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 T he canyons of the LillooetCountry focus on Lillooet, but as a group span a region more than a hundred miles square.  The great gorge of the Fraser  runs north a few hundred miles from Lillooet  through Fountain and High Bar to Gang Ranch and Dog Creek, a region that is rarely travelled although stretches of it are often featured in photographic travelogues of BC.  Wide rangeland benches encayoned by rolling pine alpine plateaux, cut by a deeper low canyon, the vista is a classic one ofthe Old West.  Indeed, it was in the Gold Rush of '58 era that the image of the western wilderness frontier became forged in the popular imagination; thousands of American miners returned back from the Cariboo and Fraser gold rushes to California Dixie and New England; at the time most of the American Rockies and Plains (north of the Platte, anyway) were still unmarred by the Indian Wars.  In a very real way, the Lillooet and its sister regions in BC (the Cariboo, the Kootenay) emobyd an actual part of "the American West" that most CAnadians and Americans alike are unaware.  Any American visitor looking at pictures of the Golden Mile in Lillooet would immediately mistake the town for something out of their own history, ratherh than Canada's
  In the wider canyon vale that runs south from Lillooet to Boston Bar where,  the valleys of the Cayoosh, Seton, Blue Pavilion and other creekswatersheds within a range of the canyonland's focus at Lillooet and Fountain. The great complex of gorges and alpine that is the basin of the Bridge River, once near-legendary even in modern times for its unique remoteness and stunning beauty, runs some 120 miles from the great Lillooet Icecap in the central Coast Mountains through a spectacular series of basins and canyons to its confluence with the Fraser; its middle canyon, downstream from Terzaghi Dam to the Yalakom's merger with the Bridge at Moha, is a staggering gorge of towering 5000' cliffs closed in on a narrow, rocky rivercourse strewn with giant boulders of jade and variegated granite. The Bridge's lower canyon below Moha and Horseshoe Wash to the Fraser is now dry of most of its natural waterflow, but still has stunning stretches of deep pools and jade-coloured rapids running beneath steep canyon walls, flanked on all sides by soaring mountain flanks and glimpses of high alpine. The Yalakom River's canyon upstream from Moha is relatively short but incredibly narrow The largest of the upper Bridge River canyons is that of the Hurley River, also called 'the South Fork' [of the Bridge], views of which visitors are treated to on the main road between Gold Bridge and Bralorne, the canyon's east wall where the road runs being about 2500' above the river, although it's only about eight miles long from Hurley Falls below Bralorne to its confluence with the main course of the Bridge at Haylmore (a 'suburb' of Gold Bridge). The lower canyon of Gun Creek runs some thirty miles, and though it is not of great depth is fiercely rocky, filled with the creek's powerful waters.
 
 
 
This is among the most historically famous of the great scenic views of the Lillooet Country: the view north up the Fraser Canyon from the 12 Mile Roadhouse at Fountain.  Travellers from farther south along the Fraser were forced by geography to detour through Fountain Valley in order to get to Lillooet or (before the construction of the Lytton-Clinton stretch) in order to reach the Cariboo Wagon Road for the journey north; this was the view that greeted them as they descended to the Fraser.  For a few months in 1858-9, Fountain was nearly as famous and busy a staging ground for the Gold Rush as Lillooet.  The ruins of the 12 Mile Roadhouse adjoin the site of this roadside view, which lies along the original route of the Wagon Road through the Fraser Canyon's grandest stretch.

