DEEP COVE: PAUL MCCLURE PHOTOGRAPHY

IT TUTORIAL

HORNBY ISLAND ADVENTURES

PADDLING BEFORE THE FRONT

We soak up the breathtaking views after a long morning's paddle. The east and south sides of our route are bound by the imposing white peaks of the Cariboo Mountains, the northern boundary of the Interior wet belt, rising up across the Rocky Mountain Trench, and the Isaac Formation, the oldest of seven formations that make up the Cariboo Group.

Some 270 million plus years ago, had one wanted to buy waterfront property in what is now British Columbia, you’d be looking somewhere between Prince George and the Alberta border. The rest of the province had yet to arrive but would be made up of over twenty major terranes from around the Pacific. The rock that would eventually become the Cariboo Mountains and form the lakes and valleys of Bowron was far out in the Pacific Ocean, down near the equator.

With tectonic shifting, these rocks drifted north-eastward, riding their continental plate, until they collided with and joined the Cordillera in what is now British Columbia. Continued pressure and volcanic activity helped create the tremendous slopes of the Cariboo Range we see today with repeated bouts of glaciation during the Pleistocene carving their final shape. Warm and dry with bellies filled full of soup and crisps, we head back out to explore more of nature's bounty.

HATSHEPSUT: FIFTH PHARAOH OF THE 18TH DYNASTY

Hatshepsut, whose name means, "Foremost of Noble Ladies, was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the time of the joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutnose III, ca. 1473-1458 B.C. 

Here she is lovingly carved out of indurated limestone, a fitting homage as Hatshepsut is regarded by Egyptologists as one of the most successful pharaohs, reigning longer than any other woman of an indigenous Egyptian dynasty. 

This piece, originally from Hathshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri, now resides at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.