Kw’ikw’iya:la (Coquihalla) in the Halq’emeylem language of the Stó:lō, is a place name meaning “stingy place.” It refers to a fishing rock and deep pool named Skw’éxweq, near the mouth of what is now known as the Coquihalla River. According to Stó:lō oral history, the s’ó:lmexw, short, dark-skinned underwater people, would grab spears, frustrating attempts at fishing there.

Bridal Veil Falls Trestle, Coquihalla Valley, 1983

Tripping in the Coquihalla

This photograph comes to you by way of a dusty trip on the Coquihalla Pipeline Road, to check up on a roommate’s “herb garden,” hidden in the Cascade Mountains.

I eagerly accepted an invitation to join my herbalist friends, not out of any interest in medicinal plants, but because I’d heard of new climbing routes, pioneered by Vancouver climbers on nearby granite domes, among the Anderson River Peaks or Coquihalla Range.*

The Coquihalla Valley forms a natural, if not easy, passage from the coast to the interior. Historically, the area marked the convergence of trade routes such as the Hudson Bay Company Trail (1849) the Similkameen Road (1860), and the Hope-Nicola Trail (1876).

An area covering 5,750 hectares of this spectacular Coast-Cascade Dry Belt Landscape, a transition zone between coastal and southern interior environments, with four different biogeoclimatic zones, is protected by the Coquihalla Summit Recreation Area, established in 1987. Prominent at the pass, the granite face of 2,040 metre Yak Peak (6,693’) rises 500 metres (1,640′) above Highway 5, (Coquihalla), completed in 1986. During the years that Highway 5 was a tollway, many drivers including truckers attempted to avoid the toll by driving the old pipeline road until it was finally gated.

The Kettle Valley Railway, built in 1914, traversed this corrugated landscape. Plagued by avalanches and rock slides throughout its existence, the line linking the coast to the Kootenays struggled to make money.

If you’ve been this way, perhaps driven over the pass on “the Coque,” you might have noticed highway signs bearing names from Shakespeare’s plays. Evidently, a CPR official with a soft spot for the  bard — Andrew McCulloch, the chief engineer in charge of building the railway is generally credited — named stations along the route after Shakespearean characters. Hence, we have Lear, Jessica, Iago, Shylock, Romeo, Juliet, Portia, and Othello. The Othello tunnels, built at great expense through the Coquihalla gorge, survive today as a tourist attraction.

Following two massive rock slides in succession, In 1959, CPR management decided to close the line rather than repair it. It was abandoned in 1962. Illustrated is the 400 foot long (123 metre) Bridalveil AKA Falls Lake Creek trestle near the summit of the pass. The trestle collapsed in 1995.

Pot Shot

The clandestine plantation, it turned out, was unimpressive, consisting of not more than a half dozen plants. I made one exposure there: let’s call it Group Portrait with Weed. But the drive through the Coquihalla Valley was memorable. We travelled the dirt road squeezed into the cab of a pickup truck, with Stevie Ray Vaughn’s music blasting from the tape deck. 

As far as fishing for photographs goes, the results were stingy. I shot two rolls of 12-exposure 120 film in my Mamiyaflex camera — Ilford HP5 400 and FP4 125 — which gave up the image reproduced here. Most frames illustrate a lack of visualization, poor exposure, sloppy composition, due perhaps to misjudgement of parallax compensation demanded by the twin-lens camera … or the intervention of s’ó:lmexw pranksters.

I took the trestle negative into the darkroom more than once, only to abandon printing in the early stages, considering it a technical failure. Whether I’m less obsessive in my old age, or the Naiads were awaiting the development of digital printmaking, I’m able to see past shortcomings, to pull a satisfactory print from the emulsion of that negative, exposed to the light nearly 40-years-ago.

*e.g. Scott Flavelle and John Howe pioneered a superb route on Springbok Peak in 1979, Canadian Alpine Journal, Vol 63, 1980, PP. 73-74. A team headed by Robin Barley reported new routes on Ibex Peak and Les Cornes in 1981. CAJ, Vol. 65, 1982, P. 60.