As we advanced and commenced to descend, the north side of Mount Hector began to appear. It was completely covered with a great ice sheet and snow fields. Mount Hector is a little more than 11,000 feet in altitude, and gives a good example of how the exposure to the sun affects the size of glaciers in these mountains. On the south and west sides of Mount Hector there is almost no snow, while the opposite slopes are flooded by a broad glacier many miles in area, and brilliant in a covering of perpetual snow.
At the tree line a trail appeared, and led us in rapid descent to the valley. The scenery on all sides was magnificent. Many waterfalls came dashing down from the melting glaciers of Mount Hector and joined a torrent in the valley bottom. The great cliffs about us, and the lofty mountains, visible here and there through avenues in the giant forest trees, were illumined by a brilliant sun, ever now and again breaking through the clouds. About eleven o’clock we stopped to have a light lunch, as was our custom on all long marches. Peyto loosed the girdle of the horses, slipped off the packs, and turned the animals into a meadow near by. Meanwhile our cook cut firewood and made a large pot of tea, which always proved the most acceptable drink when a long march had made us somewhat weary. These brief rests of about forty minutes in the midst of a day’s march always proved very beneficial to men and horses.
A long straight valley led us southwards for many miles. In every clear pool or stream, trout could be seen darting about and seeking hiding-places, though we had no time to stop and catch them. At about one o’clock we reached the Pipestone Creek and obtained a view of Mount Temple and other familiar peaks about fifteen miles to the south.
We camped near the stream in a meadow, not far from the Little Pipestone Creek. As the march of this day had brought us back to the region covered by the map, we had little apprehension of losing our way in the future.
The next day we followed up the Little Pipestone Creek and enjoyed a fine trail through a dense forest. We camped near the summit of a pass south of Mount Macoun, which I partially ascended after lunch. The rugged peak named Mount Douglas lay due east, and presented some very large and fine glaciers.
Our camp was on a little peninsula jutting out into a lake, with water of a most brilliant blue color. The sunset colors this evening were heightened by the presence of a little smoke in the atmosphere, which gave a deep copper color to the western sky, while the placid lake appeared vividly blue in the evening light.
The following day, which was the first of September, we continued south over a divide and into the valley of Baker Creek, which we followed for several hours, and then took a branch stream which comes in from the east, and finally camped in a high valley. We were now in the Sawback Range, where the mountains are peculiarly rugged, and the strata thrown up at high angles. The weather was giving evidence of an approaching storm, and before we had made camp the next day in Johnston’s Creek, rain began to fall.
Hitherto the nature of the country since leaving the Upper Bow Lake had been such as to render the travelling very easy and delightful, but from this point on, we met with all sorts of difficulties. In the lower part of Johnston’s Creek, and in the valley of a tributary which comes in from the northeast, the trail was covered by fallen timber, and our progress was very slow and tedious. Moreover, the weather now became very bad, and we were caught near the summit of a pass between Baker Creek and Forty-Mile Creek in a heavy snow-storm, so that the trail was soon obliterated and the surrounding mountains could not be seen. Fearing that we might lose our bearings altogether, Peyto urged forward the horses at a gallop, so that we might get over the pass before the snow gained much depth.
The descent into the valley of Forty-Mile Creek was very steep, and we camped among some large trees with several inches of snow on the ground. The next day we urged our horses on again and followed down the valley of Forty-Mile Creek. In some parts of the valley we found absolutely the worst travelling I have anywhere met with in the Rockies. The horses were compelled to make long detours among the dead timber, and the axe was frequently required to cut out a passage-way. Frequent snow showers swept through the valley, and, though very beautiful to look at, they kept the underbrush covered with damp snow and saturated our clothes with water.
In the afternoon we reached the summit of the Mount Edith Pass, and once more caught sight of the Bow valley and the flat meadows near Banff. A fine wide trail or bridle-path, smooth and hard, led us down toward the valley. The contrast to our recent trails was very striking. We walked between a broad avenue of trees, each one blazed to such an extent that all the bark had been removed on one side of the tree, and some were practically girdled. This was very different from our recent experience where we had only found a small insignificant axe-mark on some dead tree, about once in every quarter mile, or often none at all during hours of progress.