This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2014) |
Chilcotin Ranges | |
---|---|
Dimensions | |
Area | 9,616 km2 (3,713 sq mi) |
Geography | |
Country | Canada |
Province | British Columbia |
Range coordinates | 51°10′0″N123°15′0″W / 51.16667°N 123.25000°W [1] |
Parent range | Pacific Ranges |
Borders on | Chilcotin Plateau, Waddington Range |
The Chilcotin Ranges are a subdivision of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains (in some classifications they are a separate subdivision). They lie on the inland lea of the Pacific Ranges, abutting the Interior Plateau of British Columbia. Their northwestern end is near the head of the Klinaklini River and their southeast end is the Fraser River just north of Lillooet; their northern flank is the edge of the Plateau while their southern is the north bank of the Bridge River. In some reckonings they do not go all the way to the Fraser but end at the Yalakom River, which is the North Fork of the Bridge.
They are not one range but a collection of ranges, often very distinct from each other. There are three major named subranges:
To the west of the western end of the Chilcotin Ranges, and considered by some to be part of the group, are:
South of which are the Waddington Range and the Homathko Icefield.
In recent years major provincial parks and protected areas have been created in the central-eastern part of the Chilcotin Ranges. These are the Big Creek Provincial Park, the Tsʼilʔos Provincial Park (where the '?' is a glottal stop) and Big Creek Provincial Park, and the Spruce Lake Protected Area and Churn Creek Protected Area.
This region is commonly (but incorrectly) known as the "South Chilcotin" and is the object of a protracted quarrel between preservationist movements and resource extraction proposals since the 1930s. A provincial park was established in the 1990s but was downgraded in 2007 to the Spruce Lake Protected Area. The political status of the area is uncertain and the area preserved is greatly reduced from the original proposals to protect it, which began in the 1930s during the heyday of the Bridge River goldfield towns just to the south.
Historically this region was the hunting territory of Chief Hunter Jack of the Lakes Lillooet, whose big-game hunting business shared the region with hunters of the Tsilhqot'in people. The shared use of the area north of the Bridge River and Gun Creek was part of the settlement of an early-19th-century peace which had ended a long and bloody war between Hunter Jack's people and the Tsilhqot'in. Trails from the Bridge River Country led over the many ranges of the region to Taseko Lake and Chilko Lake in the Chilcotin Country, and also east across the Camelsfoot Range to the Fraser River near Big Bar.
Though no mines have ever been found in the proposed protected area, other than a few marginal ones in the vicinity of Eldorado Mountain, the south flank of Big Dog Mountain at the northwest end of the Shulaps Range was the site of a major gold excitement in 1941, connected with the interests who then owned the Bralorne-Pioneer Mine mines nearby. Physically daunting efforts to reach the alpine-elevation mine site over the Shulaps Range in order to preserve rights to the claim in the allotted time period almost destroyed the large pack-train, but the papers got filed. Those claims were shuffled aside during World War II but remained on the map and are currently under exploitation as the Blue Creek Mine. Other large mine prospects in the area include copper diggings covering the slopes of Red Mountain, the highest in the Camelsfoot Range just north of the Blue Creek Mine.
The area's unique and distinct landscape and ecology, so different even from the rest of the Chilcotin Ranges or the rest of the Bridge River Country, is what made it stand out amid a region already wild and extremely beautiful and why it's a long-term candidate for protection. The neighbouring Dickson, Shulaps and Bendor Ranges are all unprotected and have been or are being heavily logged, except for special preserves in alpine areas of the Shulaps and in its neighbour to the east, the Camelsfoot Range.
Many on the environmentalist side hope that the creation of Tsʼilʔos and Big Creek Provincial Park will help shore up the protection of the Spruce Lake Protected Area. Hunting guide Ted (Chilco) Choate of Gaspard Lake, on the Chilcotin Plateau just northeast of the Spruce Lake Protected Area has joined in the call to combine all these three parks, plus the Churn Creek Protected Area to their northeast, plus some of the surrounding country and the deep, much higher heart of the Pacific Ranges into a National Park. Industry and government remain committed to shared use and sustainable planning.
Mining interests in the area are few, although the area is rich in copper and there are rumours of pitchblende (which contains uranium), but in over 100 years of exploration no profitable deposits of anything have been found and no major mines established. In recent years, however, clearcut logging has penetrated the flanks of the area and pushed the boundaries of the park from south and east, feeding mills at Lillooet, British Columbia and beyond in the Thompson-Okanagan. This has generated protests on both sides of the environment vs. resource quarrel, but also instigated a stakeholder committee known as an Integrated Resource Management Process Unit which has had varying degrees of success at resolving disputes and planning land-use in the region.
The Fraser Canyon is a major landform of the Fraser River where it descends rapidly through narrow rock gorges in the Coast Mountains en route from the Interior Plateau of British Columbia to the Fraser Valley. Colloquially, the term "Fraser Canyon" is often used to include the Thompson Canyon from Lytton to Ashcroft, since they form the same highway route which most people are familiar with, although it is actually reckoned to begin above Williams Lake at Soda Creek Canyon near the town of the same name.
The Bridge River is an approximately 120 kilometres (75 mi) long river in southern British Columbia. It flows south-east from the Coast Mountains. Until 1961, it was a major tributary of the Fraser River, entering that stream about six miles upstream from the town of Lillooet; its flow, however, was near-completely diverted into Seton Lake with the completion of the Bridge River Power Project, with the water now entering the Fraser just south of Lillooet as a result.
