W.A.C. Bennett Dam, Hudson's Hope BC

Rick was probably most impressed along this trip by our tour of the Bennett Dam just outside Hudson's Hope. It is a completely earthen dam, built between 1961 and 1968 at great cost and effort by our most famous of Premier's W.A.C. Bennett and the Crown Corporation of BC Hydro who manages it to this day. The reservoir for the dam is 227 miles long, and covers 410,000 acres.  The structure is the world's largest earth-filled structure. The dam itself is 600 feet high with 10 generators and produces one third of the total power needs for the province of British Columbia (13 billion kilowatt hours annually).

We enjoyed our tour of the visitor centre, and then a one hour tour of the power house itself, which is buried into the bedrock behind the dam. We were driven by bus down 500 feet into the bowels of the dam where a guide gave us instruction about the entire process of power generation.

The earthen dam with power house on the left side, reservoir on the right.

Bill and Rick inside the visitor centre.

Showing the size of the drainage basin for the dam and the Peace River.

The bus took us down 500 feet into the backside of the dam at the level of the bottom of the power house which we entered on the right side. Ahead of us is the dam itself. It was filled with rocky material from a terminal moraine approximately 6 miles away and brought by conveyor belt to the dam site. It was a long and extremely difficult task.

Inside we visited the generator room which is the size of the Titanic with 10 turbine generators set beneath the floor. Each turbine is fed with lake water through a 5 and a half metre diameter tube.

Next we progressed to the area of the manifold which carries the water from the turbines out of the power house into the Peace River...

Back up at the parking lot, we took the truck across the dam to the other side...

The roadway is a narrow 2 lane track, and the down hill side gave us some very impressive views of the outflow of the Peace River away from the power house.

The viewpoint on the far side of the dam shows the reservoir on the left side, the top of the dam where  we drove across, the earthen side of the dam and the Peace River exiting from the power house at the base of the dam.

Of all the days spent in travel, this was by the far the most impressive experience we had!!