Merry Christmas

 

Season's Greetings

Season's greetings from British Columbia.

Happy Birthday E

Last week E celebrated her birthday!  We had lots of goodies and a chocolate cake!  Yum, yum!

The end of September

I was cleaning up the many files on my computer and came across these pictures from a beautiful fall day here at the end of September, so I thought I would share a few with you.

Snow in the Mountains

Just one more from the fall where it was snowing up in the mountains.  You can still see a few leaves clinging to the tree branches in this picture, but they are definitely all gone now, and the mountain peaks are completely covered in snow.

Preview of Winter

Well now that the trip pictures are done, I can move on to posting some from the town and the sites around here.  I have lots of pictures from the late summer to share, but I will jump ahead here a little and show you some snow pictures.  These are from the end of October.  We had this lovely snow fall, and then the next day it all melted so that there was no snow for the kids to go trick or treating on Halloween.

The snow came down in such big flakes, I swear they were almost the size of golf balls.

Bear Glacier

Highway 37A runs from the Meziadin Junction on highway 37 through Stewart BC to Hyder Alaska.  If you ever find yourself in the area, I highly recommend taking this side trip as the highway goes through towering coastal mountains with snow capped peeks and a few glaciers too.  There are also numerous waterfalls that can been seen tumbling down the mountain sides along the way, making it a beautiful drive.

This is Bear Glacier which can be easily seen from the highway. 

Burns Lake, British Columbia

I just thought I would share the welcome sign and volkswagen bettle planted with flowers that greets you at either end of town when you enter Burns Lake.  It give a whole new meaning to the term "flower power".

Getting Closer

We knew we were getting closer to our final destination when we saw this sign:

 E's favourite sign:
 

Hell's Gate

On the recommendation of a good friend, we stopped at Hell's Gate Airtram in Fraser Canyon.  Hell's Gate was first written about by the explorer Simon Fraser.  In his journal  he describes this narrow passage as an "awesome gorge" where the towering rock walls of the Fraser River plunge toward each other forcing the waters through a passage only 110 feet wide (35 m).  When the Canadian National Railway was forging through the Rockies and Fraser Canyon, one of the blasts caused a rock slide which partially blocked the Fraser River at Hell's Gate.  This caused a dramatic drop in the salmon run and since that time the Hell's Gate Fishways were built to help the salmon navigate this section of the river.

There is also plenty history, legends, folklore and mystery written about the Hell's Gate area to make your visit all the more interesting.

The Fraser River

In the picture below you can see a portion of the fish gateway built on the side river bank  to help the salmon navigate the river.

 The Airtram and suspension bridge across the Fraser River

I have no idea how the salmon are able to swim up stream against these raging waters, even with the assistance of the fishways, it still seems like an impossible journey with whirlpools and currents everywhere.