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 .
17-621: 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
34-412: A complex of peaks than a single icefield, in contrast to the other huge icefield-massifs of the southern Coast Mountains , which are not so peak-studded and tend to have more contiguous icemasses. The difficulty of access to the core of the massif delayed actual sighting, measurement and climbing of Mount Waddington until 1936; it had only been espied from Vancouver Island by climbers in the 1930s and
51-523: 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
68-802: Is the Pantheon Range , while to its south is the Whitemantle Range . Northeast across Mosley Creek, the main west fork of the Homathko River , is the Niut Range , while east across the Homathko River is the Homathko Icefield and its attendant ranges. Northwest across the Klinaklini River is the Ha-Iltzuk Icefield , which is the largest of the coastal icecaps of the southern Coast Mountains, larger than
85-533: The Coast Mountains in southwestern British Columbia , Canada . It is only about 4,000 km (1,500 sq mi) in area, relatively small in area within the expanse of the range, but it is the highest area of the Pacific Ranges and of the Coast Mountains , being crowned by its namesake Mount Waddington 4,019 m (13,186 ft). The Waddington Range is also extremely rugged and more
102-648: 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
119-458: 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. Waddington Range The Waddington Range is a subrange of the Pacific Ranges of
136-511: 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
153-571: 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
170-569: 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
187-601: The Grand Canyon of the Homathko River , occurred the first gruesome event in the guerilla war known to history as the Chilcotin War of 1864. This resulted from the attempt by Alfred Waddington to build a road from Bute Inlet to Barkerville . Port Waddington , a land-survey left over from those days, remains on the map on the south bank of the Homathko where it empties into Bute Inlet . Waddington's Road
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#1732772017412204-437: 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
221-535: 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
238-663: 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
255-566: 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
272-479: Was at first referred to as Mystery Mountain - because its existence until then had been unknown. Apparently even in First Nations lore its existence was spoken of only vaguely, as a possibility, and it seems unlikely the core of the massif was penetrated by any First Nations adventurer given the tremendous difficulty posed even for mountaineers equipped with modern outdoor gear. At its eastern edge, deep in
289-558: Was never completed because of the war, but was examined in later years as one of the main possible routings for the mainline of the Canadian Pacific Railway . Choice of the route would see the terminus of the railway at Victoria but despite strong favour from that city and the province the railway chose Burrard Inlet , which as a result became today's Vancouver . Immediately north of the Waddington Range
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