Among the Canadian Alps

This is merely introductory to a paragraph or two from Sir Sandford Fleming's account of his journey through the mountains in 1883 – something to ponder over as we rush down the same wild valley in our luxurious observation car.

Fleming had left the railway at Calgary, and with ponies and pack-horses had slowly forced his way to the summit of the main range, and was now climbing down the valley of the Kicking Horse to the Columbia. We pick him up one morning, somewhere about the western boundary of what is now Yoho Park.

"The mist hangs like a thick curtain, concealing everything not directly near the camp-fire. But we start; the six pack-horses in front with their loads standing out from their backs, giving the creatures the appearance of so many dromedaries. Dave rides ahead with the bell-horse, then the pack-horses follow, and the horsemen bring up the rear to see that none stray behind. Our journey this day is over exceedingly rough ground. We have to cross gorges so narrow that a biscuit might be thrown from the last horse descending to the bell-horse six hundred feet ahead, ascending the opposite side.

"The fires have been running through the wood and are still burning; many of the half-burnt trees have been blown down by last night's gale, obstructing the trail and making advance extremely difficult… Fortunately there is no wind. The air is still and quiet, otherwise we would run the risk of blackened trunks falling around us, possibly upon the animals or ourselves, even at the best seriously to have impeded our progress, if such a mischance did not make an advance impossible until the wind should moderate.

"We move forward down and up gorges hundreds of feet deep, amongst rocky masses where the poor horses have to clamber as best they can amid sharp points and deep crevices, running the constant risk of a broken leg. The trail now takes another character. A series of precipices run sheer up from the boiling current to form a contracted canyon. A path has therefore been traced along the hill side, ascending to the elevation of some seven or eight hundred feet. For a long distance not a vestige of vegetation is to be seen. On the steep acclivity our line of advance is narrow, so narrow that there is scarcely a foothold; nevertheless we have to follow for some six miles this thread of trail, which seemed to us by no means in excess of the requirements of the chamois and the mountain goat.

"We cross clay, rock and gravel slides at a giddy height. To look down gives one an uncontrollable dizziness, to make the head swim and the view unsteady, even with men of tried nerves. I do not think that I can ever forget that terrible walk. We are from five to eight hundred feet high on a path of from ten to fifteen inches wide and at some points almost obliterated, with slopes above and below us so steep that a stone would roll into the torrent in the abyss below."

A few miles more, and Fleming emerged from the valley of the Kicking Horse and stood on the banks of the Columbia, with the mighty walls of the Rockies and Selkirks towering above him to the east and to the west. His way through the Selkirks was by the same route that we now follow on the railway, and it brought him in time to the summit of Rogers Pass, and the first sight of the since famous Illecillewaet Glacier. As we follow in his footsteps, we find ourselves entering the third great National Park of Canada – appropriately named Glacier Park, for from any one of its great peaks one may count a score of these wonderful ice rivers.

The Selkirk Range strikes even the unobservant traveller as markedly different from the main range of the Rockies. The colouring of the rocks is more varied and less sombre; the valleys are deeper and clothed with dense forests of gigantic evergreens, cedar, spruce, hemlock, Douglas fir, and up near the extreme limit of vegetation the beautiful Lyall's larch; and the snowfall is very much heavier than in the more easterly range. From its geographical position the Selkirk Range intercepts a large percentage of the moisture borne inland from the Pacific, which would otherwise reach the Rockies, and this with the deep valleys has resulted in a vegetation that is almost tropical in its luxuriance, and infinite in its variety, something over five hundred different flowers alone having been discovered in Glacier Park.

Geologists tell us that the Selkirks are very much older than the main range, that in fact they were hoary with antiquity when as the result of some vast convulsion of nature the Rockies were born. The brilliantly coloured quartzites of the Selkirks belong to an age so remote that the mere thought of it is enough to make one's head reel. In their day they looked out to the eastward upon a great sea, covering what are to-day vast fertile plains, and the sea washed over the place where the giants of the Rockies now lift their snowy heads proudly into the heavens.

Compared with Rocky Mountain Park, Glacier Park is a comparatively small reservation, covering an area of 468 square miles, but any one capable of appreciating the glories of mountain scenery, the great valleys with their picturesque torrents and waterfalls and riotous vegetation; the upper slopes with their bewildering array of alpine flowers, dryas, anemones and mountain lilies, red and white heather, glowing masses of painter's-brush, yellow and purple asters, blue gentians and yellow columbines, delicate moss campion and the dear little forget-me-not; the dizzy precipices and dazzling glaciers; and the conquered summits with their glorious outlook over a world of indescribable wildness and grandeur, – will find here a region of perpetual delight, where he may roam afield for weeks each day on an entirely new trail.