What is not easily evident from this roadside view is the depth of the Fraser's gorge at Fountain.  The canyon walls seen here only constitute the deepest level of a multi-layered canyon that cascades down from alpine heights on either side, some 4-7000 feet of vertical above the river (elev. c.1000'), depending on which of the many summits about Fountain the measurement is takenl.  The eastern flank (up to the right; see below) is actually a plateau edge of high, flat summits known as the Clear Range.  From the highway it appears to be a line of peaks, and may be fairly easily accessed by a mix of road and hiking from the Hat Creek basin and the south wall of Marble Canyon.  The left wall at this point is a spearhead-shaped ridge that is the last abutment of the 80-mile Camelsfoot Range, named for camels brought in during the gold rush, some of whom reputedly ran wild in the montane deserts of central BC (of which the Camelfsoot Range is typical).  Camelsfoot Point is the name of the 7000' summit immediately above the southward point of the Fraser's bend at Fountain, and is itself only the foreshoulder of 9000+ Camelsfoot Peak in behind.


 


 








Six Mile Rapids, Fountain BC

The scale of the Fountain Gorge of the Grand Canyon of the Fraser is hard to describe, and only a bit less difficult to depict photographically.  The image at left is a close-up of the same scene as at right, which lies at the southward turn of the Great Bend in the Fraser between Glen Fraser and the Bridge River Bridge.  At this point, the Fraser carves its course through the rocks shown, turning back northwards for one short mile, then bending west again to turn directly south.  Mountains on either side of the river (elev. 1000') soar up to 7000' and beyond on both sides, with the canyon's depths among the driest and most sheltered places north of the Columbia.  The grand beauty of the place, and its favourable situation for human habitation, inspired the legend that this was one of the three homes of the great being Coyote in North America.  Archaeological finds in the Fountain area are among the oldest in the Northwest, and it is believed that humans have always lived here - after the retreat of the icecap, that is.  The 'Xaxlip (Fountain) First Nation of the Stlaltlimx reside in a large village on the benchlands adjacent to the gorge containing the Six Mile Rapids, which were among the richest fisheries anywhere within British Columbia for centuries.









Low-lying canyons line most of the tributary streams of the Fraser.  The arid view at right is somewhat typical of many such canyons in the Lillooet District, even the smaller ones being quite grand - except for that it is a view of the Bridge River's lower canyon (of several) from roadside in the vicinity of Applespring Creek - looking straight down from more than a few hundred feet up.  The roadside this picture was taken from is shown at right, if I'm not mistaken from one of the two corners visible in the pic (not a good place to stop!), a narrow road carved into the gravelly rock bluff just upstream from Applespring Creek; not sure of the ID on the peak yet, but I don't think it's a major summit of the Camelsfoot Range, although it could be a flank of Camelsfoot Peak.  Rugged stretches of the Bridge River like this one - once filled with a large rushing river - remained immutable (and unexplorable) until the canyon's emptying of its flow by the main generators of the Bridge River Hydroelectric Development.  Most of the lower Bridge below Yalakom is now quiet canyon pools like the one shown at left - although nearly all of the lower river is on the Bridge and any water exploration or hiking requires the permission of the Bridge River Band.

