Hell's Gate and Hope Slide

August 27/2014  Last hot sunny day, rain is coming in for the long weekend.  3 days of misty, cool, rain at times.  Friday, Saturday, Sunday.  Time for us to Read!
About 1 hour north of Hope, BC on the Trans Canada Hwy there is a place called Hell's Gate in the Fraser Canyon.   To enable the highway to be constructed 7 tunnels were burrowed into the sides of the rugged Fraser canyon.

In 1808 the explorer Simon Fraser was terrified of this section of the river he is know to say "A place where no human being should venture, for surely we have encountered the gate of hell".   It is here that the Fraser river rushes through the narrow gorge at twice the volume of Niagara Falls.

Hell's Gate Tram going down

The Trans Canada Hwy 1 sits 800 feet atop the river and the only way down to the other side is to take the aerial tram across.   Since coming West we have been on more trams and gondolas than ever before.

Fraser River Gorge

on the right is the cement fishway

Hell's Gate is evidence of man's best and worst feats of engineering.   When the Canadian National Railway was blasting the walls of the canyon for construction of their rail in 1913 it resulted in a landslide that wiped out millions of spawning salmon.  It took almost 30 years to remigrate the salmon effectively by creating the International Fishways for them to swim through.    As well another odd circumstance in the area is the Hope Slide to the West on Crowsnest Highway #3.  In 1965 one of the largest landslides in Canadian history occurred after an earthquake hit the area.    47 million cubic meters of rock, soil and snow crashed down into the valley covering the road, lake and some vehicles never to be found.

Hope slide

road, lake, valley filled with land slide