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River northward, the Coquihalla slashes directly through
the Cascade Range to gain the dry Interior plateau in
less than an hour's drive. In doing so, it traverses
no fewer than eight of the
province's 14 biogeoclimatic zones, revealing with almost
breathtaking speed a remarkable diversity of natural
landscapes. At first, the valley is lush with the mixed
hardwoods and softwoods of the Coastal Western Hemlock
Zone. With increasing elevation, you enter the subalpine
forest of the Mountain Hemlock Zone and come close to
the harsh, almost treeless Alpine Tundra Zone. Suddenly,
the highway breaks through a mountain pass. You can
expect an immediate improvement in the weather. Quickly,
you drop through the Engelmann Spruce-Subalpine Fir
and Montane Spruce zones into the dry Interior Douglas-fir
Zone. As you follow the Coldwater River north, the forest
thins. Ponderosa pine, with its strikingly patterned
bark and long needles, dominates its own Ponderosa Pine
Zone. Finally, with the town of Merritt before you,
trees all but disappear. You have now entered Canada's
hottest landscape, the Bunchgrass Zone. This zone receives
fewer than 30 centimetres of precipitation a year.
Although the Coquihalla Highway is
relatively new (builders were pushed relentlessly to
complete it in time for Expo 86), its route had long
served as a pipeline for trade between Interior and
coastal aboriginal peoples. In 1848, Alex Anderson led
his fur brigade back to Kamloops via the Coquihalla
Valley, a route that would serve the trade for a decade
and lead to the establishment of Fort Hope. When gold
seekers moved north, before the Cariboo Road was completed,
some of them took the Boston Bar Trail. They followed
the Coquihalla River and its tributary, Boston Bar Creek,
then broke over the mountain to gain the Fraser via
Anderson River, upstream of the most treacherous reaches
of the Fraser Canyon. Snow closed the Boston Bar Trail
for most of the winter. Oval signs bearing the names
of Shakespearean characters are clues to a more recent
enterprise -- the Kettle Valley Railway (KVR).
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