Among the Canadian Alps
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The Minute Book at Glacier House contains an account of the first ascent of Mount Tupper, by Wolfgang Koehler, of Leipzig, in 1906. A translation of the narrative appeared in the Canadian Alpine Journal, 1909, from which the following is taken:
Koehler made the expedition with two Swiss guides, Edouard Fuez, Jr., and Gottfried Fuez. They walked from Glacier to Rogers Pass, and climbed up the trail to a hut provided for mountain-climbers, where they spent the night.
"The night was wonderfully beautiful, a cloudless sky and brilliant moonlight. Moreover, to be surrounded by the dear, beautiful mountains! How one's heart goes out to them! Towards 4 A. M. we got up, breakfasted, and started off at 5 A. M. We took the direction at first immediately behind the hut, then turned off to the right, and across the little icy creek, looking up to Rogers, Swiss and Fleming Peaks, Mount Tupper, Sifton and Grizzly. It was always up and then down again. We had innumerable gullies and streams to cross, until we reached the ridge at the end of two hours. We rested, and then started again, always following the ridge over icy blocks."
So they made their way, with more or less difficulty, until they reached a point where more serious problems confronted them. There were several possible routes, all involving pretty stiff climbing. One was finally selected as the most promising.
"In the middle of the right wall was a broad chimney, if only we could get up there direct. Two ridges appeared running parallel, which seemed to make the ascent possible. We climbed to the first ridge, next to the chimney, then up the first ridge in the chimney itself. So far we were still right. With the help of three picks and four hands Edouard got up a little higher, but quickly came down again. That could not be the right way. He tried then to go direct by the chimney, but that was not practicable, and so he had to come back.
"In between was Gottfried, who had successfully climbed up and stood in the chimney. I followed, Gottfried continued on, but a shower of big and small stones came down. It seemed as if everything was rotten, and, in spite of great care, not one of us could avoid bringing down the stones. We now went on the outside, round the rock, and came to a big flat, climbed a little broken chimney, and then got over a large rock. Soon we stood again before the wall. One piece appeared somewhat loose, and formed a breach, which gave us sufficient hold to get on to a small platform. From there it was a short, somewhat overhanging climb to the higher platform. 'This is the sort of place for people with long legs,' Edouard called out (I am 6 ft. 4 in.). 'Alas, we little ones have no chance.'
"We now came back again to the ridge, came to a little gendarme (isolated rock tower or pinnacle) with a beautiful outlook down the valley, and climbed on, until we suddenly came to a wide platform. We had all three expected that the last piece to the summit would be especially difficult. It looked so from the distance, but when we came to it quite an easy way appeared of getting up. We stepped over one sharp knife-edged ridge, 'tight-rope dancing' we called it, and with a loud hurrah, reached the summit… Would that many could see and experience the joy of this beautiful mountain as I have done. Aufwiedersehen!"
XI
AFIELD IN JASPER
HITHERTO we have been wandering about what may be called the Southern Group of the Canadian National Parks, along the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. There remain two parks, Jasper and Robson, lying on either side of Yellowhead Pass, famous in the annals of the fur-trade as Tête Jaune. Through both run the lines of the new transcontinental railways, the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern, on their way to the Pacific coast. These two parks may for convenience be called the Northern Group, although only one is strictly speaking a national park, Robson being under the jurisdiction of the Provincial Government of British Columbia. Tête Jaune Pass and Tête Jaune Cache are said to commemorate the personality of a veteran Indian trader or trapper whose yellow hair made him conspicuous in a country where black was the prevailing hue. Jasper Park is named after a famous trader of the North West Company, Jasper Hawes, the site of whose trading fort may still be seen on the banks of the Athabaska, though every vestige of the buildings has long since disappeared. Jasper House, as it was called, was still standing when Milton and Cheadle went through the mountains in 1862. They describe it as "a neat white building, surrounded by a low palisade, standing in a perfect garden of wild flowers, backed by dark green pines which clustered thickly round the bases of the hills." Ten years later, when Sandford Fleming examined the pass as a possible route for the Canadian Pacific Railway, the post had been abandoned and the buildings were falling into decay. A mile or two east of Jasper, the headquarters of the park, one is shown a grassy mound which represents all that remains of another old trading post, Henry House. Here two routes through the mountains forked, one leading up to Yellowhead Pass, and the other to Athabaska Pass.
