Committee's Punch Bowl
# Committee's Punch Bowl

The Committee's Punch Bowl is a small tarn on the continental divide straddling the border between the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. George Simpson, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, named the lake for the London-based managing committee of that company in 1824. While journeying on an important trade route in the company's trade area in what is now western Canada and parts of Alaska and the northwestern United States, he saw the lake at the summit of Athabasca Pass.

As Simpson noted, Committee's Punch Bowl drains to two oceans. Its northwest margin is the source of the Whirlpool River, tributary to the Athabasca River which runs to Lake Athabasca. That lake drains into the Rivière des Rochers which in turn joins the Peace River to form the Slave River to Great Slave Lake from which the waters descend down the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean.

The southern outlet drains to Pacific Creek to the Wood River to the former Canoe River, now impounded and called the Canoe Reach of Kinbasket Lake, a reservoir of the Columbia River, which runs to the Pacific Ocean in the United States.