Before it was diverted into the Seton watershed in 1958, the Bridge River ('Xwisten) was among the largest (and most salmon-rich) of the Fraser's tributaries, and filled this gorge with a rush of blue-white water comparable in season to the Chilcotin or even the Thompson.  The Bridge River originates in a massive icecap some hundred miles to the West that is the source of seven major Coast Mountain river systems, and during its course combines into itself several other large glacial streams - the Hurley (South Fork of the Bridge), Gun, Tyaughton, and Yalakom , each with its own canyon within the Bridge's large highland basin, and all quite large in their own right.  At the Bridge's mouth at the Bridge River Fishing Grounds on the Fraser, the river's waters roared into and atop the Fraser's own cataract, both rivers converging in a rocky double throat and sharp ledge. forming some of the worst water on the Fraser shy of the nearby Six Mile Rapids, or even Hell's Gate itself. The rocky step where the Fraser and the Bridge once so mightily converged was said to be of Coyote's own forging - so that salmon would be easier for people to catch.To this day it remains among the most important (and sometimes the most contentious) of the native fishing grounds along the Fraser, with today's families still occupying the particular fishing spot and fish-drying camp used by their families for thousands of years.  Largely invisible from Highway 12 far above, the nearby Six Mile Rapids had an equal (if not larger) concentration of native fisheries shared by native families from throughout south-central BC, including Secwepemc (Shuswap), Nlaka'pmx (Thompson) and Okanagan).  The Six Mile Rapids and Bridge River Fishing Grounds were also shared within the nearby Slt'atl'imx-speaking nations, with chies and families from Pavilion Seton, D'arcy and Mount Currie having fishing privileges on the best fishing grounds on the  Fraser alongside the people of the Bridge River, Lillooet, Cayoosh Creek and Fountain peoples.
This view is from the south point of the Horseshoe Wash formation, which was among the largest (if not the largest) of the Gold Rush-era hydraulic operations, looking into a rocky stretch just below a twisting canyon that leads out of the Wash into the Bridge's lower reaches from its contortions at Moha.  During the Gold Rush, the area of the lower Bridge (as far as Moha) was heavily mined by hydraulic outfits licensed by an enterprising (and locally powerful) chief of the Bridge River ('Xwisten) Band of the Stl'atl'imx Nation.  The Bridge still gives up records amount of gold throughout its length, including a recent find in the lower reaches of the Great Canyon of the Bridge, even though large stretches yet remain unexplored because of native ownership - or because they are under the waters of Carpenter and Downton Reservoirs.  In addition to gold, hydraulic miners also sought after molybdenum, the blue-grey ore of which is markedly visible in places along the Bridge's banks where dozens of hydraulic mining operations had once thrived; certain other placer metals were also found, with there being rumours of such rareties as chromium and pitchblende in the then-mysterious upper Bridge River Country beyond the Great Canyon.  Jade, agate and other ores were also pulled from placer operations here, with much of the Bridge's rocky banks lined as much by raw jade and rough agates as by granite (most of it too big to move!).  Just below this point, the valley opens up for six-eight miles or so in a broad, sloping basin until its next deep gorge at Applespring Bluff and the remaining miles of canyon-throat to the Bridge River Fishing Grounds and the Bridge's convergence with the Fraser.  Nearly all of the land in the picture at right is part of the gigantic (for BC) Bridge River Indian Reserve, which takes in most of the flanks of the Bridge River below the convergence with the Yalakom.  The snowy heights visible are not alpine, but snowed-over logging operations on the reserve.  The picture is not "tilted", by the way - that's the lay of the land, not an off-centre camera.
The Moha - Entrance to the Underworld?

This formation in the centre of this view (taken from the Yalakom River "Bridge of the 23 Chipmunks") is not often noticed by modern travellers, although it is the namesake of the placename appearing on the roadmap as "Moha".  More importantly, perhaps, it is part of the local mythological landscape, its name (supposedly) meaning "land of plenty" in Stat'imcets.  The dark space in the formation's centre is not a cave, but a dark-coloured rock framed by the stone lintels visible in the photo.  The whole formation is at the bottom of a talus and landslip flanking the benchland where the Moha (Road 40) and Yalakom Roads meet, so it is a bit unusual for such a distinct formation to be found underneath an alluvium - although the Yalakom's canyon above here turns rocky just around the corner.  Though not an actual physical entrance to an underground realm, the name for this place and object is "the Moha", and the dark stone is supposedly a gate to the underworld, "the land of plenty", from whence some first peoples say they came.  I don't know the particulars of the Stl'atl'imx legend here and promise to find out and amend this text accordingly.  I do know that "in the old days, there were deer people living in four large underground houses" in the Bridge River Valley over the mountain from Seton, although it was never clearfrom that story if these underground houses were mythological places (or if the deer people where a deer-clan native people of some pre-Contact historical period now unknown.  Any Stl'atl'imx person reading this who knows is more than welcome to e-mail me with the correct version).  I doubt there is any connection between that story and "the Moha", but I would certainly be interested to know if there were.  Certainly the locality of Moha and environs (now locally called Yalakom) is more than amenable to human habitation, and might indeed have been the location of a once-large but now-forgotten ancient settlement, even as is the case with Lillooet, Seton Mt. Currie and elsewhere in the region.

