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Aerial pic from Photos by Kat

The Grand Canyon of The Fraser

Introduction



Webpage/Sections of the Grand Canyon of the Fraser:

Sxetl & Lillooet Canyon Fountain Ridge Big Bar High Bar
Fountain Canyon Moran Jesmond
 Riske Creek-Chilcotin Junction
Pavilion Churn Creek Gang Ranch-Dog Creek Chilcotin River
Glen Fraser Red Creek
 Chimney Creek Soda Creek    

Other Canyons Nearby:



Marble Canyon
 The Chasm
 Bridge River Canyon
 Nkoomptch (Seton Creek)
Fraser Canyon Highway (Lytton-Yale)
 Thompson Canyon (Lytton-Ashcroft)
                     


Moran Canyon - Aerial pic from Photos by Kat
 Most people think of the Fraser Canyon as only the well-travelled and so better-known stretch from Hope to Lytton, sometimes even confusing Highway 1's Thompson River stretch as part of it.  In reality the Fraser Canyon extends northwards from Lytton all the way to its junction with the Chilcotin River, near to Williams Lake - a distance of a few hundred miles, through stretches of desert canyon far grander than the Yale-Boston Bar stretch of the River, and in places rivalling the grandeur of the best scenery of the American West.  My own estimation is that if this had become part of the United States, this region would be as famous in the American imagination as Four Corners or the Grand Canyon or Moab or Yosemite.  Although the accessible parts of it between Lillooet and Pavilion/Moran are stupendous enough, the scale of the canyon can't truly be realized unless you get to one of the mountain summits or plateau edges flanking it, much higher up than the highway or rail line, as suggested by the aerial shot above.  Properly given to another canyon upriver from Prince George, I use the term "Grand Canyon of the Fraser" here to mean the grandest stretch of the river, the "one big canyon" that takes in everything from Lillooet to Riske Creek; the upper canyon known as the Grand Canyon is truly impressive as well, but comes nowhere near in scale or length as the deep gorge it cuts into the Interior Plateau, slicing in behind the Coast Range in a spectacular tour de force of erosive, tectonic and glacial forces.  Ranging in depth from 3500 to 9000 ft in height between the river and summits on either side for a distance of some 300 miles, the Fraser Canyon geography and scenery vary tremendously as the river traverses the montane rifts between the coastal and interior biogeoclimatic zones.  Most of the river's canyon remains invisible to the public eye because the ruggedness and remoteness of the country has discouraged road and railway building, the river itself being too rough through its canyon stretches for the development of commercially-viable navigation.  Today whitewater rafting tours regularly transit the Canyon, which means that foreign tourists are often more aware of the Canyon's scale and beauty than most British Columbians, who barely know it exists.  The only other way to get a look at the Canyon for much of its length above Lillooet is by four-by-four roads which skirt its perimeter and only occasionally pierce its depths - at the crossings, some of them now abandoned (see Pavilion Ferry).  Even in the Lillooet area its scale is deceiving, and best appreciated from high up, either on the plateau rim to its East or from one of the many Coast Ranges summits that flank its West; some of these are (or were) driveable summits, most are not, although some are fairly easy hikes from certain roads.  The Lytton-Lillooet-Pavilion-Lower Hat Creek highway, formerly Highway 12 but now partly Highway 99 (from Lillooet to Lower Hat Creek), only gives a glimpse of the Fraser's Great Bend, which is best appreciated from the edge of the Clear Range or the Camelsfoot fire lookout, which are its eastern and western rims; or from atop Fountain Ridge, which also gives a compehensive view of the Canyon below the Great Bend, as well as cavernous views of the Cayoosh gorge and the Fraser's benchland value north and south.  For any who've never travelled the West Side Road from Lytton via Texas Creek, it's worth a ramble if you don't mind the road; for those braver still there's powerline-road connections from North Bend as well; the view of the better-known stretch of the canyon from its lesser-known side can be very surprising, and sometimes looks like a very different place.  For the West Side Road north from Lillooet, or via certain backroads near Poison Mtn in the Upper Yalakom which link towards Watson Bar and Gang Ranch as well as back into the West Side Road, it's advisable - pretty well mandatory - that you travel with extra fuel & emergency supplies and tools; at least south of Pavilion on the canyon's side roads you're always within hoofing range of town and there's a bit more traffic.