The peculiar charm of Jasper Park, and of its sister reservation on the western side of the Pass, is in the fact that it is almost virgin ground. As a Park it is very young indeed, and there has not yet been time to improve upon nature. Lest this should suggest a touch of sarcasm, let us admit at once that nature can be improved upon when the improvement takes the form of practicable trails into the heart of the mountains, and the opening of such trails is one of the principal objects of the Canadian Parks authorities. Nevertheless, however one may appreciate the convenience of a good trail, there is a joy unspeakable to the natural man in getting out into the wilderness, if possible where no man has been before, but at least where nothing exists to remind him of the noisy civilisation he has managed to escape from for a time. And that is what you will find in Jasper Park: no automobiles, no stage coaches, no luxurious hotels, no newspapers, no luxuries of any kind, and very few conveniences; but a sufficiency of plain food, the intoxicating air of the mountains to eat it in, and the mountains themselves ever about and above you. What more could a tired man ask? What more could any man ask?
At least so two eastern city men thought as they awoke one glorious August morning to find their train crossing the eastern boundary of Jasper Park, with Brulé Lake sparkling ahead and the curious outlines of Folding Mountain dominating the landscape to the south. At a little station called Pocahontas, a few miles beyond the western end of the lake, they were dumped off unceremoniously with their luggage, and welcomed by a stalwart park officer who had rashly undertaken to look after them for the next few days, and particularly to pilot them out to the Miette hot springs. While he trotted off to round up his ponies, the two "tenderfeet" had leisure to look about them.
Pocahontas, what there is of it, nestles at the foot of Roche Miette, a great frowning bastion of rock dropping sheer for nearly a thousand feet toward the waters of the Athabaska. They tell you in the mountains that it was named after a trapper who managed to clamber up its precipitous sides many years ago, perhaps in chase of a mountain goat, and sat himself down on the extreme edge with his feet dangling over the thousand foot drop. No doubt the situation afforded him the same satisfaction that is experienced by those praiseworthy citizens whose names one sees carved on the extreme end of a log overhanging the Horseshoe Falls at Niagara. Posterity has rather a rude name for such heroes.
A short walk from Pocahontas brings you to a view of one of the most charming waterfalls in this part of the mountains. The erosion of ages has here carved out of the face of the cliff a lofty, semi-circular alcove, and over this background of sombre rock drops a ribbon of sparkling diamonds. An illustration might give some idea of the scene, but could not do justice to the peculiar grace and animation of the fall as seen under a bright sun and swayed gently by a summer's breeze. There are a number of beautiful waterfalls in Jasper Park, such as those on Stony River, a tributary of the Athabaska some distance above Pocahontas, in the Maligne Canyon, of which something will be said later, on the south side of Pyramid Mountain, and on Sulphur Creek above the hot springs, but none that cling to the memory like that of the Punch Bowl.
Largely because the Southern Parks, Rocky Mountains, Yoho and Glacier, are comparatively well known, the writer has preferred to describe them impersonally, to picture them as far as possible as seen through the eyes of other and more competent authorities, men who have learnt to know them intimately. The case is different with the Northern Parks, Jasper and Robson. Very few visitors from the outside world have yet discovered their wonderful possibilities; indeed until very lately they have been inaccessible except to those possessing the time and hardihood for a long journey from Edmonton over very rough trails. Similarly very little has been written about the Northern Parks. For this reason the writer will venture to describe in a more personal vein some of the characteristic features of Jasper and Robson.