Although the park as a park did not exist until long after his visit, and good roads and trails now take the place of the rough paths he had to follow, William Spotswood Green's Among the Selkirk Glaciers, is still the most satisfactory and entertaining introduction that one can find, or wish for, to this mountain playground. Green came to the Selkirks in 1888, after years of delightful experience in the Alps and the great mountains of New Zealand. He left with the conviction that he had seen nothing elsewhere more impressive or more fascinating than these mountains of British Columbia. "Dark green forest, rushing streams, purple peaks, silvery ice, a cloudless sky, and a most transparent atmosphere," he says, "all combine to form a perfect Alpine paradise."

One of his first visits was to the Illecillewaet Glacier, which then entailed a slow and more or less painful scramble through a wilderness of fallen timber, tangled thickets of alder scrub, and the appropriately named devil's club. To-day one reaches the foot of the glacier by way of a delightful and well-kept trail through the forest, the trail starting from the doors of Glacier House, the large and comfortable hotel maintained by the Canadian Pacific Railway at the headquarters of the park.

On the way he had an opportunity of observing the tremendous destructive power of avalanches. "The hemlock, balsam, and Douglas firs, though as stout as ships' masts, had been snapped off close to their roots; some were torn up and driven long distances from where they grew, and lay in heaps, but the general position of the trunks pointed distinctly to the direction from which the destroying avalanche had come. Even the boulders of the moraine showed signs of having been shifted, some of them huge blocks of quartzite, one I measured 50 X 33 X 24 feet. No better illustration could be presented of the overwhelming power of an avalanche, though composed of nothing else than the accumulation of a winter's snow."

On this or another expedition, Green was introduced to the idiosyncrasies of the Indian pony or cayuse. One had been taken as a pack horse, and picked his way demurely along the trail for some time, with that air of meek innocence which always imposes upon the tenderfoot. Suddenly, without a moment's warning, and for no apparent reason, he was "seized with a paroxysm of buck-jumping; the packs flew off, he rolled down through the ferns and rocks, and then, perfectly satisfied with his performance, stood patiently while we restored our goods on his back." The incident will bring back many similar experiences to those who have camped in the Rocky Mountains. One is almost tempted to chuckle over Green's bewilderment. It is generally found that there is reason in the pony's madness. When he runs unexpectedly into a hornet's nest, the most natural thing in the world is to get away from it as quickly as possible, and as a rule the quickest way is to roll down hill.

Exasperating as the cayuse can be on many occasions, no one who has any sense of humour or any appreciation of animal intelligence can fail in time to grow very fond of a horse that has been his companion on many wild mountain trails, that has carried him safely through raging torrents, and sometimes shared his meal beside the camp fire. A good pony will follow unerringly a trail that is indistinguishable to even an experienced guide; he will carry an able-bodied man, or a much heavier pack, all day over a trail that would kill an eastern horse; he will pick his way through a tangle of fallen timber with an instinct that is almost uncanny; and he will do all this on the uncertain feed of mountain camps. He is a true philosopher, a creature of shrewd common sense, pluck, endurance, and rare humour, a good fellow, and a rare friend.

Green made the first attempt to scale Mount Sir Donald, the splendid peak that almost overshadows Glacier House. He selected what proved to be an impracticable route, and was forced to return without reaching the summit. The mountain has since been repeatedly climbed, and is now with Mount Stephen in the Rockies the most popular peak for mountain-climbers in the Canadian parks. Thanks to the Swiss guides who are stationed here throughout the season, any one of reasonable endurance and with a head for dizzy heights or depths, can now make his way to the summit of Sir Donald, 10,808 feet above the sea, and be rewarded with a view that will more than compensate him for the fatigue.

Although mountain-climbing in the Canadian Rockies has been singularly free from accidents, there have of course occasionally been narrow escapes, and one of these is graphically described in Among the Selkirk Glaciers. Green and a companion had climbed to the summit of Mount Bonney, a great peak some miles west of Sir Donald, and were returning, when they made the usual mistake of trying a short cut to avoid a tedious piece of climbing. There seemed to be a way down a very steep snow slope, and Green went ahead on the rope to test it, while his companion anchored himself as firmly as possible in the snow above. They were of course "roped" in the usual mountaineering fashion.