One legend I have heard is that the benchlands adjoining the convergence of the Bridge and the Yalakom were in ancient times the site of major gatherings of native peoples from throughout the region for ceremonies lasting many weeks consisting of dance and celebration.  The native source for this tale was an elder speaking to one of the local landowners, whom he enjoined to never sell the land and always keep it in his family, citing tradition that  the lands were on a place of great power, and  a source of great fortune to any that live on them.  Indeed, the setting of Moha - not visible easily through the photographic lens because of its geological three-dimensionality - is a dynamic and magical place, from any of several viewpoints within the vicinity.  The gorge of the Great Canyon cuts through the forested buttresses of the Shulaps Range and (severed by the canyon from the Shulaps) the snowy knolls of Mission Ridge, the dark, wet winds beyond the canyon pouring out into the arid semi-desert and pine of the Yalakom and the lower valley of the Bridge.

At this site there was once (I remember) a small store or cafe with a gas pump and one lone incandescent light above a small concrete stoop.  There are still houses on the site, which once had an orchard and (if I remember right) a couple of cabins adjoining the main building.  At one time, this was about as far as you could come up the Bridge River from Lillooet, the violent course of the river through its Grand Canyon between here and the upcountry base of the Mission Mountain Road (from Seton Lake over the mountains to the goldfields, then the only way into the upper Bridge country) making anything other than horse, packtrain or foot travel impossible.  The trip by canyon trail on horseback from Moha to the upper Bridge valley - only ten miles upriver - is said to have taken 12 hours, and in some cases (due to inclement weather and/or associated river conditions) a few days.  The store must have been built at the time of road construction during the canyon in 1957-8 as a roadhouse for workmen and truckers; I only remember it vaguely and don't think it looked that old (for those times); it may yet have been there in the 1970s when I first got back into the Lillooet Country  - if there are any older Lillooeters out there who remember and details about the store, please let me know; maybe the store dated from the heyday of the placer and hydraulic operations in the lower Bridge and at nearby Horseshoe Wash  There was never a town at Moha, despite its appearance on maps, other than a ranch of the same name and a scanttering of small local freeholds.
Vast Mountain - "King of the Canyon"

Vast Mountain was named in recent times by one of the residents of its lower slope.  I do not know its native name, and it remains ungazetted, despite its prominent position within the focal alpine bends of the Great Canyon of the Bridge River, the northwestern walls of  which are the mountain's ramparts, some precipitous 5000 feet of near-vertica clear around beyond the Canyon along the shores of Carpenter Lake for not a few miles; hence is name - vast, despite its relatively invisible summit.  The southeastern-most peak of the 50-mile long Shulaps Range, a series of high tundra domes limning the northeastern flank of the upper Bridge River Basin - over which its craggy western faces look.  Vast Mountain is home to the Hell Creek jade mine, one of BC's main sources of gem-quality jade for many years.  The outlet of the Great Canyon into the dryland Yalakom-Lower Bridge dale is hidden behind the forest slopes in the midground of the picture, which was taken looking up at a 45 degree angle or so just downstream from Moha, which is just to the right.  On Vast's lower flanks near Terzaghi Dam, there are a couple of ice-climbing routes which have been documented on-line; I will dig out that URL and link it here for those interested.  Decomissioned mine and logging roads are traversible by hiking and (not advisedly) by mountain biking, but animal dangers are high in the area of the canyon, particularly in alpine areas such as Vast Mountain, so precautions should be taken.