Presently the ponies arrived, and we set off on our fourteen-mile ride to the Miette springs. The trail was a good one, so that we were not yet in the full enjoyment of the wilderness. That was to come later. Mile after mile we jogged along, sometimes in the open, sometimes in the heart of the woods, winding zigzag fashion down a steep hillside, splashing through a noisy little creek, and zigzagging up the opposite hill. For a couple of hours Roche Miette towered above us as we swung around his flank, and then ahead loomed up the great wall of Buttress Mountain, with Fiddle Creek winding along its base, peacefully enough now, so peacefully indeed that it is hard to believe the tales we are told of its resistless fury as it rages down in the spring, filling this wide channel from bank to bank, and turning its wonderful canyon – 200 feet of sheer black rock – into a roaring hell of waters.
The Springs themselves we did not find particularly interesting. We listened respectfully to the information that their temperature ranged from 112 to 128 degrees Fahrenheit, and that they possessed valuable curative properties. After testing the upper pool we were willing to believe that the temperature was even worse than that, and not being rheumatic we accepted the curative properties without question but without enthusiasm. Still it was a pleasant enough place to loaf for a day or two, scrambling about the hills and exploring the upper waters of Sulphur Creek, and the lower pool turned out to be rather an agreeable thing to roll about in for a time before turning in to our tent for the night. The big mountains, however, were still ahead of us, and we saw the last of the little group of springs without much regret. Within a year or two the primitive pools that have cured the rheumatism and other ailments of generations of traders and trappers for a hundred years or more, will be confined in neat concrete basins, and a pipe line will carry the water down the valley of Fiddle Creek to the Château Miette, one of a series of great hotels that the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway is to build through the mountains. Never mind, the tourists are welcome to the Miette Hot Springs, and they may build an automobile road along the face of Buttress Mountain if they will, so that they leave us for a time unspoiled some of the wild spots that lie beyond.
We started back to Pocahontas rather late in the afternoon, and the sun went down as we climbed the last hill from Fiddle Creek. Over the shoulder of Buttress Mountain a graceful spire soared into the sky, and as we turned in our saddles to take a last look at it before following the trail into the woods, it grew so strangely and wonderfully luminous that we unconsciously pulled in our horses and stood there in silent amazement. Momentarily the light deepened, and golden shafts shot out into the velvet sky. Then as we gazed spell-bound, from the very heart of the golden crown, and immediately behind the glowing peak, there rose the silver moon, and hovered for an instant on the very summit of the mountain, a vision so glorious that it almost brought tears to one's eyes.
An hour's ride by rail from Pocahontas carried us to Jasper, the headquarters of the park administration, a rudimentary town seated in a charming valley and surrounded by mountains, with the Athabaska sweeping by on its way down to the plains. From here we made several short trips, to Pyramid Lake and Pyramid Mountain, the former a characteristically beautiful tarn, and the latter a graceful peak with a variety of colouring rarely found in these mountains, reds and browns, blacks and greys, softly blended with the utmost perfection. On the way we had glimpses of a couple of lovely little lakes on the other side of the Athabaska, lying close together, one a bright blue and the other a most brilliant emerald. Behind them rose Maligne Mountain, with the valley of the Athabaska opening up to the southwest, a group of great peaks in the distance, and around to the west the majestic, snow-crowned peak, Mount Geikie.
Another day was spent in a long walk to the Maligne Canyon. We started under heavy clouds, which presently broke in rain, that slow, persistent sort of rain that never seems to tire. On we plodded for hours, determined to stick it out because we had been warned that we would certainly be driven back. And in the end we were rewarded with the Canyon, seen under most uncomfortable and depressing conditions, but compelling admiration for its gloomy splendour, its ebony walls so close together in spots that one could almost jump across, not merely perpendicular but sometimes overhanging, so that creeping to the edge and leaning over one looked down to the centre of the stream roaring a hundred feet or more below.
One other afternoon was devoted to a visit to Swift, the first and only settler in the pass. Swift came here many years ago, after an adventurous career in mining camps from Colorado to northern British Columbia. On a hunting or trading expedition through the mountains he discovered a beautiful little prairie, a few miles below where Jasper now stands, and then and there determined to make it his home. He came back, built a rude log shack, took unto himself a wife, and despite innumerable discouragements has managed to live happily and contentedly. Today he owns a good farm in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, with cattle and horses, and as both the great transcontinental railways have had to build through his property, Swift bids fair to end his days in wealth and prosperity. If wealth can make him any happier, he thoroughly deserves it for his pluck and perseverance under conditions that would have driven most men to despair. An afternoon spent at Swift's ranch, roaming with him about his own particular little canyon, or listening to his yarns of mountain and plain, mining camp, trapping, and hunting, told with all the spirit of a born story-teller, is an experience well worth remembering.
