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.
| R. C. W. Lett FIDDLE CREEK CANYON |
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.