Part 2

Much of the exploration of the Canadian Rockies and Selkirks has been done by Englishmen and eastern Americans who received their training as mountaineers in the Alps, and one naturally asks why they should travel thousands of miles to our western mountains when the Alps are so much more accessible. There is, of course, the charm of a virgin and unexplored wilderness in our Rockies and Selkirks, so seductive to one who loves adventure; but there are other attractions as well which make our mountains fully the equal of the famous European range. Every type of Alpine scenery is as well illustrated in Canada as in Switzerland and the area of snow mountains in Alberta and British Columbia is several times that of the Alps. The whole length of the Alps is less than 400 miles and its breadth from 50 to 80; as compared with a length of 1,200 miles and a breadth of 140 miles for the Rockies and Selkirks, not to mention the Gold ranges, the Coast range and the Vancouver Island mountains, all of which have their snow fields and glaciers. Stuttfield and Collie in their delightful book “Climbs and Explorations in the Canadian Rockies” say of the Rockies that “they have a remarkable individuality and character in addition to special beauties of their own which Switzerland cannot rival.”

GLACIAL STREAM, MT. ROBSON, DIVIDING ITS WATERS BETWEEN THE PACIFIC AND ARCTIC OCEANS

ICE BRIDGE ON ILLECILLEWAET GLACIER

Though there are higher mountains in the Rockies of the United States, they rise from a dry and lofty tableland and most of them have little snow and no glaciers. But for the row of extinct volcanoes beginning with Mt. Baker, Mt. Rainier and Mt. Shasta, the United States has very little truly alpine scenery except where our Rocky mountain ranges extend for a degree or two south of the boundary. A great many of the mountain climbers of the eastern states come to Alberta or British Columbia when they want to use an ice axe or a glacier rope and most of their experienced climbers are members of the Alpine Club of Canada.

Canadians themselves are often not aware of the splendid scenery and the unsurpassed opportunities for climbing of all grades of difficulty offered by their own mountains. There is no more exhilarating sport than that of the mountaineer, and there is no more interesting region for the geologist, the botanist or the zoologist than the grand ranges of mountains that run parallel to the Pacific in our western territory. While tourists from all over the world are being attracted more and more to our glorious alpine region it is especially important that our own people should seek a delightful holiday and gain health and vigor in our mountain parks. As good roads and trails and cabins for shelter are extended to the wilder and more impressive parts of the mountains it becomes easier for the ordinary visitor to study the sublimities of valleys, glaciers and mountain peaks once out of reach without an expensive camp equipment.

A few good Swiss guides are available at the more important centres in the mountains and the inexperienced climber should not undertake any difficult glacier work nor bad rock climbing without the aid of a guide. There is of course a wide range of less difficult walks and climbs that brings one without risk into the heart of the mountains where one may study the ways by which snowfields and glaciers and glacial rivers do their work of shaping the mountains.

A. P. Coleman in “The Canadian Rockies”

If one halts by chance anywhere on a mountain pass, all sorts of thrilling things are going on around. Lovely flowers are opening eagerly to the sun and wind of Spring—in mid August, with September snows just at hand, a whole year’s work of blossom and seed to be accomplished before the ten months’ winter Sleep begins. Bees are tumbling over them intoxicated with honey and the joy of life while it is summer. Even the humming-birds, with jewels on their breasts as if straight from the tropics, are not afraid to skim up the mountain sides, poise over a bunch of white heather, and pass with a flash from flower to flower. The marmots with aldermanic vests are whistling and “making hay while the sun shines,” and one may see their bundles of choice herbs spread on a flat stone to dry, while the little striped gophers are busy too. Time enough to rest in the winter.

Everything full of bustle and haste and of joy, what could be more inspiring than the flowery meadows above tree-line when the warm sun shines in the six weeks of summer! The full splendour and ecstacy of a whole year’s life piled into six weeks after the snow has thawed and before it falls again!