XII
OUT OF THE WORLD
CHATTING one evening with the genial Superintendent of Jasper Park, into whose sympathetic ear we had been pouring our ardent desire to see some portion of the mountains that was at least comparatively unknown, he replied: "I know the very place you want – Maligne Lake, off to the south of here. I can get you a good guide and outfit to-night, and you can start in the morning." The name did not sound very inviting; rather suggested that some one had seen the lake and condemned it. It appeared, however, that the name was really given to the river by which the waters of the lake are carried down to the Athabaska, and that the Indians had their own good reasons for pronouncing it "bad." We lived to commend their verdict. As for the lake, it would be as reasonable to call it "Maligne" as to give such a name to a choice corner of paradise. That, however, is getting a little ahead of the story.
The following morning the guide and his helper with the outfit were waiting for us on the other side of the Athabaska. We and our packs were punted across, the pack-horses were loaded, we climbed on our ponies and started off for the undiscovered country, as it pleased us to call it, with mountains smiling down upon us, a radiant sky overhead, and unutterable joy in our hearts.
The trail – it is painful to admit that there was a trail, and an excellent one at that – led up the valley of the Athabaska to Buffalo Prairie, where we made our first camp after an easy day's journey. Buffalo Prairie is a beautiful meadow set among the rolling hills that break the level of the long valley, with that first consideration to those who travel in the mountains, an abundance of feed for the horses, and with wonderful views of the great guardian peaks, Geikie, Hardisty, the Three Sisters, and a great company of glittering giants as yet unnamed. To one who comes from the east where every little hillock has its name, it is startling to find oneself gazing reverently at a majestic pyramid of rock and ice soaring a mile or so into the sky, and learn from the indifferent guide that it is merely one of the thousand nameless mountains.
The following morning we were off early, to the infinite disgust of the horses who were revelling in the good feed of the prairie. There was a long day's journey ahead up to and over Bighorn Pass, and a good deal of uncertainty as to where we might find any sort of a camping ground on the other side of the mountains. For a time we continued our way up the valley of the Athabaska, and then began the long slow climb up to the pass, over 8000 feet above the sea. As we topped one hill after another, sometimes travelling through patches of jack pine, sometimes up the dry bed of a mountain stream, there opened up new and ever more glorious views of the great ranges on either side. High up on the trail we had to turn aside to make room for a long pack train on its way down to Jasper. Hideous confusion would result if the two outfits were allowed to get entangled, only to be made right after much expenditure of time and pungent language. Finally the last pack-horse went by with a picturesque packer jogging along in the rear, and we began the last and heaviest grind up to the pass. The trail wound into the pass, and up and ever up, until we must get off the plucky little beasts and lead them the final stage, puffing and panting as we stumbled along through the heavy loose shale until at last we stood on the summit, and with a last glance back at the peaks off toward Athabaska Pass turned down through an alpine meadow, and in the midst of a swirling snowstorm, toward the valley of the Maligne.
For hours we toiled around the shoulders of hills of loose shale, or through miles of muskeg, or fallen timber, sometimes mounted, oftener on foot leading our hard-worked ponies, until at long last with the sun below the horizon we found on a steep hillside a little feed for the horses, and water for our kettles. The tent had to be pitched on the trail, the only relatively clear spot that could be found, and we trusted to Providence not to send another outfit along in the middle of the night to walk over us. It had been a long heavy day's travel, and after our supper of bannocks and bacon and a pipe we turned in and slept as only those may sleep who travel on the wilderness trail.
