Among the Canadian Alps

by Lawrence J. Burpee

The first mention of Mount Assiniboine 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 Pass 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 Pass, near what is now the southern extremity of the Park. He named it after the tribe of Indians known as the Assiniboines.

But although Dr. Dawson and his party of surveyors saw and admired Mount Assiniboine 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 Pass 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 Wilcox, 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.

Mary M. Vaux, W. S. Vaux, and G. Vaux, Jr. MOUNT ASSINIBOINE (The Matterhorn of the Rockies)

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 Assiniboine 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 Assiniboine.

The next day's journey took them up the north fork of Healy Creek, and they camped a few miles from Simpson Pass, 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 pass 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 mediæval 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 pass, from which they had their first glimpse of Assiniboine, piercing the sky beyond an intervening barrier of snowy peaks. Another day's journey, through fallen timber, along the winding shore of a beautiful lake, and over a rocky ridge to a second lake, brought them to the object of their heart's desire. Assiniboine at last!

"The majestic mountain," says Wilcox, "which is a noble 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 passed 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 Assiniboine, 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."