In December 1858 the British Colonist newspaper reported that
the Fraser River was frozen all the way across below the mouth
of the Harrison River. At Port Douglas, the new town at the
north end of Harrison's Lake -- at the south end of the new
Harrison Lillooet trail to the goldfields -- the snow fell for
three days before the sky cleared and the thermometer plunged to
5 degrees below zero. A party of one hundred twenty miners came
downriver from Fort Yale in canoes; when they struck ice at the
mouth of the Harrison River they took to their feet and walked
downriver toward Fort Langley. They supposed the HBC fort was a
mere fifteen miles away -- but they were wrong. The journey
would have taken them three days, but they had provisions for
only one. Their trail had to be made though ten inches of snow
over a high mountain, and in places the men waded waist deep
sloughs and pushed their way through the thick underbrush that
clogged the valley floor in those years. But many were rescued
by the captain of the st