The Horseshoe Wash


This is the easiest - and safest - view of the Horseshoe Wash, through which the Bridge River flows just after its convergence with the Yalakom just above the twisting canyon at upper left.  Road 40, the "Moha Road" of the old times, takes a curving route around to the right of the half-mile across Wash, which was formed by hydraulic mining operations.  Although the road closely follows the edge of the Wash, most other approaches are quite precipitous and involve unstable banks and ongoing erosion, so the place is best appreciated from the pull-out at its southern edge. 

The original landscape here was a continuation of the benchland in the top-centre of the wash, with the river confined to a steep canyon of gravel and sand.  The remaining canyons just above and below the wash are rocky (although toned in rich-coloured ores), however, although only visible as a result of an hour or so's hike down into the Wash, or from above or below via the river.  The scale of landscape alteration here is staggering once you realize this was a mine, and it's clear that this must have been a rich operation to have gotten so big in the first place.  The benchland here is all alluvium, remnants of ancient floodings and flows and full of gravelly ore from seven rich mountain ranges in the days of the Great Melt.  I don't know any particulars about the company or the find or what years this was in operation (the 1870s strike a chord, but I can't remember the source) , but I'll try and dig that up if I ever get around the Assay Office or the Chamber of Mines or anywhere else useful for that kind of thing.  Recent placer operations in the lower reaches of the Great Canyon of the Bridge in the few miles just above the convergence with the Yalakom turned out to have been extraordinarily rich, although the discovery was kept largely secret, with no stocks ever being offered.  I guess the moral of the story is when you're making huge amounts of money daily, who needs to get investment from the stock market?  The Bridge remains famously rich and is still highly regarded by mining investors, with major explorations underway in various locations around the region, and the revival of the once-great main pits of the Bralorne Mine.  Hydraulic mining's not likely to be back because of environmental concerns (most of the land beyond the excavated point in the picture, by the way, being privately held and probably hostile towards resumption of hydraulic mining that would wipe out their holdings!).



























The Jones Ranch, Texas Creek Road

Another utterly typical Lillooet Country image is that of the square-notch cabin thicketed in a half-abandoned orchard, with a view of dry but snowy peaks in the background.  Indeed this is one of the oldest "views" seen by non-natives here, as the ranch this was taken on is one of the oldest white "alienations" of land in the district, if not the oldest.  The namesake Mr. Jones was a British officer who accompanied a higher-ranking noble who was given his choice of lands in the valley at the time of the Gold Rush.  Jones chose a series of benchlands running south along the Fraser the whole of a half-dozen miles below the junction with Seton and Cayoosh Creeks ("Nkoomptch") and the Cayoosh Creek Indian Reserves.  The Jones place's location was highly favoured - shaded by the high ramparts close by on the west and abundantly watered by the same high mountains, the vast acreages of the Jones Ranch are still a working sheep farm.  They are also host to Lillooet's famous Sheep Pasture Golf Club, which is Lillooet's contribution to the world of non-PGA golf, including mobile, woolly obstacles, real rough and other things than sand in the traps.  There are a number of other similarly large "spreads" in the district, but none so old and perhaps none so favoured with climate and water as "the Jones place".

I don't know the history of this cabin; next time I'm up there I'll ask at the ranch.




















This is the view upward from the Bridge River Bridge to the summit of Mission Ridge, Mt. McLean, which is the snowy summit at upper left.

 

 

 

This is a deceptive view, easier to comprehend when you realize the camera is tilted 30 or 45 degrees upwards and that the shoulder summit on the right is about 4 miles away and four thousand feet or so higher. The dome in the upper left is the summit of Mission Ridge, Mt. McLean, the forested ridge to its right a flanking ridge, in behind which is Moon Lake and Camoo Basin, another flank of the main Ridge which rolls down towards Moha and the Yalakom Valley. The snowed-in line climbing the ridge is that of a BC Hydro transmission line; careful examination of the large-scale photo (when the thumbnail is clicked on) will show signs of the powerline maintenance road which climbs that track. "Climb" being the operative word, as our jeep felt like it was leaned straight back five or six times during the ascent, so steep and rough is that road..