Big Bar and north: the Upper Canyon of the Fraser

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Big Bar & Big Bar Canyon

BC Archives # I-57558

Aerial pic from Photos by Kat

The higher profile of areas upriver from Moran in gold rush times is a reminder that only wheeled travel - wagons and stages - needed to use the road, and that non-wheeled travel could use the Canyon route instead and many did; it was shorter but much more scarce on water and the system of roadhouses available along the Cariboo Road, however....

BC Archives # I-57590	BC Archives I-57565
Big Bar Canyon
BC Archives # B-02675	This picture of Big Bar Canyon, about 60 miles upstream from Moran, was probably taken for hydroelectric survey purposes, or for railway surveys for a riverside route that was never used; there's usually a good (industrial) reason isolated bits of BC landscape wind up in the government archives, government photographers rarely shooting for their own enjoyment. The Canyon here is obviously not as high nor the river as rough as in the Fountain-Pavilion-Moran region, but as you can see it's every bit as arid and challenging, although the severe dryland of the Canyon's depth is narrower here, with relatively verdant plateau forest limning the Canyon edge, as seen here.
BC Archives # I-57872
BC Archives # I-22450	BC Archives # I-57872
The building at left was Phil Grinder's hotel and post office and dates from the time when the Canyon trails were still a major route of travel between Lillooet and the Cariboo.and Big Bar was a relatively busy place. The picture at right is typical of the rangeland valleys which cut into the Cariboo plateau in the Big Bar area.
Aerial pic from Photos by Kat	Aerial pic from Photos by Kat
I'm uncertain of the location depicted here, which is somewhere between Moran and Dog Creek; I think it's south of Big Bar as there are still mountains flanking the canyon instead of plateau.

Grand Canyon of the Fraser - Fountain to Big Bar

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 one, which I generally refer to as the "Grand Canyon" of the Fraser. The term "Grand Canyon of the Fraser", however, is also 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 are more correctly called the "Black Canyon"). Also, due to the designation of Highway 1 from Ashcroft to Hope as the "Fraser Canyon 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 Fountain, where the Fraser does a torturous double-reverse 's' bend in a one-mile radius, 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 7000 feet, and at Moran (just north of Pavilion), it is more like 8000. 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 Imperial Valley and Gang Ranches.

BC Archives # I-22328

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