construction personnel are moved in or
out as required.

In conjunction with flights to points on
the established road are visits to areas
further west. North and south of Tele-
graph Creek on the Stikine River are ac-
tion centres of prospecting and mining.
Here in the Coast Range of mountains
the scenery is fantastic and unquestion-
ably some of the finest in British Colum-
bia. The huge glaciers flowing cast from
the 7,000 to 10,000-foot peaks of the
Alaska Panhandle provide a grandeur un-
equalled elsewhere at this latitude. In
good weather it is an exciting, unfor-
gettable flight down the B.C. boundary
adjacent to the Panhandle.

In the valleys cutting deeply into this
glacial region further to the south are two
of the province’s large modern mines —
Grandue and B.C. Moly. In between, at
the head of the Portland Canal, 120 air
miles north of Prince Rupert, lies Stew-
art, the port that sparked the idea of the
Stewart-Cassiar Highway.

Much of the new road runs through
the immense Stikine Plateau which is
surrounded by the Rocky Mountains, the
Coast, Cassiar, Skeena and Omincca
Ranges. It is intersected by deep valleys.
has a beauty and interest all its own. The
Stikine River flowing through the centre
of the plateau runs for some miles
through a canyon with 2,000-foot walls.

On the surface of the plateau, clearly
visible from the air, are extensive lava
flows, low mountains of obvious volcanic
origin and incredibly beautiful colorings
in the rock and vegetation.

As the surveyors worked their way
through this country they had their prob-
lems and many are the stories they can
tell. At one camp a boat was damaged
and sank and a party of eight were ma-
rooned on one side of a lake for eight
days until a plane rescued them.

At another the cook, alone most of cach
day when the survey party was away
working, was desperately afraid of the
many bears in the neighborhood. He built
himsclf a ladder up one side of a camp
shack as a retreat until he learned that a
bear could climb his ladder, prompting
him to build another ladder down the far
side as an escape route.

Of the areas traversed by the new road
one of the more interesting is the Iskut
Valley, a high plateau, semi-dry belt of
lodgepole pine, sparser vegetation and
lighter snowfall than elsewhere and lovely
lakes of which Kinaskan is an outstand-
ing example. ,

Iskut itself; an Indian settlement, was
for years forsaken by the Indians who
moved to Telegraph Creck and returned
only to trap in winter. But when the road

Page 20

came through, they returned and_ re-
established the village. Close by is now a
small store and post office.

Further south near Refuge Lake the
suivevors found evidence of the early line
from Hazelton to Telegraph Creck, poles
still standing, wire and the remains of
shacks, a reminder of those earlier
stiugeles and ambitions.

In the Bear Pass area of the road. a
few miles northeast of Stewart, is the only
really dificult section of road building in
the whole route. Here a glacier comes
down to the road level and a temporary
10 percent grade (at no other point is
the road more than 7 percent) had to be
built to avoid it but it will eventually be
bypassed, In the Bear Pass area survevors
were maintained by air drops and at one
point a lake at the foot of the glacier
broke its banks and flooded the valley to

Stewart.
But now that landing strips are estab-

lished and planes make regular visits,
maintenance establishments on the road
are no longer isolated, in fact hardy vour-
ists are beginning to dribble down this
road to the end of construction to see the
scenery and to wy the fishing and hunting.
Tt is an area in which virtually all the
main game species in B.C. are to be
found, However, it is still a 1,500-mile
drive from Vancouver to get well and
truly into this country via the Alaska
Highway, but it is one of the few places
in Canada where a car can get into the
hinterland that still has nature in its origi-
nal beauty.

Ir is still, and will remain for some
time. a country dependent on the air-
plane for — its
transportation.

This is the need for which the Trans-
Provincial Airlines has aimed its expan-
sion as a feeder line to pick up and trans-
port to points on the perimeter of the
country where larger airlines (CPA and
PWA) with larger aircraft can transport
faster and cheaper ever the greater dis-
tances. So all TPN pianes are oriented to
local services on a 50 percent schedule
and 50 percent charter basis.

Because of the difficulty of finding and
building landing strips in the remoter
areas of the north, the emphasis is on
float or amphibious craft. Only two
planes are exclusively on wheels -- the
DC-3 and the Otter. As an indication of

communications and

this, 95 percent of the company’s summer
revenue is derived from floats.

At present TPA sivcraft are based at
Burns Lake. Smithers, Terrace, Prince
Rupert, Ocean Falls, Sandspit and Mas-
set on the Queen Charlotte Islands. On
the charter side it is interesting to note
that recently a group was flown from
Terrace to and from the Abbotsford Air