"I turned my face to the slope," says Green, "and holding on to the rope kicked my toes in and went over the brink. I took the precaution, too, of burying my axe up to its head at every step. Just below the brink there was a projecting crag. This I thought would give a firm footing before testing the snow slope. I got one foot on to it and was taking it as gently as possible when the rock gave way, a large piece of snow went with it and fell on the slope twenty feet below.

"I stuck my knees into the snow, but felt my whole weight was on the rope. Then I heard a swishing noise in the air, and glancing downwards saw that the whole snow slope had cracked across and was starting away down towards the valley in one huge avalanche. H. hauled cautiously but firmly on the rope, and getting what grip I could with toes, knees and ice-axe I was quickly in a safe position, and the two of us standing side by side watched the clouds of snow filling the abyss below and the huge masses bounding outwards. We listened to the sullen roar which gradually subsided and all again was quiet."

It was probably this same stout rope by which Green pulled himself back to safety, of which he elsewhere gives the history, quite an eventful one, though sadly ignoble in its latter days. "Its first good work was to save the lives of some of our party in a bad slip, near the summit of the Balmhorn on the Bernese Overland. It was next used as the mizzen topping-lift of a fifteen-ton yawl. It was my tent-rope in the New Zealand Alps. It was the bridle used on a deep-sea trawl that went down to 1000 fathoms beneath the surface of the Atlantic. It trained a colt. Now it was in our diamond hitch; and I regret to say that its old age was disgraced by its being used for cording one of my boxes on the voyage home."

Compared with Rocky Mountains Park and Yoho Park, Glacier Park at present is somewhat deficient in roads and trails, those that have been opened all radiating from headquarters and extending not more than six or eight miles in any direction. This, however, will be remedied in a few years, the park being still very young, and in the meantime it is not an unmixed evil to those who care to get off the beaten track. Old Indian trails follow all the rivers and creeks throughout the park, and though these will be more or less obliterated and blocked with fallen timber, a competent guide can always be relied upon to take you to any corner of the park, and when you have found a good camping ground, with feed for the horses, a sparkling stream at your feet, and a circle of noble peaks smiling down upon you, you will, if you are the right sort, thank your stars that railways and hotels and roads lie far away in another world beyond the mountains. To really enjoy this sensation of out-of-the-worldness, however, you must have brought with you a sufficient supply of worldly eatables.

Of the available trails, one leads up to Rogers Pass, at the summit of the Selkirks, with Mount Macdonald on one side and Mount Tupper on the other. These two great peaks were named after the famous Canadian statesmen, Sir John Macdonald and Sir Charles Tupper. The latter, after watching the growth of Canada from a group of weak and scattered colonies to a strong and ambitious Dominion, is still alive in England in his ninety-third year.

In the opposite direction, good trails lead to the Illecillewaet Glacier, and to Asulkan Pass and the Asulkan Glacier, from which it is possible to reach a group of magnificent peaks, Castor and Pollux, The Dome, Clarke, Swanzy, and a little farther to the west Bonney and Smart. On the opposite side lies the vast Illecillewaet snow-field.

From Glacier House, again, a good carriage road takes you west parallel with the railway and the Illecillewaet River, towards Cougar Mountain and Ross Peak. Eventually this will be extended to the Nakimu Caves. At present a trail follows the same route to the Caves, and around Mount Cheops to Rogers Pass, thus providing a round trip, from Glacier House to the Caves, thence to Rogers Pass, and back to Glacier House again.

The Nakimu Caves were discovered accidentally some nine years ago, and are said to be well worth visiting. They are in charge of C. H. Deutschmann, who discovered and explored them, and thanks to his competent guidance and the facilities that have been provided it is now possible for any one to visit and examine this curious freak of nature. It will be more convenient to describe the Caves in another chapter.

Those who would really wish to know the character, extent and variety of the scenery in Glacier Park and the great mountain range of which it is only a small part, are recommended to consult A. O. Wheeler's delightful guide-book, The Selkirk Mountains, and the same author's exhaustive work published by the Dominion Government, The Selkirk Range. These are not only readable and authoritative, but with the exception of Green's Among the Selkirk Glaciers, they are the only books available on this very important region.3