn’t return for 20 years. Back home I fell into another type of love that resulted in five offspring and almost no travel.
In 2000 the start up that I had a sliver of equity in was purchased by private capital and I left the corporate world and headed to the Chilcotin where I purchased an old guest ranch as a family retreat. In 2002 we began a modest build which soon became a major five year build that resulted six guest homes being built plus all the support facilities needed to live off the grid in comfort. The focus was constructing a very nice rec facility for family and friends. One guest described staying at Chilko as “National Geographic during the day, the Four Seasons at night”.
By 2015 my family had grown and was gone so we began operation as a boutique luxury wilderness lodge which continues today. Now, every summer my wife, Anne and I return to my home away from home and share with it people from far and wide so that they too can create memories to last a lifetime.
-Phil Huston, Owner of The Chilko Experience