Higher up even the snow itself is alive with the red snow plant and the black glacier flea, like the rest of the world making the most of summer; and as you take your way across the snow to the mountain top, what a wonderful world opens out! How strangely the world has been built, bed after bed of limestone or slate or quartzite, pale grey or pale green or dark red or purple, built into cathedrals or castles, or crumpled like colored cloths from the rag-bag, squeezed together into arches and troughs, into V’s and S’s and M’s ten miles long and two miles high; or else sheets of rock twenty thousand feet thick have been sliced into blocks and tilted up to play leap-frog with one another.

And then the sculpturing that is going on! One is right in the midst of the workshop bustle where mountains are being carved into pinnacles, magnificent cathedral doors that never open, towers that never had a keeper—all being shaped before one’s eyes out of the mighty beds and blocks of limestone and quartzite that were once the sea bottom. You can watch the tools at work, the chisel and gouge, the file and the sandpaper. All the workmen are hard at it this spring morning in August; the quarryman Frost has been busy over night, as you hear from the thunder of big blocks quarried from the cliffs across the valley; there is a dazzling gleam on the moist, polished rock which craftsman Glacier has just handed over to the daylight; and you can watch how recklessly the waterfall is cutting its way down, slicing the great banks of rock with canyons!

It is inspiring to visit the mountains any day in the year, but especially so in the July and August springtime when a fresh start is made, and plants, animals, patient glaciers, hustling torrents, roaring rivers, shining lakes are all hard at work rough hewing or putting finishing touches on an evernew world.

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“From the physical geographer’s point of view, every feature of the Alps has its counterpart somewhere in the Rockies; folds and faults and tilted strata are carved into an infinitude of shapes, including risky peaks and aiguilles; snow and ice are present in every form, smooth and easy or torn with blue crevasses and splintered into daring seracs. There is every variety of stream at work, clear or muddy, gentle or furious, including much larger rivers in much longer valleys than any in the Alps. Small lakes are far more numerous and beautiful. Every element of interest and beauty on the physical side is as well developed somewhere in the Rockies as it is in the Alps but from my own observation I may suggest that often the Alpine mountain group is better posed, the picture better composed from the point of view of the beholder, than in the Rockies. The reason for this is I believe, largely one of area. The comparatively small mass of the Alps is more statuesque and more easily seen from the proper point of view than any part of the Cordilleran region, which sprawls over a hundred thousand square miles. This seeming lack of focus and concentration of dramatic points seems to me the greatest defect of the Rockies as compared with the Alps.

On the other hand, there is a cleanness and virginity, an exquisite loneliness about many of the Rocky Mountain peaks and valleys that has a peculiar charm. There is the feeling of having made a new discovery, of having caught Nature unawares at her work of creation, as one turns off from a scarcely-beaten route into one never trodden at all by the feet of white men; and this experience may be had in a thousand valleys among the Rockies.”

Five Great Glaciers in the Canadian National Parks

By A. O. Wheeler Director Alpine Club of Canada

_Yoho Glacier._

The Yoho glacier is situated at the head of the Yoho valley and is of very spectacular appearance. It presents a magnificent cascade of broken ice falling into the valley a long way below timber line and the forest is seen thickly clothing the heights far above it.

The glacier is of the alpine type. It has its origin in the Wapta icefield, a wide snow covered tract of ice with an area of some twenty-five square miles, and affords one of the principal overflows that maintain the yearly accumulation of snow on this great basin at a constant level.

The glacier presents a splendid opportunity for study and observation. It is readily accessible by the pony trails that traverse the valley and can be reached in a day from either Emerald lake chalet or the Takakkaw falls summer camp, to both of which places good driving roads are open from the village of Field on the C.P.R. railway.

