Among the Canadian Alps Part 2

The evolution of mountain roads is an interesting problem in itself.

The foundation is nearly always an Indian trail, one of those ancient thoroughfares that run hither and thither throughout the mountains, following the courses of innumerable streams, and winding up over mountain pa.s.ses and down again to the valleys that lie beyond. There is a peculiar thrill of excitement in falling unexpectedly upon one of these relics of other days. The imagination leaps back to the time when Indian hunters followed them in search of elk and deer, mountain goat and bighorn. With the exception of a handful of Stonies, whose days are numbered, the Indian no longer hunts in the mountains; and the trails he once followed are now mostly covered with underbrush or blocked with fallen timber.

The first step in the conversion of an Indian trail into a modern road is to cut through the down timber. Expert axemen are sent out for this work, which varies according to circ.u.mstances from the cutting out of an occasional log to the hewing of a path through a tangle of fallen trees ten or fifteen feet high. Wherever possible the latter is of course left severely alone, but it sometimes happens that no way around the obstacle can be found and there is nothing for it but to cut out a path. The huge game of jack-straws may cover only a few yards, or it may extend for several miles.

Incidentally the axemen straighten the trail more or less. The practice among the Indians, and after them the fur-traders and white trappers, was to follow an old trail until a fallen tree blocked the way. It would have to be a formidable obstacle to stop the average cayuse, but occasionally even that professional acrobat was brought to a standstill. The rider in such case never cut his way through if it could be avoided. He followed the lines of least resistance, turned right or left through the standing timber until he had won around the fallen tree and back to the trail again. The next man took the new path, until he was perhaps brought up by a later windfall and in his turn added another twist to the devious course of the original trail.

It can readily be imagined that these forest thoroughfares did not at any period of their history represent the shortest route between any two points; and it may as well be admitted here that the policy of every man for himself in trail-making is as active to-day as it was a hundred years ago. Each one of us who has camped in unfamiliar valleys of the mountains must plead guilty to the same selfish practice.

Hurrying along the trail, anxious perhaps to reach a certain camping-ground before dark, the temptation to flank a fallen tree rather than laboriously cut through it, is irresistible. The thought is there, though we may not admit it, that we may never come this way again, and the next man must look out for himself.

It remains for the trail-makers to unravel the tangled skein and reduce it to something very remotely resembling a straight line.

Having cut through the fallen timber and roughly bridged the deeper creeks, the result is a good pack trail. This is widened and cleared from year to year; levelled, graded and provided with substantial bridges, to convert it into a carriage road; and finally macadamized.

And as the picturesque trail is converted into the eminently modern and respectable macadamized road, the equally picturesque pack-train disappears and in its place we see, and smell, that emblem of the twentieth century, the automobile.

However, let us not meet trouble half-way. There are still, thank fortune, many miles of trail in the Canadian national parks which the most enterprising automobile could not possibly negotiate, and many more miles of wonderful mountain country that as yet are even trailess. From the main road which follows the Bow River, and roughly speaking runs southeast and northwest through the centre of the Banff Park, good trails branch off on either side up every important valley.

Portions of some of these have been converted into roads, such as those to Lake Minnew.a.n.ka, Sundance Canyon and up Spray River. From the Chalet at the western end of Lake Minnew.a.n.ka, where the road now ends, a trail has been opened along the north sh.o.r.e of the lake to its eastern extremity, through the Devil's Gap and Ghost Valley, and across the South Fork of Ghost River to the Stony Indian Reserve, which lies just outside the Park.

Ghost Valley is a weird, uncanny canyon, the scene of many wild Indian legends. It is believed to mark the ancient valley of the Bow, Minnew.a.n.ka and a couple of smaller lakes being the sole remaining relics of the channel. No water now runs through Ghost Valley, though mountain torrents and waterfalls dash down its precipitous sides. Each disappears in its limestone bed, which must cover a network of subterranean channels. The mountains end abruptly in the Devil's Gap, from which one looks out on the plains, or rather on the border land between plain and mountain. A few miles to the north rises a grim peak known as the Devil's Head, and the whole country is studded with Hoodoos and other strange natural features appropriate to such a region.

Sir George Simpson, who entered the mountains by the Devil's Gap on his expedition of 1841, camped by the side of Lake Minnew.a.n.ka, which he named Lake Peechee after his guide, a chief of the Mountain Crees.

