A nice South African City image:
2015 – Kamloops-Lillooet Road Trip – 8 of 9 – Seton Lake Viewpoint
Image by Ted’s photos – For Me & You
Our weekend road trip continued south and west from Lillooet on the Duffey Lake Road (Highway 99) toward Pemberton and Whistler BC.
A few km’s out of Lillooet the road comes upon a viewing point for Seton Lake.
The lake was named in the 1860s by Alexander Caulfield Anderson, who traversed the uncharted territory in 1846, after his cousin and boyhood friend, Lt. Col. Alexander Seton, who was drowned in the wreck of the troopship HMS Birkenhead off the South African coast in 1852.
The Canadian National Railway (formerly the British Columbia Railway, originally the Pacific Great Eastern) runs along the north shore of the lake.
Seton Lake makes up a portion of BC Hydro’s Bridge River Power generation project. The lake is natural in origin but was raised slightly as part of the project.
The Bridge River hydroelectric complex consists of three dams and stores water for four generating stations. The system uses Bridge River water three times in succession to generate 492 megawatts of British Columbia’s electrical supply.
BC Hydro operates recreation areas on Seton Lake Reservoir (Naxwit Picnic Area, Seton Beach, Seton Viewpoint, Seton Dam Campground.
Bridge River powerhouses:
Work on Powerhouse No.1 was postponed until 1946 due to the depression and war years. However, growing power requirements of the post-war era gave the project great urgency.
The building was rushed to completion and the first generator was installed in 1948. Three more generators were added at intervals until 1954. The plant’s total output of 180 MW was the largest source of power in the province at that time. While a second tunnel was being bored to carry water from Carpenter Reservoir, work on Powerhouse No. 2 commenced.
Four generators were installed by the end of 1960. Water for the turbines of both powerhouses flows from the tunnels under Mission Mountain into steel penstocks, which drop a vertical distance of 329 m (1,078 feet) down the hillside.
Bridge No.1 has four penstocks-one for each turbine. Bridge No. 2 has two penstocks, which split into four just before they enter the powerhouse.
The Bridge River Powerhouses have a maximum generating capacity of 480 MW and an average generating capability of 2670 GWh per year – more than enough to supply the City of Surrey.
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