From glaciers at the summit of Balfour pass, lying some two and a half miles east of Yoho glacier, Waves creek flows westward and is the main source of Yoho river. Until recently the bed of Waves creek, a deep, narrow rock canyon, lay, at its terminal point, beneath the icefall of the Yoho glacier and there joined with the flow from it, reappearing at the nose of the glacier as the Yoho river. As a result of this combination, during the summer months, a very beautiful ice cave was formed at the nose of the glacier, which was a source of much delight to visitors. The ice, however, has been in retreat for many years and has now gone back so far that the bed of Waves creek is quite clear of it and the great ice arch formed yearly by its torrent is no longer seen.

In 1906, the Alpine Club of Canada, through the writer, began observations and measurements of the flow and advance of retreat of the ice. Such observations were carried on steadily, year by year, until 1919, when, owing to the ice tongue having shrunken very greatly and having become much crevassed, they were discontinued.

During the period of twelve years it has been found by measurements from marked rocks that the ice has receded 396 feet; also by means of metal plates placed on the surface of the forefoot the movement of which was annually measured, it was found that the mean average rate of surface flow of the ice has been 3·3 inches per day for the period mentioned.

The Yoho glacier is but one half a dozen that flow from the Wapta icefield, and the icefield itself one of many such wide snow-filled basins that lie among the crest of the Main Range of the Rocky mountains and culminate in the great Columbia icefield with an area of 110 square miles of ice and snow, reaching out with numerous ramifications and many magnificent ice-falls.

_Victoria Glacier._

The Victoria glacier is of the _alpine type_, that is, has its origin in the snow that accumulates at the summit of the Abbot pass, and is fed by snow and ice avalanching from the adjacent slopes of Mts. Lefroy and Victoria.

It flows in a narrow channel between the precipitous sides of the two mountains named, which is known as the death Trap, owing to the number of avalanches that are precipitated from side to side directly across its bed. It is wise to make the traverse of this part of the glacier during the early morning hours before avalanches begin to fall. The altitude of the pass is 9,588 feet above sea level. The snow covered part of the glacier, or névé, below the pass lies at an altitude of about 7,500 feet. The Lefroy glacier comes in as a tributary from the southeast from below the cliffs of Mt. Lefroy.

The length of the Victoria glacier is about 2¾ miles. The Lefroy glacier is about 1 mile in length. The combined glaciers flow down the valley. The forefoot or tongue of the glacier is covered by a thick veneer of rock detritus carried down by the flow of the ice and fallen from the cliffs of Popes peak on the west side, and Mt. Aberdeen on the east. The ice terminates at from 1½ to 2 miles from the end of lake Louise. Owing to the close proximity of the glacier to Lake Louise Château, the C.P.R. tourist hotel, and its easy access therefrom it is of great interest on account of the many spectacular features it present and its unique setting of cliffs and snow clad mountains. Particularly may be mentioned the number of avalanches that thunder into Death Trap daily and the exhibit of semi-circular markings, known as “Forbes dirt bands” seen on the body of the ice opposite the junction with the Lefroy glacier.

The Victoria glacier has been steadily receding for many years. Observations carried on by George and William S. Vaux, and later by Miss Mary Vaux of Philadelphia (now Mrs. Charles Walcott), show that between 1898 and 1903 the glacier receded about 17 feet annually or about 85 feet for the 5 years. Subsequent measurements by Miss Vaux show that for the year 1909 to 1912 the ice receded 43 feet. The amount of recession is small compared with that of other glaciers, but a reason is found in the fact that the whole ice forefoot is thickly covered with a veneer of broken rock which protects it from the sun’s rays and reduces the melting process to a minimum.

Of late years no measurements have been made for advance or retreat of the ice but, as all the most prominent glaciers of the Canadian Rockies are known to be receding, it is assumed that the same has been the case with the Victoria glacier.

_Wenkchemna Glacier._

The Wenkchemna glacier lies at the northern base of the Ten Peaks in the valley of Moraine lake. The name is of Sioux Indian origin, Signifying ten, and was given to the glacier by Mr. S. E. S. Allen, an early explorer, in relation to the Ten Peaks.