Peechee is still remembered in the splendid peak which rises behind Mount Inglismaldie. Ghost Valley was the scene of an exploit of which Sir George Simpson tells the story.

A Cree and his squaw had been tracked into the valley by five warriors of a hostile tribe. "On perceiving the odds that were against him, the man gave himself up for lost, observing to the woman that as they could die but once they had better make up their minds to submit to their present fate without resistance. The wife, however, replied that as they had but one life to lose, they were the more decidedly bound to defend it to the last, even under the most desperate circ.u.mstances; adding that, as they were young and by no means pitiful, they had an additional motive for preventing their hearts from becoming small.

Then, suiting the action to the word, the heroine brought the foremost warrior to the earth with a bullet, while the husband, animated by a mixture of shame and hope, disposed of two more of the enemy with his arrows. The fourth, who had by this time come to pretty close quarters, was ready to take vengeance on the courageous woman with uplifted tomahawk, when he stumbled and fell; and in the twinkling of an eye the dagger of his intended victim was buried in his heart.

Dismayed at the death of his four companions, the sole survivor of the a.s.sailing party saved himself by flight, after wounding his male opponent by a ball in the arm."

Other trails lead up Cascade River from the Minnew.a.n.ka road, and over the Park boundaries to the Panther River country, connecting also at Sawback Creek with the Forty Mile trail; and up the east bank of Spray River, and between the Goat Range and the Three Sisters, to Trout Lakes, connecting with the road which follows the west bank of the Spray, and continuing on to the foot of Mount a.s.siniboine, just over the Park boundaries, which on this southwestern side follow the height of land. Another runs from the end of the Sundance Canyon road up Healy Creek to Simpson Pa.s.s, with a branch trail to Fatigue Mountain on the divide; while others again take you up Redearth Creek to Shadow Lake and one of the giants of this part of the Rockies, Mount Ball, and by way of Johnston Creek to the Sawback Range and its wonderful glaciers. It is impossible to give any real impression of the marvellous region through which these mountain trails lead you, of its scores of great peaks whose turrets, spires or domes climb into the very heavens, of its snow-fields and glaciers, bleak mountain pa.s.ses and exquisite alpine meadows carpeted with millions of flowers, its primaeval forests and rushing torrents, sparkling waterfalls and emerald or turquoise lakes. To appreciate the mountains, you must come and see them at first hand, and to see them at their very best, you must take tent and pony and provisions, not forgetting tobacco if you are a normal man, and get well out on the trail, away from hotels and railways and every suggestion of the artificial life you have left behind you.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE VALLEY OF THE BOW]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAIL NEAR BANFF. _Canadian Pacific Railway Company_]

IV

THE CANADIAN MATTERHORN

Mount a.s.siniboine lies about sixteen miles from Banff as the crow flies, but by trail it is more than twice that distance. It is not visible from any of the lower mountains about Banff, such as Tunnel and Sulphur, being hidden by the intervening ranges, but if you are sufficient of a mountain-climber to win to the summit of Mount Rundle you will gain a view of the mighty pyramid to the south that will alone make the climb worth while. Cascade Mountain, some miles north of the Bow, also offers the ambitious climber an inspiring sight of the Matterhorn of the Rockies. Sir James Outram, the famous mountaineer, who was the first man to reach the summit of a.s.siniboine, says that the view he had of the peak from the summit of Cascade Mountain, towering over two thousand feet above where he stood, first fired his ambition to conquer what was then believed to be an unscalable peak.

The first mention of Mount a.s.siniboine is in the report of the Rocky Mountain expedition of the late George M. Dawson, of the Canadian Geological Survey, in 1884. It is quite possible that the peak may have been seen by the missionary De Smet, who crossed the White Man's Pa.s.s in 1845, but he says nothing about it in his narrative. Dr.

Dawson first saw the peak from Copper Mountain, some distance west of Banff, and later from White Man's Pa.s.s, near what is now the southern extremity of the Park. He named it after the tribe of Indians known as the a.s.siniboines.

But although Dr. Dawson and his party of surveyors saw and admired Mount a.s.siniboine from a distance, neither he nor any other white man is known to have reached its base until 1893, when R. L. Barrett, an American mountain-climber, with Tom Wilson of Banff, made their way to its foot by way of Healy Creek, Simpson Pa.s.s and Simpson River. Two years later Mr. Barrett made a second trip to the mountain by the same route, accompanied this time by James F. Porter and Walter Dwight Wilc.o.x, who has since become widely known as an interpreter of Rocky Mountain scenery. Tom Wilson outfitted the party, but was unable to accompany them. He sent, however, one of his best men, Bill Peyto.

