moran

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Aerial pic from Photos by Kat	Moran canyon Glimpsed by rail passengers briefly (when there was still passenger service, that is) just before the rail line tucks into a side valley off the Fraser and heads for Clinton and the Cariboo Plateau, Moran Canyon is one of the deepest and grandest stretches of the Grand Canyon of the Fraser. The aerial view at left is from just above Mt. Cole at Pavilion; the cut of the BCR line can be seen on the sidehill at right. The square patches at left are ginseng fields in West Pavilion, as that side of the Fraser is known in this area. This picture is a closeup of the full-size version just below it; a hint of the vast broad flat of the Cariboo Plateau can be seen at upper right in the lower picture. The BC Archives picture below, part of a promotional series from the days when the BCR (PGE) believed in generating passenger business, was taken from the last bit of the train line before it leaves the Fraser, just beyond the last visible bit of rail line in the picture at lower left.
Aerial pic from Photos by Kat	BC Archives # I-22329
BC Archives # I-22322	Moran as a name is little more than a wayside post on the BCR line, without so much as a station; only a stop name on a board; no town, village, not even a railway works yard or siding. As a place it is one of the grandest locations along the whole length of the Fraser Canyon from Williams Lake south to Hope, as well as having one of the more austere dryland ecologies in BC. The mountain walls of the canyon-valley here, ranging in vertical difference six to seven thousand feet or more above the Fraser, far exceed those of the mile-deep Grand Canyon of the Colorado - as do many canyons in the Lillooet Country: Moran is one of the deepest, if not the craggiest, stretch of the Fraser Canyon (surpassed only by the Great Bend at Fountain). The location was a highlight of BC Rail passenger service, reaching dizzying heights above the Fraser on a cutbank into a gigantic, partly-treed scree that stretches nearly from the summit of the Marble Range high above down the river. The view in either direction takes in the Fraser Gorge, south to Glen Fraser (as at left) and north almost to High Bar.

BC Archives # I-22336	Just north beyond Moran, the rail line cuts through a cleft in the Marble Range through a small ranching settlement known as Arden Forest, and then on to Kelly Lake, rejoining the route of the northbound Cariboo Road at the base of the Pavilion Mountain Road. All the black-and-white pictures here are courtesy the British Columbia Archives; those I hope to add in future will be in colour. Moran is well-known to hydroelectric engineers as the potential location of what could have been one of the largest dams in the province, although government policy has now moved away from reservoir-type hydroelectric developments towards less environmentally harmful sources; if ever built the resulting lake would stretch north beyond Williams Lake as well as some distance up the Chilcotin River; damage to the Fraser fishery, siltation and changes to the climate and biogeography of the Cariboo-Chilcotin were among the reasons the project was never built, despite several attempts to push it by politicians and Hydro officials (as with the Hat Creek Power Project). Other dams in the same much-dreamed-of project would be at Glen Fraser-Fountain and at Lillooet Canyon, just above the town of Lillooet, which would have flooded out the Six Mile Rapids Fishing Grounds and backed the Fraser up past Fountain Rapids; Glen Fraser would have been just above that. Needless to say, the effect of any one of these dams on the Fraser fishery would be devastating, which is why there is a standing moratorium on further damming of the Fraser and its tributaries (the Nechako having been already heavily impacted by the Kitimat-Kemano hydroelectric-aluminum smelter development); the extremely high dam at Moran - 3000' - would be simply too high for any fish ladder system to be considered. And in addition to the very serious loss of the remaining upper Fraser fishery, one of Canada's grandest and (though-forgotten) historic stretches of desert scenery would be lost forever, even though it's largely invisible to the public eye today because most travel goes via other regions nowadays due to the lack of paved roads and services in the area. From Moran north to Williams Lake, the Fraser is only touched by difficult 4x4 ranch and forestry roads, with almost nothing in the way of services other than small cable ferries and the occasional gas pump and store here and there at High Bar, Big Bar and Gang Ranch-Dog Creek. If you ever decide to drive up this way by any of the routes, remember to bring lots of gas - and water.
BC Archives # H-00643

The two pictures at right correspond to each other closely; the lower picture is taken from near the first "point" on the rail line in the picture at right, looking over the shoulder of the ridge at far left up the Fraser. For good measure and to give a good idea of the scale of the terrain in these views, the picture below is the full size one from which the picture at right was cropped, and shows how far below the Fraser is, and how much more severe desert-like the country is as you get towards the canyon bottom. The climate of the rangeland and higher mountain areas is obviously much wetter, though many of the creeks that form on the benchland do not reach the Fraser, clearly shown in both of the pictures in the next row.	Aerial pic from Photos by Kat

Aerial pic from Photos by Kat	BC Archives # NA-04639

BC Archives # H-00639	This is another northward view from the rail line. If I'm not mistaken (it's been years since I've been up the rail line that far) the valley visible at far right in this photo is the gap in the Marble Range that the line takes towards Clinton via Arden Forest-Kelly Lake; the benchlands at centre-left are, I think, those featured in the centre of the other photo. The mountain in the far distance at centre left - and mountain it is, despite its seeming hillishness, is China Head, one of the eastward flanks of the Camelsfoot Range, now a favourite area for 4x4 enthusiasts in search of high alpine roads to conquer. Roads from China Head lead to Big Bar Ferry, a native-operated cable-drag raft open only part of the year (and when the locals are around to run it) that connects back via Jesmond to Clinton, as well as further north along the Fraser to Gang Ranch and Dog Creek. The view on the right is from the PGE line as it emerges from the narrow gulch connecting the Kelly Lake area to the Fraser Canyon; the rail line curves away to the left from here towards Lillooet.

BC Archives # H-00641	BC Archives # I-22330
This view gives a good idea of the general lay of the track from Pavilion to Moran - one long grade cut into the side of a rocky scree. The grade is actually fairly steep and very tough on the engines, the whole ascent from Glen Fraser to Moran and Arden Forest being as far as I know the largest hill on the whole of the BCR mainline. Only one other surveyed route to the Interior available to the BCR - Railway Pass from Pemberton into the upper Hurley River - would have surpassed it in the distance climbed and the grade, had it ever been built, with a grade beginning near Pemberton and progressing 50 miles to the summit of Railway Pass; the distance from Lillooet to Moran is only about 30 miles, and the ascent is only 3500' or so [check]. In the vicinity or Moran the train generally slows down; not only so passengers could get a good ogle of the depths of the Fraser Canyon far below, but also because of the instability of the slope and the likelihood or rock on the track. I think every time I've been along this stretch there's been a work crew in the area, a sign that ongoing work is needed to keep the railway open in this area due to ongoing erosion and small landslips.	I'm not sure of the actual track mileage of this photo, but it seems close to the final mile or so of the Moran Canyon stretch of the BCR, which just north of here will duck to the right into a gap in the mountainside, entering the (much greener) Arden Forest-Kelly Lake Valley, which leads towards Clinton. This view is looking north up the Fraser towards High Bar; some of the benchlands in this view are or were part of the Blue Mountain Ranch, also known as West Pavilion, which was also for a while part of the holdings of the ranchlands once known as "Carson's Kingdom", now part of the Pavilion-Termuende Ranch. This photo gives a really good idea of the incredible aridity and sparse vegetation of the landscape here, which is typical of the Fraser from Lillooet to Williams Lake.