Field Trips

Field trip #1 - Lillooet River Basin, led by Olav Slaymaker, Michael Bovis and Erik Schiefer

Sunday, June 27th

Field trip is now full.

Thirty five years ago, we started work on the sediment budget of Lillooet River basin, a 3,850 km² basin containing 400 km² of glaciers and ice fields and an unusually active sediment source in the form of the Meager Creek volcanic complex. This complex consists of early to mid Pleistocene dacite and rhyolitic lava and pyroclastic deposits which have undergone hydrothermal alteration. The valley experienced extensive river training under the direction of the Water Development Branch of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act from 1946-1951, a process which steepened and straightened the river above Lillooet Lake and lowered the outlet of Lillooet Lake by 2.5 metres. Gradual growth of population in the village of Pemberton since its incorporation in 1966 contrasted with the rapid growth of the Mount Currie Reserve, the home of the most westerly of the Interior Salish people, located directly on the Lillooet River delta. More recently, since about 1995, Pemberton has become a bedroom community, serving the needs of Whistler, whose prominence as an international skiing destination has made housing prohibitively expensive. Consequently, heavy investment in building of homes on the Lillooet River floodplain is now evident. Research in the northern half of the basin has been directed by Michael Bovis; that in the southern half by Olav Slaymaker.

Itinerary and Information

Field trip #2 - Chilliwack Valley, led by Michael Church and Jon Tunnicliffe

Wednesday, June 30th

Field trip is now full.

Chilliwack Valley is a 1200 km2 drainage basin in the glaciated northernmost Cascade Mountains about 100 km east of Vancouver. The upper basin drains via Chilliwack Lake. Modern land use includes forestry and mixed institutional uses. We have selected this valley in order to study the regional geomorphological history of the Holocene Epoch and to examine the problems of establishing long term sediment budgets in drainage basins substantially larger than most experimental or "representative" basins. We are using mineral tracing, sediment texture trends, seismic methods and evidence of morphological evolution to establish the history of sediment transfers. The field trip will demonstrate the landscape and landforms of the valley and generate discussion of some of our results and problems.

Itinerary and Information