Sunday Night, and the ice throne is just being loaded onto a trailer to transport back to town when I pull up.
Randy and Roxanne Gulick of Wild River Adventure tours, his brother Martin, and Gerald and Nikki Noksana are the only people left at the site, which saw, at their best guess, about 1300 people go through today.
As they pack up, they share stories, with each other, with me, about the adventures, trials and tribulations that they’ve faced since the throne was discovered Tuesday, March 26. Randy collapses in a foldable chair in the trailer that has been the group’s home away from home for the last week. “97 percent of the people who’ve gone through have been great,” he says. “But there’s always that last three percent…”
“But you also have the people who stand out on the other end, too,” says Gerald. He says he woke up that morning at 4:30, to discover a group of people patiently waiting in line. He told them the rules and that the throne would be uncovered at 7. They said they knew and were just waiting. “When I got up at 6:15, they were still standing there, patiently. I thanked them, and they said that was what it was all about.”
The story of the Ice throne is convoluted and full of conspiracies. Toss in a dragon or two and you’ve got a full-blown episode of Game of Thrones.
Unless you’ve been asleep for the last week, you’ve probably heard that one of six replicas of the Iron Throne was hidden here in Tumbler Ridge as part of a contest that HBO held, in advance of season 8 of their monster hit show, based on the books by George R.R. Martin, which premieres April 14.
The story of the throne coming to Tumbler Ridge begins a few months back, in January, when a location scout from Calgary, tasked with the goal of finding a frozen waterfall, decided that Kinuseo Falls would be the perfect place to place the throne.
So he called up Randy Gulick from Wild River Adventure Tours. “He asked about Kinuseo Falls. I asked him how he got my name and he Googled it,” says Randy. “I told him the 25 km unplowed road would make it difficult, logistically. I mentioned six other falls, and sent him pictures. He put me in touch with the lady he was working for. She picked three falls. I scouted them, still not knowing what it was for other than a scavenger hunt.”
When they decided to go ahead with the Babcock Seeps, Gulick had to sign an NDA before being let in on the contest. He then escorted a film crew to the site with the throne to film the 24 hour 360 degree video that would be the first clue released in the contest.
And then, it was just a matter of waiting.
A series of near misses
The week before the throne was placed, yours truly was out for a snowshoe up to the seeps on Babcock Creek, where the throne would ultimately be placed. At the time, I marveled at the quality of the trail up to the seeps. Well packed and no holes in the ice to fall through. I was told that Wild River Adventure Tours were running tours up there. Little did I know that Gulick had been up a few weeks earlier with a crew from HBO and the throne to film a 360 video, and, in 8 days, would be returing with the throne.
But that near miss wasn’t even close.
Jenna McQueen says she missed the throne by a day. On March 17, she joined Birgit Sharman and Sandy Corsi to go for a ski up to the Babcock Seeps.
The skiing, she says, was still great, and it was a beautiful, warm day. Unseasonably warm. “That was going to be the last ski of the season,” she says.
Monday morning, Randy Gulick was transporting the throne out to the site at Babcock Creek, as he arrived, he says, he bumped into the Helms, just coming back from an early morning ski. “Charles and Linda were just coming off the creek when we arrived,” says Gulick. “I talked to Charles for ten minutes. But the throne was in a crate on the back of my truck, so he had no idea what was going on.”
According to Charles, he and Linda had been skiing up to the seeps every morning for the last three days. The next day would have been four.
“As we got back to our vehicle on the third day we encountered Randy and a large group of well-equipped snowmobilers,” says Charles. “Randy said they were heading in to the Seeps for a few days’ winter camping.”
Charles says this sounded a bit strange, as it is a dead end ride, ending at the lower falls. “Randy and his group set off on their snowmobiles, and we had a look at their trailers and the large amount of well-packaged stuff they would have to come back for, and concluded that it would be a very well-equipped camping trip indeed.”
But, says Charles, because Gulick was taking a group out camping for a few days, they decided not to go to the seeps the next day. “We have great respect for the tourism business that Randy is bringing in to town, so rather than return there the next day, we chose to respect the privacy of his group and skied up Bullmoose Creek instead. We must have been very close to the Throne!”
Of course, that was still six days before the video went live, so any of these discoveries would not have been part of the actual contest.
After the Helms left, Gulick and co. loaded the throne onto a sled, hitched it to his snowmobile and hauled it out to the Babcock seeks, where it sat, guarded by his brother and Gerald Noksana, for a week.
On March 20, the contest began, with HBO posting 360 degree videos of the first two thrones.
Five days later, they posted the video for the Throne of Ice, sitting in front of the Babcock seeps, and thousands of Game of Thrones fans began analyzing the video for clues.
There were some other hints. When HBO posted the video on Twitter, it was posted with the line “we stand on guard…”, so everyone knew to look for it in Canada.
That’s where Rosa Saba enters the picture. Say is a reported for the Calgary StarMetro.
She says her editor flagged the story, because some folks on Twitter thought the Ice Throne was in Alberta.