Our tent has been spoken of, but it was more properly a tepee – not the tepee that you see in pictures of Indian life, made of skins neatly sewn together and perhaps ornamented with rude drawings – but a modern compromise, of the old Indian form but made of strong cotton. Some of the guides in the mountains much prefer the tepee to the tent in any of its familiar forms. Others will have none of it. Our own experience led us to the conclusion that the tepee is without a rival in a good tepee country, that is one where suitable tepee poles are abundant, but there are occasions when you have to camp in a district where poles are as hard to find as needles in a haystack, and the resources of the language seem ludicrously inadequate as you limp about the camp in an ever-widening circle hunting for something that will support the thrice-damnable tepee for the night.
If you are fortunate enough to find a sufficient number of long, straight, slender poles among the fallen timber (in the parks you are not permitted to cut down trees for the purpose), it is a matter of but a very few minutes to stack them in position, stretch the cotton over the frame, and lace the front with a handful of small twigs, leaving an opening at the top. Then you make the beds around the circle, and build your camp fire in the middle. On a cold night, and particularly on a cold, rainy night, one blesses the Indian who first invented the tepee. Instead of shivering outside around a fire that will not burn, you have your fire with you in a large roomy tent, and can cook your meals and eat them in comfort. And who that has experienced it can forget the evening around the tepee fire, resting tired bodies on luxurious beds, smoking the pipe of peace, and swapping yarns until it is time to roll up in the thick, warm Hudson Bay blankets and sleep until dawn, or until the smell of frying bacon awakens one to another day's adventures.
This morning on the hillside overlooking the Maligne Valley proved to be a Red Letter day in our calendar. The sun had been rather unkind since we left Jasper, but now as we scrambled out of the tepee, we looked up into a cloudless sky. Far below a noisy little creek hailed us cheerily as it hurried down from the mountains to join the Maligne. In the distance we had glimpses of the river itself, and beyond uprose an extraordinary wall of rock a thousand feet or more in height, shutting in the valley and running on one side toward Maligne Lake and on the other far off into the hazy distance toward the Athabaska.
Our plans were to climb up the valley to Maligne Lake, take advantage of the kindly sun to secure a few pictures, and then make our way back to last night's camp and down the valley to Medicine Lake. East of Medicine Lake we had heard of a wonderful little body of water called Jack Lake, famous not so much because of its beauty as for the extraordinary abundance of its trout.
A ride of an hour or so, up and down hill, through fallen timber, muskeg and acres of boulders, with finally a most delightful gallop through a piece of virgin timber, brought us unexpectedly out on to a point of land overlooking Maligne Lake. We had read Mrs. Schäffer's enthusiastic description of the lake, but were hardly prepared for the perfectly glorious sight that lay before us: a lake of the most exquisite blue, mirroring on one side a high ridge clothed to the water's edge in dark green timber, and on the other a noble range of mountains climbing up and up in graceful towers and pinnacles sharply outlined against a cloudless sky. Beside us was an ideal camping ground, and then and there we vowed to come back to this spot some day, with several weeks to the good, and really make the acquaintance of Maligne Lake, if one must call anything so gracious and beautiful by such an inappropriate name.
Among the trees by the lake side we caught a glimpse of a tent, but the owner was nowhere in sight. We afterwards learned that he was one of the forest rangers, who rejoiced in the picturesque name of Arizona Pete. How Arizona Pete had wandered so far from the land of alkali plains and canyons no one seemed to know, but it was apparent that he had accumulated in his travels a fund of hair-raising stories of which Pete was the hero. If one heard of a riotously impossible exploit, and it was not attributed to that mythical hero of the northwest, Paul Bunion, one knew at once that it must be one of the adventures of Arizona Pete.
Turning our backs most reluctantly on Maligne Lake, we rode back to our deserted camp, and north toward Medicine Lake following what by courtesy was called a trail but was actually nothing but a few blazes pointing the way through a perfect wilderness of fallen timber. How the ponies, with all their marvellous intelligence and matchless endurance dragged themselves and us through the miles of hopelessly tangled logs that covered ridge and valley nearly every foot of the way to Medicine Lake, none of us could ever understand. However, we did at last reach the mouth of the river where it emptied into the lake.