Photo: Mike Cleven

Aerial pic from Photos by Kat

Marble Canyon

Photo: Mike Cleven	Although most of the pictures here are black-and-white, either from my own work of borrowed from the BC Provincial Archives or other sources.  I am hoping to find - or take myself - enough colour material to give an idea of the range and subtlety of the canyon's limestone walls and hidden gorges.  Most of the rock is white-to-orange, with the three lakes in the valley possessing their own particular shades of deep blue.  The rock wall on the canyon's north side is higher, at up to 3000' above the lakes, while the south wall is around 1000'; the valley floor's elevation is around 3500'.  The landscape in the area is a limestone karst, from which it may be inferred (perhaps in error) that at one time the canyon was a huge cavern or chain of caverns that eventually collapsed and became further eroded; even today, Pavilion Creek disappears underground shortly after leaving Pavilion Lake, re-emerging a few miles down-valley.  Some of the side canyons on the north wall are very deep and are largely unclimbed and unexplored.  Towards the top of the main face (at the centre-right of the first picture below) there is a hole-in-the-wall formation piercing the curtain-wall of the largest of these gorges.  The hole-in-the-wall is so high up that it appears only as a pinprick from the roadside far below, and is only visible when an overcast sky reveals its presence as a white dot in a crack in the cliff-face; yet it's supposed to be 20 yards wide or so I was told by someone who'd been up there.  The top of the main cliffs is one of the north shoulders of Pavilion Mountain, as is the ridge on which stands Chimney Rock (the last picture on this page); conceivably the north precipice of the canyon could be approached from the Pavilion Mtn fire-lookout road from the Diamond S, or (so I was told) from the Two Springs Road a few miles east of the Hat Creek Jnctn at the eastern end of the canyon.
BCArchives # H-02933	BC Archives # NA-11619
BC Archives # C-09841	BC Archives # C-01333
BC Archives # C-01279	BC Archives # NA-12025
BC Archives # H-00994	BC Archives # NA-12020
BC Archives # NA-12021	BC Archives # C-01279
BC Archives # NA-12029	BC Archives # H-01004
BC Archives # NA-12022	BC Archives # NA-12023
BC Archives # NA-12027	BC Archives # NA-12024
	BC Archives # NA-12019
BC Archives # NA-12028	BC Archives # I-22332

I have strong memories of Marble Canyon and Pavilion Lake from an overnight camp we made there one spring equinox in the early '80s.  We slept in the back of a '64 Impala station wagon, and woke up hearing the most remarkable noise - as if bells were ringing in the canyon, mixed with roaring and howling as if every beast in the valley were enraged or terrified; no doubt some of them were.  Some of them perhaps were - but the main part of the noise, as it turned out, was caused by the grinding against the shore of the icesheet on Pavilion Lake.  We sat and listened for at least two hours, completely in awe - it was as loud as it was strange - until we grew cold and decided we needed to find somewhere for coffee (which was at least 30 miles away).  One story I've heard is that the valley was taboo in some way for natives, as at one time there had been a great battle fought there where many warriors died who haunt the place; remembering the sound that lake made, I can see where some of that belief came from.

A community of the Bonaparte Band of the Secwepemc (Shuwsap) nation is situated within the valley's eastern end, and the village of the Pavilion Band (Tskwaylaxw Nation) at the western outlet, where the Pavilion valley opens onto the Fraser Canyon.  There are many abandoned quiggly hole (pit-house) towns in the valley.  One of the largest of them is at the foot of the canyon wall at the back of the fifth picture below, which is taken from the canyon's south wall above the western end of Pavilion Lake.

Aerial pic from Photos by Kat	Aerial pic from Photos by Kat
Aerial pic from Photos by Kat	Aerial pic from Photos by Kat
Aerial pic from Photos by Kat	Aerial pic from Photos by Kat
Hat Creek Ranch
BC Archives # A-03503	BC Archives # E-03334
Aerial pic from Photos by Kat	Aerial pic from Photos by Kat
BC Archives # G-08760	BC Archives # G-08761
BC Archives # F-02699	BC Archives # H-05408
BC Archives # G-08762

 
 

Chimney Rock
Photo: Mike Cleven	BC Archives # C-09846
BC Archives # NA-12026	Photo: Mike Cleven