“So I started searching,” says Saba. “I was looking at the video and noticed it was on a river or creek.” Near the throne was a hole in the ice, so her original story was that the throne might not be easy to find, and if people went looking, they should be careful.
But the fans were on the case. A Twitter User named Eric from Karlsruhe in Germany measured the length of shadows being cast in the video, and came to the conclusion that the throne wasn’t north of Fort Nelson or West of the Rockies, which narrowed it down to, oh, half the country.
Meanwhile, as the throne sat by the seeps, the weather got nicer and nicer. Gulick, who was the local contact, was worried that the creek was melting too fast, so the decision was made to haul it out on the 26th. They’d already moved it once, as the original location for the throne was soon to be underwater. But because the ice was unstable, he wasn’t willing to risk going in on snowmobile and hauling out a 600 lb sled, so they walked in, put the throne in a net designed to be carried by a helicopter, and flew it out. “I had to get Marc from Ridge Rotors to sign an NDA before I could get him. I Made plans with him that night, and the next morning we went out and put throne in a sling net. I called him on my Sat phone. He came in, we hooked it to his line, and it was sitting where it is now by 10:30in the morning.”
One last close encounter. This one by Ashley Pindera. At 8:30 that morning on Tuesday March 26, she went to do water samples on Babcock Creek. She saw a bunch of “burley men” waiting by the creek, and a sign that said something about “Ser Gulick”, but having no idea about the contest (and not being a fan of the show anyway), she took her water samples and left, two hours before the throne arrived.
Meanwhile, on the Internet, the case was cracked when a YouTuber, COWanderer, mentioned that she works in shipping freight, and had a request to ship a 600 lb “throne” to Tumbler Ridge. “It didn’t click until I saw this contest,” she says. “This is where it’s at.” Shortly after, she posted a link to Above Tumbler Ridge’s video of skiing Lower Babcock Creek, comparing the two.
With Tumbler Ridge now the most likely spot, the Visitor Information Centre started getting phone calls and messages, asking about Lower Babcock Creek and the seeps. As she’d shared photos about the trip she’d taken, McQueen, who manages, the VIC, thought there was just a lot of people interested in spring snowshoe trips. “We got maybe a dozen inquiries,” she says. “We had no idea this challenge was even going on.”
She says she cautioned people against heading out there. “Honestly, I probably wouldn’t recommend going out after Sunday. We’ve had 15 degree weather, and the creek was melting.”
On Tuesday, Saba stumbled across the post by COWander. Wanting to confirm with a local, she called the Visitor Information Centre. They suggested talking to Kevin and Birgit Sharman to confirm. “I asked him if it was actually Babcock Creek, and if it was still frozen, as people were worried that the ice was melted.”
She says Sharman said it looked like the seeps, and that the video looked like it was shot a few weeks ago, telling Saba they has stopped skiing the creek because of the melt.
“That was my originally story,” says Saba. “People think they know where it is. But it’s not going to be as easy to get to, and be careful.”
The Sharmans had no idea the contest was happening, but, always game for an adventure, set out to find the throne, which they found sitting by the side of the road. Birgit sat in the throne, and was crowned queen, receiving an official crown for her troubles.
The story of how they found the throne has been oft retold, but the story of Rick Panoulias has not.
Panoulias is a long term resident of Dawson Creek and a Game of Thrones Fan. On Monday, March 25, his daughter saw the same YouTube post as Saba had, and called up her father. “She’s a big Game of Thrones fan,” says Panoulias. “So am I. We’ve watched it three or four time. We looked at the video, and decide that was definitely Lower Babcock.”
Panoulias knew the area personally, having visited it a number of years ago. So they headed out, arriving at Babcock Creek at about 10. “It was pretty dark,” he says. “We went out with snowshoes, Cross Country Skis and flashlights. When we got out there, we noticed it was melting. We knew we would have to go in 3 km, but we weren’t sure what we might run into, and we didn’t want to get into trouble late at night, so we went up the Core Lodge road. We found a cut block that brought us quite a bit closer. It got us about a km away from the site. We were going to cut through the trees, but snow was really deep, and I figured hike a km through that in the dark wasn’t the best idea. We had flashlights, but it was pretty dark out there. I was concerned about grizzlies, as they should be waking up soon. So we decided to go back the next day. I had to work in the morning, so as soon as I could, we went back out; that’s when I realized that they moved the throne. We didn’t have to go through bushes. But we were half an hour late. I knew where it was. But they just got there first.”
Panoulias is disappointed that the contest was won by people who weren’t even aware of it. “We were into the game, and looking for it. I would have felt better if someone had been looking for it and found it first. They got out there before I did because they lived closer. When we went out on Monday, we were the only ones looking for it. I didn’t see anyone out there. My daughter is kicking me, because I talked her out of going out Monday night. I just felt it was a little too dangerous to be heading out.”
Still, he was third to sit the throne, which is not to shabby, I tell him. He laughs. “I might as well have been hundredth. In the game of thrones, you’re either first, or you die.”