Fountain Canyon - Photo: Mike Cleven

Fraser River below Red Creek - Photo: Bob Wilson


Grand Canyon of the Fraser - Lillooet to Dog Creek and beyond

There are several names for the various stages of the Fraser's central canyons - Lillooet Canyon, Six Mile Canyon, Fountain Canyon, Glen Fraser Canyon, Moran Canyon, High Bar Canyon, Big Bar Canyon, and others - but they are all really the same large canyon, which I have come to refer to as the "Grand Canyon of the Fraser" because of its grand scale, huge depth and great length.  The term "Grand Canyon of the Fraser", however, is formally used to describe the canyon of the Upper Fraser (between Prince George and Tete Jaune Cache) as well as the more well-known canyon between Lillooet and Hope (the lower reaches of which have their own names, such as the "Black Canyon" for a certain stretch below Hells' Gate).  Also, due to the designation of Highway 1 from Ashcroft to Hope as the "Fraser Canyon Highway", formerly the Cariboo Highway, most people are under the misapprehension that the Thompson Canyon is actually the Fraser Canyon.  In the midst of all this confusion, all I can offer is that the Fraser is perhaps the only river in the world to have three "Grand Canyons".  There is also a page for the main Fraser Canyon in another part of this site.  I have begun this section using pictures from the BC Provincial Archives, but in time I hope to add many other pictures of the river and the canyon.  Pictures of the Lillooet and Six Mile Canyons are to be found on other parts of this site, although they are technically part of the part of the river that I refer to as the Grand Canyon of the Fraser.

The scale of the Fraser's Grand Canyon is hard to appreciate, even when journeying through it (as spectacular as that drive is).  Only by climbing to the moutainous heights on either side of the canyon can its depth and vastness be appreciated.  At the broad widening of the Fraser's gorge at Lillooet, the relief is 5000' on the east side, formed by Fountain Ridge, and 7000' on the east wall, which is formed by the flanks of Mt. McLean (Mission Ridge) and Mt. Brew, separated by the large gap that is Nkoomptch where the Seton and Cayoosh Canyons converge.  At Fountain, where the Fraser does a torturous double-reverse 's' bend in a one-mile radius - "the Great Bend" - the mountain peaks on either side tower between 7000 and 5000 feet above the river; just upstream in the Glen Fraser area both sides are well above 6000 feet at peak-level, and at Moran (just north of Pavilion), it is more like 7000.  The highway and rail line through this section (they could not follow the river further upstream because of the canyon's steep sand walls) follow the benchlands at the first level above the river, limning the deeper level of canyon walls, which themselves are between 1000 and 2000 feet sheer to the river.  The first two pictures in the following set are of the Fountain Canyon, the former being slightly upstream from the latter, which is taken at the point where the Fraser turns north briefly before turning south again a couple of miles later.  The next three pictures were taken from mountain heights in the Pavilion area, and give an idea of the canyon's tremendous depth and aridity.  The next two are of the Moran Canyon section, where the BCR (the old Pacific Great Eastern railway) was forced to turn into a side valley rather than follow the Fraser north; Moran has long been debated as a site for a major hydroelectric project on the Fraser that would create a lake stretching a couple of hundred miles north to Williams Lake, flooding the upper reaches of the Grand Canyon and destroying what is left of the Fraser salmon fishery.  The last picture is of the canyon in the area of Big Bar Ferry, and is typical of the miles of similar country that lay between Moran and Williams Lake, where the highway and rail line are at ;ast able to rejoin the Fraser.  Travel through the Big Bar country is difficult and often dangerous, and traverses the legendary ranch country of the Empire Valley and Gang Ranches.
  





Aerial pic from Photos by Kat
This view is similar to the one at the top of this page but has a slightly different angle; the cliffs of Marble Canyon are not visible at upper right, and there is a slightly better view into the main gorge between Fountain and Pavilion, giving a slightly better view of the hayfields of Glen Fraser (behind Fountain Ridge) and those in the Pavilion area (behind the peak of Camelsfoot Point), but less of the town of Lillooet.