As we descend the steep grade from Stephen to Field, we catch glimpses of peak after peak, range after range, valley after valley, glacier after glacier, purple, saffron, red, dazzling white, glistening greens and blues. Mt. Stephen lifts its great wall over a mile of almost perpendicular height, and nearly opposite is the spire of Mt. Burgess. Mountain wonders and attractions of every sort lie in all directions from Field. Perhaps the finest is Yoho Valley. There are the Takkakaw Falls, twelve hundred feet high. There is the Wapta Glacier, itself a part of a prodigious ice-field, known as Wahputekh, lying between the towering heights of Mts. Gordon, Balfour, and Tralltinderne.
Leaving Field, the road runs between two chains of mountains, the Ottertail on the north and the Van Horne on the south. The former is bold and spire-like in outline, with the snow-fields and ice pinnacles of Mt. Goodwin closing the vista. The latter is less bold in contour, but has a colouring of yellow rock-slopes in beautiful contrast with the rich purple of the lower forests.
Passing between those sublime mountain chains, we soon plunge into the Wapta cañon, with its perpendicular walls of rock rising hundreds of feet on either side. The Wapta is more commonly known as the Kicking Horse. It received that name in this wise. The Palliser exploring expedition of 1858 had been seeking unsuccessfully a feasible route through the Rockies. In the progress of the search, Sir James Hector, then in charge of the party, pitched camp on the Wapta. While there a vicious horse kicked him with such effect that he was left on the ground apparently dead. The three Indians with him had, in fact, dug his grave. But while they were conveying him to it, he suddenly came to himself. Having recovered, he became curious to follow the stream where he had met with the disaster. As a result he discovered the cañon and a short route through the main chain. Upon the pass he bestowed the name of “Kicking Horse,” and this has latterly been bestowed upon the river itself. The river is one of the most remarkable of the tributaries of the upper Columbia. It drains a cordon of glaciated peaks, from which it bears a vast volume of water, foaming and frothing with frequent cataracts down the steep descent, from fifty to a hundred feet to the mile.
Natural Bridge Kicking Horse or Wapta River, and Mt. Stephen, B. C.
Photo. by C. F. Yates.
Sunrise on Columbia River, near Washougal.
(Copyright, 1902, by Kiser Photograph Co.)
Forty-five miles west of the Divide we reach Golden on the Columbia. It is indeed a thrilling moment to the traveller when he first sets eyes upon these head-waters of the River of the West. Golden is a pleasant little town, a hundred and fifty miles below the upper Columbia Lake and twelve hundred and fifty by the windings of the River from its destination in the Pacific.
At Golden we must pause and make ready for our first journey on the River. The greater part of the tourist travel passes by Golden, not realising that between that pretty town and the lakes lie some of the most charming scenes in all the vast play-ground of British Columbia.
We find at Golden several steamboats in command of captains who are very princes of good fellows, as Captain Armstrong of the Ptarmigan and Captain Blakeney of the Isabel, with whom we may journey from Golden to Lake Windermere. Over the hundred miles between these two points the Columbia is a slack-water stream, having a descent of but fifty feet in the distance from the extreme head waters to Golden. Over considerable part of this distance the River runs in bayous. These bayous or channels wind their serpentine courses through low flats, flooded at high water, and exposing fair expanses of vivid green at the subsidence of the waters.