Alta Lake (Whistler) & Garibaldi

Brandywine Falls

Cheakamus Canyon

In support of my webspace rental fees plleasedonate generously at GoFundMe or Patreon

Thank your for visiting. If you enjoy this site
please make a donation.

BC Archives # F-07504, PGE tracks at Alta Lake, approaching Rainbow Lodge (around corner)

BC Archives # F-07504 PGE/BCR tracks at Alta Lake, just south of Rainbow Lodge.

It would be extremely hard to surpass the excellent visual history website created by Pepper Sunlight Productions for the Whistler Museum on the history of Rainbow Lodge and its founder, Myrtle Philip, which I highly recommend you visit by one of the links in this sentence. It is my hope that a similarly-produced site can one day be done for Lillooet and the Bridge River Country beyond the simple layout of my own, pending the cooperation of the Canadian government's Digital Collections programme and the Lillooet Historical Society and other organizations. I include the Alta Lake and Garibaldi areas in this site because they, and Squamish, were and are a part of the history of the Lillooet Country, though less understood as such nowadays when Whistler is by far the most prominent town in the region (and one of the richest in Canada). Pictures on this page are presented not in an effort to describe the early history of Rainbow Lodge and Alta Lake, which the Myrtle Philip site already does so well, but by way of having found them in searching BC Archives pictures on the PGE (BCR) and feeling that they are of interest to the history of the region. Rainbow Lodge was only one of many railway-oriented tourist hostelries along BC's own railway, some of them first-class resorts such as the old Craig Lodge tennis resort at Seton Lake. Thanks to Whistler's rise as an international ski resort out of the old skier cabins of Alta Lake, Rainbow Lodge has become the most famous and enduring story on the PGE line. The train no longer stops at Brandywine Falls for picnics and gawking, and the hand-car is no longer available for resort guests to tool up and down the valley on for entertainment, nor are there weekend dances thrown by guests from the big city, many of them entertainers and chorus workers and visiting performers and stars. Rainbow Lodge today is a rustic museum of moss-covered cabins adjacent to the railway track, which is all that's left of the old resort, but thanks to the Myrtle Philip website and the efforts of the Whistler Museum society, Myrtle Philip and her Rainbow Lodge live on. . The rest of this page below is mostly miscellaneous historic pictures from the BC Archives collection which do not appear on the Myrtle Philip site.

BC Archives # F-07504	BC Archives # F-07503 Handcar in front of Alta Lake Hotel
BC Archives # I-29046 Rainbow PGE Station, Alta Lake	These three pictures give a sample of the days spent by tourists weekending at Rainbow Lodge or one of the Alta Lake's other hostelries, including the Alta Lake Hotel visible to the upper left of the handcar depicted above (I think that building may still be there as a private residence, but I'm not sure). The handcar is no longer available as an entertainment, but hopefully Whistler will oneday have a rail system to link its scattered and traffic-clogged residential areas either for joyriding or gettingto the hill - or back from the bar without having to worry about drunk-driver roadblocks. This stretch of track is across lake from the ski hills and modern village; the watertower is long gone, no longer required as the railway's fleet of steam locomotives is long-gone.
Part of the experience of travelling the PGE, then as now, is waiting for the train; the crowd gathered at Rainbow Lodge Station on Alta Lake gives an idea both of the popularity of the run and its resorts, and of the wait for the rail service once given the name "Prince George Eventually" as a play on its corporate acronym.

BC Archives # E-00353 Viewing Deck at Brandywine Falls, PGE Bridge in background	During the golden age of railway tourism on the PGE, travellers from the Coast were treated to a picnic and sightseeing stop at Brandywine Falls, so named because a wager for its height by two "discoverers" was made, one bettor ante-ing a bottle of wine, the other a bottle of brandy.
BC Archives # G-07254	BC Archives # G-07255
Photo: Mike Cleven

BC Archives # G-07259	The BC Archives caption for this picture says "Brandywine Falls", but of course the falls are nowhere to be seen although this is in their general vicinity. I'm not sure if this is above or below the falls (locals familiar with terrain please advise) (replace "_at_" in address with @ symbol). Visible in the distance is the famously spectacular Tantalus Range; the Cheakamus River, shown in the photo, plunges into its canyon in the gap in the forested mountains just behind the hill in the left-centre of the picture.

BC Archives #C-07243

BC Archives # C-07244

BC Archives # I-29043

These are very old pictures but this stretch of the railway looks pretty much the same today as it does at right, which was taken after the replcement of the old wood trestle with a newer concrete one, probably in the 1950s. The route of the PGE climbed up the rocky chasm of the Cheakamus River through twenty miles of such terrain until reaching the broader highland valley above Garibaldi that leads up to Whistler and beyond to the Lillooet country via the Green River. This is among the most spectacular and physically daring stretches of the line both to build and to travel, although it does not share the precipitous heights of the Fraser Canyon nor the grandeur of the shore-hugging seascapes of Howe Sound.

These pictures were likely commissioned by the railway following construction of the concrete trestles that are featured in them; the lower picture of the three is from 1947, probably after the rebuilding of the same trestles depicted in the upper two; this is the same stretch of the Canyon, at Mile 18 (from Squamish, presumably); note the steam locomotive on the trestle in the lower picture, which helps give an idea of the Canyon's scale.. The rail line through the Canyon clings close in above the torrent of the river, which in spring freshet or rainfall-generated floods can completely choke the gorge with a massive torrent and has been known to take out trains and bridgings such as the one shown here. The downstream views from this part of the canyon look out over the main view of the famous Tantalus Range which dominates the Squamish region and the Sea-to-Sky Highway to and from Whistler. An abandoned powerline road-cum-"highway" through the rocky country above the rail line is now a popular mountain biking route between Squamish and Whistler, and today's much-improved highway lies further above, although at the head of the canyon the highway and the rail line come to the same elevation and stay that way for most of the journey towards Whistler.