Wilson, Peyto and Fred Stephens are _the_ guides of the Canadian Rockies. There are to-day scores of more or less capable guides in the various National Parks, but these three alone are famous. One or other of them has accompanied, or led, nearly every expedition of any note into the unexplored parts of the mountains. Tom Wilson is not only a competent outfitter and a splendid guide, but he is also a renowned spinner of yarns, and a very mine of information on the Rockies. As some one has said of him, he knows more about the Canadian Rockies than any other man has ever yet possessed. A visit to Tom Wilson is not the least delightful of memories that the intelligent tourist will carry away with him from Banff. Stephens and Peyto are men of the same calibre, unerring on the trail, delightful around the camp-fire, and withal thoroughly good fellows. But we must leave them for the present, and return to the a.s.siniboine expedition.

The first camp was made on Healy Creek, where they arrived after a long tramp over a bad trail, soaked through from wet brush, but nevertheless thoroughly happy. The camp-fire soon dried their clothes, a hot supper was before them, and after that they would roll themselves up in their blankets and sleep as only those may sleep whose bed is of balsam boughs and who breathe the life-giving air of the mountains. Above all, they were on the road to a.s.siniboine.

The next day's journey took them up the north fork of Healy Creek, and they camped a few miles from Simpson Pa.s.s, crossing the continental divide from Alberta into British Columbia the following morning. At the summit the snow drifts were fifteen or twenty feet deep, though it was the month of July, but as they turned down the southerly slope the snow disappeared and in its place appeared immense banks of white anemones and yellow Alpine lilies. The mossy woods through which the trail led them the previous day had been carpeted with the round-leafed orchid, with here and there a nodding Calypso, one of the most daintily beautiful and fragrant of the mountain flowers.

On the northern side of the pa.s.s they had left behind a stream whose waters eventually flow into Hudson Bay. An Indian trail now led them through deep and sombre woods, beside the banks of a river which empties into the Pacific Ocean. The following day they travelled through the Simpson valley, crossing and recrossing the river or its small branches, and camping in a high valley two thousand feet above the river, above which again towered on either side smooth cliffs whose dark faces were relieved with silvery waterfalls. Opposite the camp the walls of the mountain had been carved by nature into one of those curiously realistic representations of a mediaeval castle that is found here and there in the Rockies. "One might easily imagine that these sharp pinnacles and rocky clefts were ramparts, embrasures, and turreted fortifications. But the wild goats, marmots and picas were the sole owners of this castle."

A few hours' tramp brought them the next day to the summit of a high pa.s.s, from which they had their first glimpse of a.s.siniboine, piercing the sky beyond an intervening barrier of snowy peaks. Another day's journey, through fallen timber, along the winding sh.o.r.e of a beautiful lake, and over a rocky ridge to a second lake, brought them to the object of their heart's desire. a.s.siniboine at last!

"The majestic mountain," says Wilc.o.x, "which is a n.o.ble pyramid of rock towering above snow fields, was clearly reflected in the water surface. Such a picture so suddenly revealed aroused the utmost enthusiasm of all our party, and unconsciously every one paused in admiration while our horses strayed from the trail to graze.

Continuing once more, we traversed some open places among low ridges covered with beautiful larches. We pa.s.sed through a delightful region which descended gently for half a mile to a treeless moor, where we pitched camp. Behind us was a clump of trees, before us Mount a.s.siniboine, and on our left a lake of considerable size, which washed the very base of the mountain and extended northwards in the bottom of a broad valley."

Here they remained for a couple of weeks, exploring the neighbourhood, and obtaining photographs of the mountain, some of which are reproduced in Wilc.o.x's wonderfully ill.u.s.trated book on the Rockies. A couple of days were spent by Wilc.o.x, Barrett and Peyto in a complete circuit of the mountain, a distance as they were compelled to travel of fifty-one miles, through a country for the most part absolutely devoid of trails, and covered in places with a very wilderness of fallen timber. For hours their only means of travel was along the tops of prostrate trunks piled ten and twelve feet above the ground. They were rewarded, however, by a magnificent view of the south side of Mount a.s.siniboine, never before revealed to white men.

