Pitt Lake, BC
Gothic Pacific Northwest
The largest tidal lake in the world has an eerie and profound beauty that is unforgettable. This massive lake is only smaller than the Harrison in the Lower Mainland, and yet it's virtually deserted, as if haunted. The waters are very deep, and where there are shallows, giant logs are lodged into the mud, their tops leering above the surface with vegetable hats. As a child, I was thrilled to hear them called "deadheads" by the boaters.
Access to Pitt Lake is via the Pitt River from either of two boat launches in PoCo, or from the boat launch at Grant Narrows, at the end of Harris Rd in Pitt Meadows.
The Legend of Slumach's Lost Creek Mine
The Pitt Lake area is also the site of a legendary cursed goldmine from the 1800's. Slumach was a native man who did not speak English, but he would periodically pull his canoe into New Westminister and lay down walnut-sized nuggets of gold, after which he would drink and whore until his gold was spent, after which he would return up the Fraser to the Pitt Lake region, where his fabled mine presumably was.
But the story gets really interesting: Slumach never revealed the location of his mine (despite a variety of efforts from jealous local prospectors), and he was hanged in 1891 for murder. It's said he cursed the mine at the time of his execution.
Whether or not the curse was really uttered, the search for the secret canyon has killed a lot of people, which seems only to have kindled the fever - every spring, a number of treasure hunters set out into the wildernesses above Pitt Lake, braving the unforgiving heights, and the glaciers and scree and box canyons.
The story of the treasure has remained plausible in peoples' minds for more than 115 years, because at least two of those who sought Slumach's mine seem to have found it, though neither lived to tell anyone where it was.
More info about the Lost Creek Mine:
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