The Chilcotin region of British Columbia is usually known simply as "the Chilcotin", and also in speech commonly as "the Chilcotin Country" or simply Chilcotin. It is a plateau and mountain region in British Columbia on the inland lee of the Coast Mountains on the west side of the Fraser River. Chilcotin is also the name of the river draining that region. In the language of the Tsilhqot'in people, their name and the name of the river means "those of the red ochre river". The proper name of the Chilcotin Country, or Tsilhqotʼin territory, in their language is Tŝilhqotʼin Nen.
Tŝilhqox Biny, known as Chilko Lake, is a 180 km2 lake in west-central British Columbia, at the head of the Chilko River on the Chilcotin Plateau. The lake is about 65 km long, with a southwest arm 10 km long. It is one of the largest lakes by volume in the province because of its great depth, and the largest above 1,000 m in elevation. It and Harrison Lake are the largest lakes in the southern Coast Mountains.
The Pacific Ranges are the southernmost subdivision of the Coast Mountains portion of the Pacific Cordillera. Located entirely within British Columbia, Canada, they run northwest from the lower stretches of the Fraser River to Bella Coola and Burke Channel, north of which are the Kitimat Ranges. The Coast Mountains lie between the Interior Plateau and the Coast of British Columbia.
The Niut Range is 3600 km2 in area. It is a subrange of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, although in some classifications it is considered part of the Chilcotin Ranges. The Niut is located in the angle of the Homathko River and its main west fork, Mosley Creek. It is isolated, island-like, by those rivers from its neighbour ranges, as both streams have their source on the Chilcotin Plateau in behind the range. Razorback Mountain is its highest peak.
The Shulaps Range is a subrange of the Chilcotin Ranges subset of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains in southwest-central British Columbia. The range is 55 km NW–SE and 15 km SW–NE and 2,970 km2 (1,150 sq mi) in area.
Tŝ’ilʔoŝ, also known as Mount Tatlow, is one of the principal summits of the Chilcotin Ranges subdivision of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains of southern British Columbia. Standing on an isolated ridge between the lower end of Chilko Lake and the Taseko Lakes, it is 3,063 m (10,049 ft) in elevation.
The Homathko River is one of the major rivers of the southern Coast Mountains of the Canadian province of British Columbia. It is one of the few rivers that penetrates the range from the interior Chilcotin Country to the coastal inlets of the Pacific Ocean. The Homathko River reaches the sea at the head of Bute Inlet, just west of the mouth of the Southgate River.
The Camelsfoot Range is a sub-range of the Chilcotin Ranges subdivision of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains in British Columbia. The Fraser River forms its eastern boundary. The range is approximately 90 km at its maximum length and less than 30 km wide at its widest.
The Chilcotin Plateau is part of the Fraser Plateau, a major subdivision of the Interior Plateau of British Columbia. The Chilcotin Plateau is physically near-identical with the region of the same name, i.e. "the Chilcotin", which lies between the Fraser River and the southern Coast Mountains and is defined by the basin of the Chilcotin River and so includes montane areas beyond the plateau. East of the Chilcotin Plateau, across the Fraser River, is the Cariboo Plateau, while to the north beyond the West Road (Blackwater) River is the Nechako Plateau. West and south of the Chilcotin Plateau are various subdivisions of the Coast Mountains, including the Chilcotin Ranges which lie along the plateau's southwest.
Big Creek Provincial Park is a provincial park in British Columbia, Canada.
The Spruce Lake Protected Area, formerly known variously as the Southern Chilcotin Mountains Provincial Park, Southern Chilcotins, and also as South Chilcotin Provincial Park, is a 71,347-hectare Protected Area in the British Columbia provincial parks system, approximately 200 km north of Vancouver. The area had been the subject of an ongoing preservationist controversy since the 1930s. In 2007, its status as a provincial park was downgraded to protected area.
Tyaughton Creek, formerly gazetted as the Tyaughton River, also historically known as Tyoax Creek, is a 50 kilometre tributary of British Columbia's Bridge River, flowing generally southeast to enter the main flow of that river about mid-way along the length of Carpenter Lake, a reservoir formed by Terzaghi Dam of the Bridge River Power Project.
Big Creek is a roughly 120-kilometre (75 mi) long tributary of British Columbia's Chilcotin River. Its surroundings are protected as the Big Creek Ecological Reserve.
Black Dome Mountain is the northernmost summit of the Camelsfoot Range, which lies along the west side of the Fraser River, north of Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada. It is an ancient butte-like volcano located in the formation known as the Chilcotin Group, which lie between the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains and the mid-Fraser River in British Columbia, Canada.
The British Columbia Interior, popularly referred to as the BC Interior or simply the Interior, is a geographic region of the Canadian province of British Columbia. While the exact boundaries are variously defined, the British Columbia Interior is generally defined to include the 14 regional districts that do not have coastline along the Pacific Ocean or Salish Sea, and are not part of the Lower Mainland. Other boundaries may exclude parts of or even entire regional districts, or expand the definition to include the regional districts of Fraser Valley, Squamish–Lillooet, and Kitimat–Stikine.
The Churn Creek Protected Area is a 36,747-hectare (90,800-acre) provincial protected area in British Columbia, Canada. It is a mix of dryland canyon and steppe and adjoining rangeland flanking the canyon of Churn Creek and that stream's confluence with the Fraser River at the northern apex of the Camelsfoot Range. The historic Gang Ranch is just north of the Churn Creek Protected Area. The Empire Valley Ranch ecological preserve was added to the Protected Area in an expansion.
Churn Creek is a tributary of the Fraser River in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
South Chilcotin Mountains Provincial Park is a provincial park in British Columbia, Canada, located on Highway 40 northwest of Lillooet, British Columbia. The park, which is 56,796 ha. in size, was established on April 18, 2001, and It was created out of a portion of the Spruce Lake Protected Area. The park is located on three Indigenous Nations: The Tsilhqot’in, St’at’imc, and Secwepemc.