The fascination of this singularly n.o.ble peak and its splendid setting of neve and glacier, lake and forest, drew Mr. Wilc.o.x to its feet again in 1899, accompanied this time by Henry G. Bryant and Louis J.

Steele, who made the first attempt to climb the mountain, reaching an elevation of ten thousand feet. Approaching storms then drove them back, and on the last ice slope they both had a narrow escape. Steele lost his foothold and dragged Bryant with him. "There was but one possible escape from a terrible fall. A projecting rock of considerable size appeared not far below, and Steele with a skilful lunge of his ice-axe swung round to it and anch.o.r.ed himself in a narrow crevice where the snow had melted away. No sooner had he come to a stop than Bryant shot over him from above and likewise found safety. Otherwise they would have fallen about six hundred feet, with serious if not fatal results."

An incident of the outward journey is so characteristic of one of the innumerable phases of Rocky Mountain scenery that one may venture to borrow Mr. Wilc.o.x's graphic description: "Whatever interest there may have been to learn our whereabouts was absorbed upon reaching the ridge crest by a revelation of wild and gloomy grandeur that I have never seen equalled. Our little band of men and horses were standing upon a craggy ledge, where splintered rocks, frost-rent and rough, rose through perpetual snows, making a tower of observation, whence we looked out upon a mountain wilderness. Shifting winds were sweeping fog-banks and clouds far above the highest trees of a forest-clad valley, not faintly discernible through the storm. Yet they were below the crest of our lofty pinnacle, where our storm-beaten band of horses, steaming in moisture, stood darkly outlined against the pale mists. No gleam of light broke through the lurid sky. The monotonous grey of falling snow had given place to heaving bands of clouds, for the storm was breaking. Then slowly and mysteriously beyond a dark abyss rose a beautiful vision of mountains clad in new snow. Their bases rested on unsubstantial fog, their tops were partially concealed by clinging mists, and they were apparently so far away as to seem like the highest mountains in the world."

Their route to the mountain from Banff had been by a branch of Healy Creek to the continental divide and along this high plateau to Simpson valley; they returned by way of the Spray. This is now the recognised route to a.s.siniboine, along which the Park authorities have opened a good trail. Mr. Wilc.o.x describes it as the easiest, and at the same time most uninteresting, of several possible routes; and that by way of Healy Creek and the continental divide as the most varied and attractive. A good trail is now available up Healy Creek to the plateau, and no doubt in time it will be extended to Mount a.s.siniboine. Another shorter route by the south fork of Healy Creek has also been partially opened; so that in the course of a year or two it will be possible to visit the monarch of the southern Canadian Rockies by any one of several alternative routes.

Although popularly reputed to be unscalable, attempts were made after that of Bryant and Steele to get to the summit of Mount a.s.siniboine, first by two brothers named Walling, and later by Bryant and Wilc.o.x, but without success although the first record of ten thousand feet was considerably increased. Finally, however, in 1901, Mr. (now Sir James) Outram, with two Swiss guides, Hasler and Bohren, reached the highest peak after six hours' climbing. The story of the climb is modestly told in Outram's book, the following pa.s.sages from which will give some idea at least of the stupendous precipices that had to be negotiated and the skill and daring demanded in such a climb. On the way up Outram rested for a time near the summit of one of the spurs of the main peak. "Here," he says, "for some moments I stood in solemn awe, perched like a statue in a lofty niche cut in the topmost angle of a vast, t.i.tanic temple, with s.p.a.ce in front, on either side, above, below, the yawning depths lost in the wreathing mists that wrapped the mountain's base."

After a perilous ascent where nerve, sure-footedness, and quick judgment were needed every moment, they finally reached the summit of the mountain. "One at a time--the other two securely anch.o.r.ed--we crawled with the utmost caution to the actual highest point (an immense snow cornice) and peeped over the edge of the huge, overhanging crest, down the sheer wall to a great shining glacier 6000 feet or more below.... Perched high upon our isolated pinnacle, fully 1500 feet above the loftiest peak for many miles around, below us lay unfolded range after range of brown-grey mountains, patched with snow and some times glacier hung, intersected by deep chasms or broader wooded valleys. A dozen lakes were counted, nestling between the outlying ridges of our peak, which supply the headwaters of three rivers--the Cross, the Simpson and the Spray."

