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Hurley River / Scenic Drive
2003-September-01
Because of the wild fires a backcountry travel ban was in effect for almost two
weeks. Well, I had the perfect opportunity to do a driving trip from
Lillooet to the old mining towns of Bralorne and Goldbridge. We reached
the banks of Carpenter Lake, this lake was formed when the Bridge River was
dammed in 1948. For a quick reminder click
here
We continue along the road which follows the shoreline of Carpenter Lake to
Goldbridge. Goldbridge now is almost a ghost town but in its busiest times
it has a peak population of over 10,000 - larger than today's Lillooet, and
comparable to Squamish of only a few years ago.
Then we reached Bralorne. We stopped for a quick visit to Bralorne Pioneer
Museum. Bralorne was once the richest gold mine in Canada's history and is
one of the world's deepest delvings. The town is an at elevation of 3400
ft (1000 msn) but some of the deepest parts of the mine go to over 1.5 km below
sea level.
And then, the now abandoned Pioneer Mine. This mine was merged with
Bralorne Mine and their tunnels integrated. For a second I thought to do a
casual hiking but then I remember that abandoned mines have hidden air shafts
and old openings covered by the bush. This place was torn down immediately
following the mine's closing in 1971 (to keep the hippies from taking it over
but somehow they managed to go to Vancouver)
After you cross the mine, the road lead to nowhere, well no quite nowhere, but
they do fade off into "goat tracks", one towards McGillivray Pass, the
other towards the Hurley Main Road; you can still get through the latter but
unless you vehicle have a decent clearance you are risking you muffler and an
engine mount.
One of the locals told me that discrepancies in the tunnel surveys had missed a
cubic mile of mountains between Bralorne and Pioneer Mines. Now a company called
"Bralorne Pioneer Gold Mines Ltd" is having fun. The old guy
told stories about the clumps of gold as big as a man's fist.
I did a further research, when the mining was shut down in 1971, it had produced
an astounding 4.1 million ounces of gold (worth U$1.6 billion at today's gold
prices). Well, all the old guy's stories proved to be true :)
Besides the minor mining activity, now Bralorne has hung on in the form of a
retirement and recreation town. This place has a huge skiing potential,
the place is really crowded in winter time.
Then we continue our trip over the Hurley Pass, a summer only road, before we
continue our way to the pastural farm lands of Pemberton we paid a quick visit
to Downton Lake. I took a break, two hours on a dusty road were waiting
for me.
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