On a recent trip through British Columbia in September 2020 my wife and I came across a very interesting railway bridge at Lytton which is a few kilometres north of the more famous Cisco bridges in the Fraser Canyon. The Cisco bridges get all the glory but the bridge at Lytton which is crossed by the Canadian National Railway mainline has a pedestrian catwalk attached to the north side of the bridge. The bridge is open to the public and is high above the Fraser River just south of the confluence of the Thompson and Fraser Rivers.
My wife and I walked from the east to the west side of the river across the catwalk, much to her consternation. She was a little distressed at looking through the steel grating beneath her feet at the Fraser River which rushes below. The swift-flowing river with its numerous huge swirling eddies can be easily heard. She was even more distressed at me suggesting that it would be fun if a train would cross the bridge while we were on the catwalk, a suggestion I made when we were half-way across!
I found the location quite easily by Googling it. On the map you will see that the parking lot is at the end of River Street. However, at first we drove right past River Street and ended at a dead end because River Street is more akin to a back alley than a typical residential street.
I hope that next time I am in that area I can hang around long enough to see a train pass over the bridge while I am on the catwalk. The railway traffic patterns were rather messed up the day we were there because the day before 20 cars of a potash train had derailed near Hope, BC. As a result, we saw a number of trains along the Fraser River Canyon that day but very few of them were moving.
In the following pictures, you will notice a distinct haze in the air. This is smoke that had blanketed southwest BC and Alberta from the forest fires on the west coast of the US. After having experienced this smoke for the previous five days our eyes were burning and our throats sore from the smoke. Even though we were wearing our COVID-19 masks over our noses and masks everywhere we went that we weren't alone, they were no match for the pervasive smoke. On the ferry ride from Vancouver Island to the mainland, the smoke was so thick that we could see no land for the two-hour sailing.
