Climbing on the Himalaya and Other Mountain Ranges

by Norman Collie

Several times the luckless ponies, dead tired and overladen, had sunk up to their bellies, but with terrified snorts and plunges had just managed to get out again. At last the sun went down, then daylight disappeared, and finally the moon came out, and we were still in that swamp. Ultimately we tried to make for the forest at the side of the valley, but one of the horses got so deep into a hole that only with difficulty we managed to prevent him vanishing altogether. He was at last rescued with an Alpine rope; and we also were rescued from a night out in a swamp by our headman, Peyto, who had come down the valley to look for us. The horses had to be left for the night, but we, wading through everything, got safely into camp at about midnight. These Indian ponies are wonderfully clever in thick timber or in the streams and rivers that have every now and then to be crossed.

One old grey that I rode for two different trips was a most wise old animal, rather stiff in the knees, but wonderfully sure-footed, and never once did he even brush my leg against a tree trunk even in the thickest timber. He was also a very gentlemanly old animal, never frightened (unless he got into a muskeg), never in a hurry, very fond of going to sleep, also of having his own way, and his way was usually the right one.

To those who wish to spend all their time, during a short holiday, climbing peaks, the Canadian Rocky Mountains cannot be recommended without some explanation. Firstly, they are a very long way off; and secondly, many of the finest groups, lying, as they do, perhaps fifty or a hundred miles from the railway, necessitate days of travel with ponies, provisions, etc., before even their base is reached. Still undoubtedly the pleasure of the leisurely advance through the charming valleys and dense pinewoods is to

'Those who love the haunts of Nature, Love the shadow of the forest, Love the winds among the branches, And the rain-shower and the snowstorm, And the rushing of great rivers'

of quite an equal importance to the joys of a first ascent.

The absolutely free life that one experiences in camp never palls, let the weather be good or bad; as one jumps out of one's sleeping-bag into the fresh morning air, one is always ready for the day's work.

Perhaps it is a glorious morning. The men have gone off to find the ponies, which, if they have strayed far afield during the night, can be found by listening for the tinkle of the bell always tied to the neck of the bell-mare. Then after a breakfast of porridge, bacon, and whatever else there may be, the horses are packed—an operation which is hard work, and takes perhaps the best part of two hours when there are over a dozen horses to load. Each pack has to be finally tied on with the diamond hitch, otherwise in a very short time the pack would work loose, and, if once lost bit by bit in the dense undergrowth of the forest, would never be recovered.

Then comes the start, and the cavalcade files off into the virgin forest, led by the headman, whose business it is to pick out a trail amidst the dense undergrowth and the fallen trees along which the pack train can go. Soon the sound of the axe is heard, and the single file of ponies comes to a standstill whilst some fallen tree which bars the way is cut through. Sometimes the path leads along the bank of a swiftly flowing, muddy white river, swollen by the melting snows of the glaciers, which every now and then are seen through more open parts of the forest, glaciers that glimmer and shine high up amongst the peaks that wall in the valley below. It is in places such as this that the greatest danger to the horses and baggage is experienced. The banks of the river may be rotten, or a horse more self-willed than the others may suddenly plunge into the water, and often it is next to impossible to prevent others following; so that in one moment of time perhaps half the outfit may be sweeping down stream to perdition, and the expedition ruined by being left provisionless. Fortunately, although I have often seen our horses helplessly drifting down rivers that at first sight seemed hopeless to get out of, owing to the undercut banks, depth of water, and strength of current, yet somehow or other these plucky little ponies always have managed to scramble out again.

The silent forests, through which one sometimes has to march for days together, are not so dense, and the trees are not so large on the eastern side of the Divide as on the western, that is to say, in the valleys leading to the Columbia river.

In the valley of the Columbia itself, down which we travelled in 1900 from Donald to the Bush river, for several days we hardly saw the sky. The vast forest far surpassed in size anything we had seen on the other side of the range—huge pines, cotton-wood trees, firs, and spruces reaching to a height of 150 feet or more. The undergrowth too was very dense—cedar, white maple, and alder (near the streams), were found; whilst the fallen trunks of dead trees, sometimes six or eight feet in diameter, lay scattered with others of lesser size in every kind of position. Some in their fall had been arrested by others, and were waiting for the first gale to bring them crashing to the ground; whilst at the will of every breeze that wandered through the upper branches of the higher trees, these half-fallen monarchs of the forest would break the heavy stillness of the air by their complaints and groans against their more sturdy brethren for thus preventing them lying at peace upon the moss-covered ground below. Others that had lain perhaps scores of years in the wet underbush had decayed and rotted, leaving rich masses of decomposing vegetation, from which trees had sprung that in their turn also must fall and suffer the same change. There is a marvellous fascination about these quiet shady fastnesses of the western valleys. As one wanders day after day through this underworld, cut off from the glaring sun of noonday and the blue sky, hardly a sound breaks the stillness, whilst all around the ruin of ancient woods lies piled with a lavishness most absolute—that of Nature's self, the tangled wreck of a lifetime, the luxuriant growth of centuries.