The Camelsfoot Range is a sub-range of the Chilcotin Ranges subdivision of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains in British Columbia. The Fraser River forms its eastern boundary. The range is approximately 90 km at its maximum length and less than 30 km wide at its widest.
Terrain and location
The far southeast end of the Camelsfoot is extremely rugged, and dropping to one last point at 7000'-plus before plunging into the gorge of the Fraser Canyon at Fountain, near Lillooet. For 45 km NW from there, the range is rocky and lightly forested with lodgepole pine, breaking into high benchlands and large creek basins draining through benchland country via small canyons.
Beyond that the range's terrain is much more gentle, with high, meadowed ridges running east towards the Fraser Canyon between treed plateaus and small canyons, and a few large, barren domes running further north along the Fraser. The range is bounded on the north and west by a large and impressive benchland-and-hoodoo sand canyon similar to those along the range's east flank - that of Churn Creek, which is a provincial protected area. The historic Empire Valley Ranch is near the mouth of Churn Creek and is provincially protected for heritage and environmental reasons. It is on a high side-valley above the Fraser Canyon; north of it beyond Churn Creek is the historically significant Gang Ranch.
Camels in the Cariboo
Camelsfoot Peak and the range itself take their name from an odd episode in the story of the Fraser and Cariboo Gold Rushes. Frank Laumeister, a United States veteran of the Camel Corps, bought 23 camels from the US military, which was ending their use. He used the animals to carry freight on the Douglas Road and the Old Cariboo Road from Lillooet to Fort Alexandria, and later on the new Cariboo Wagon Road from Yale. After this, he finally discontinued using the camels. Horses could not stand their smell, the camels' soft feet were hurt by the rocky soils of the BC Interior and the canyon trails, and handlers found them difficult. Many escaped retirement into the wilds.
The last confirmed sighting was in the Ashcroft area in 1905, possibly 1910 by some claims. Barroom stories recount sightings elsewhere in the southern Interior into the 1930s, but these are taken with the same amount of stock as the Sasquatch or the Cariboo Alligator.
The original Log Cabin Theatre in Lillooet, still exists today, originally was used by Laumeister for a camel barn. No one knows if the camels roamed the Camelsfoot. The new highway bridge in Lillooet is named the Bridge of the Twenty-Three Camels to commemorate their role in local history.
The name of the Yalakom River is a simplified version of the Chilcotin word for the ewe of the mountain sheep. Shulaps, the name of the range to the west of the Camelsfoot, is a simplified version of the Chilcotin for the ram.
Peaks
There have been copper prospects operating on Red Mountain 2445 m (8022 ft), the highest in the range, and on Poison Mountain 2264 m (7428 ft), just south Red, is located where the spine of the Shulaps Range intersects with that of the Camelsfoot, at the apex of the Yalakom valley which runs SE towards Lillooet from this point. Poison Mountain's name comes from the toxic leaching of its orebodies into local streams (and rumours of mercury in the copper ore) while Red's comes from the colour of its cuprous earth. Red's flanks show ziggurat-like scars that are evidence of the scale of ore-sampling that at one time was underway.
There are projected open-pit mine and smelter plans for the Poison Mountain-Red Mountain orebody, using power from the also projected Hat Creek lignite deposits nearby on the other side of the Fraser. These have never been brought forward in the public planning process, nor are they likely to be given the scope (and overlapping) of First Nations land claims in the immediate region.