2nd Canadian Stop - Hell's Gate

We left Hope on Thursday morning in sunshine which was nice after yesterday's all day rain.  Our trip north consisted primarily of following the Fraser River thru the mountains.  We are on Highway 1, which is called the Gold Rush Trail, and runs for almost 1,200 miles from just outside Vancouver all the way to Prince George.  Then it turns east and doubles back to Vancouver.  We will follow it as far as Prince George where we will start north on the ALCAN Highway.  Prospectors found gold all along this river.

We encountered 7 tunnels along the way and saw trains numerous times below us. 

Trains use both sides of the canyon, going north on the west side and south on the east side.  They had their own tunnels to travel thru.

We stopped about half way at something called "Hell's Gate." 

A tram takes you down to the other side of the river to a gift shop (what else?) and a restaurant. 

A bridge crosses the river and you can actually walk back up, which I did!  They said it was strenuous (and it WAS).  Took me about 35 minutes to do it.  The river is very fast here - 35 miles per hour.  So fast that the salmon can't swim up it.  So they built these fishways (fish ladder system) along each side thru which they swim. 

Normally they would have been in the river already but spring is late this year and the snow in the mountains has not melted yet.  When the river rises, they will be swimming up stream.

Here are trains on both sides of the river:

It is early in the season so we didn't have worry about crowds.  We ate some salmon chowder and bread and then walked around.

A little history of the area:

This monument depicts how the traders traversed the canyon: We did find a couple of people to take our picture:

We spent a couple hours here and were thoroughly fascinated by the history.
While Judy was waiting for me to make the walk, she caught this truck going by:

We've seen alot of this while in the Pacific Northwest.

From here, we continued our trip north to Cache Creek.