After resting on the summit, it was decided to descend by another and even more difficult route--one in fact that had hitherto been thought impossible. Outram had studied it from below, however, and was confident that it could be negotiated.

"Well roped," he writes, "and moving generally one at a time, we clambered downward foot by foot, now balancing upon the narrow ledge, 5000 feet of s.p.a.ce at our right hand; then scrambling down a broken wall-end, the rocks so friable that handhold after handhold had to be abandoned, and often half a dozen tested before a safe one could be found; now, when the ridge became too jagged or too sheer, making our cautious way along a tiny ledge or down the face itself, clinging to the cold b.u.t.tresses, our fingers tightly clutching the scant projection of some icy k.n.o.b, or digging into small interstices between the rocks; anon, an ice-slope had to be negotiated with laborious cutting of steps in the hard wall-like surface; and again, cliff after cliff must be reconnoitred, its slippery upper rim traversed until a cleft was found and a gymnastic descent effected to the ice-bound declivity that fell away beneath its base.

"For close upon 2000 feet the utmost skill and care were imperative at every step; for scarcely half a dozen could be taken in that distance where an unroped man who slipped would not inevitably have followed the rejected handholds and debris, that hurtled down in leaps and bounds to crash in fragments on the rocks and boulders far below."

Beside this daring climb down the steep north arete of a.s.siniboine may be placed an even more perilous incident of the descent of Mount Bryce the following year. Outram had made the ascent with the Swiss guide Christian Kaufmann, taking eleven hours to reach the summit. With a long and difficult climb down the mountain in prospect, and a particularly dangerous cliff to be negotiated, which had been troublesome enough on the way up and would be much more dangerous now, they spent very little time on the summit.

"It was almost dark," says Outram, "when we approached the well remembered cliff, which had been continually on our minds, and to reach which before nightfall had been the object of our hasty, foodless march. But we arrived too late. And now the question arose as to the wisest course to take. We were on the horns of a dilemma. To go on meant descending practically in the dark a cliff which we had deemed so difficult by daylight as almost to be deterred from undertaking it at all. But on the other hand, a night out 10,000 feet above the sea, without the smallest vestige of shelter, on the exposed sky-line of a ridge swept by an arctic wind, with boots and stockings saturated and certain to freeze (and possibly the feet inside as well) before the dawn could aid us on our way, and almost dest.i.tute of food, offered a prospect particularly uninviting. I left the decision to Kaufmann. The risk was practically his alone. For me, descending first with the good rope in his trusty grasp, there was no danger, even should I slip or fail to find a hold, except for the short distance where both would be upon the face at the same time. For him, a slip, a lost grip or a broken hold might mean destruction. But he voted for advance, and at any rate I could make a trial and report upon my personal sensations before his turn arrived. So I turned my face towards the rock, slipped over the edge, and entered on the fateful climb.

"It will be long before I lose the recollection of those seventy feet of cliff. Drawn out for one long hour of concentrated tension were the successive experiences of hopeless groping in the dark depths for something to rest a foot upon, of blind search all over the chilled rocky surface for a k.n.o.b or tiny crack where the numbed fingers might find another hold, of agonizing doubt as to their stability when found, of eerie thrill and sickening sensation when the long-sought support crumbled beneath the stress and hurtled downward into the blackness of s.p.a.ce, whilst the hollow reverberations of its fall re-echoed through the silence. Then the strain of waiting on the best, but very questionable, protuberances for several tense minutes of motionless suspense, whilst the exigencies of the rope compelled Christian to climb down fifteen or twenty feet, and I could move again. At long last came the marvellous relief of feeling solid and sufficient standing-room once more, followed by the still more trying period of inactivity, the patient intensity of watching and hauling in the slack as the rope came slowly and spasmodically down, telling of Christian's gradual descent, the strained anxiety lest any accident should happen to my comrade, and, finally, the thankfulness of seeing his figure looming close above and in a few moments standing by my side, and we could breathe again."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOUNT a.s.sINIBOINE. (_The Matterhorn of the Rockies_) _Mary M. Vaux, W. S. Vaux, and G. Vaux, Jr._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EMPEROR FALLS. _R. C. W. Lett_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOUNT EDITH. _A. Knechtel_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOWERS OF MOUNT BABEL. (_Consolation Valley_) _A. O.

Wheeler_]

V

INCOMPARABLE LAKE LOUISE