It is of the _piedmont type_ of glacier, that is, has its source from a number of commensal streams of ice, fed by snow falling upon the eastern slopes of the Ten Peaks. These independent streams descend to the valley of Moraine lake and are so close to one another that when they reach the floor of the valley they spread out laterally and join together, forming a single glacier with a breadth of about three miles and a length of from one-half to one mile. Its supply is maintained by the independent ice streams referred to above. Glaciers so formed are known as the “piedmont type.”

The Wenkchemna glacier lies at an altitude between 6,400 feet and 7,500 feet and the easternmost nose is about 400 feet higher than that of the Victoria glacier.

No systematic observations of the Wenkchemna glacier have been made but it has been visited and photographed several times by Messrs. William S. and George Vaux, and Miss Vaux of Philadelphia. Their observations have shown that the glacier has made an advance while all the other glaciers in the district have been in retreat. In its advance, it has encroached on the living forest and has crushed and thrown down the green timber. Its advance is probably due to the fact that its surface is thickly covered with broken rock, fallen from the precipitous sides of the Ten Peaks, and the melting of the ice has been less than the accession it receives from the ice streams that feed it.

In the absence of systematic observations and measurements it is not known whether it is continuing to advance, is stationary or is in retreat. Like the Victoria glacier it affords a feature of very great interest for observation and scientific study, owing to its easy access from Lake Louise Château and the summer camp for visitors which is maintained at Moraine lake close to the glacier.

_Illecillewaet Glacier._

The Illecillewaet glacier is commonly referred to as the Great glacier of the Selkirks, although it is by no means the largest one. It is, however, one of the most spectacular, and is seen from Glacier House, the C.P.R. Hotel near the railway summit of the range, falling some five thousand feet from skyline of the icefield in which it has its source. Seen from high up on the opposite mountain side, it presents a bird’s-eye view that is unique and altogether entrancing.

The glacier is of the _alpine type_ and is fed by the overflow from the Illecillewaet icefield, which contains an area of some ten square miles. The icefall is of special interest, owing to the fact that it is situated about one and a half miles from the hotel and is reached by a delightful pony trail through primeval forest—forest presenting a most picturesque setting of giant cedar, hemlock and spruce trees, and, at their base, an impenetrable tangle of thick undergrowth, midst which the many-spined devil’s club repels the would-be explorer by its poisonous punctures. This barrier is of semi-tropical luxuriance and is justly famous in the valleys of the Selkirks. It is, however, not without its attractions, for the wonderful collection of ferns, the bright berries of the devil’s club, the handsome white flowers of the wild rhododendron and the luscious fruit of the huckleberry are most alluring.

There are two other special features for which the Illecillewaet glacier is famous. One is the low altitude at which the nose of the ice-fall is found, 4,800 feet, while timber line lies at 7,300 feet; consequently the ice extends 2,500 feet down into the virgin forest. The other is the immense terminal moraines, consisting of great blocks of rock weighing hundreds of tons, which are seen across the valley below the glacier. These moraines have been deposited by the ice many hundred years ago and are now grown with huge trees and other forest growth. Owing to their appearance and the frequent cave-like openings between blocks, they are referred to by Dr. Sherzer, in his treatise on the subject, as “Bear Den Moraines”. The ice has now retreated a long way from them.

Some years ago the Illecillewaet glacier presented a fine ice cave at its snout which was much visited by tourists from Glacier House, but owing to the continued retreat and shrinkage to which the icefall has been subjected for many years, it is now a feature of the past.

Observations and measurements of the ice-fall were carried on during a series of years by Messrs. Vaux and Miss Vaux (Mrs. Charles Walcott) of Philadelphia, the results of which may be summarized as follows:

August 17th, 1898, the most advanced point of the ice forefoot was 60 feet from a deeply imbedded marked boulder. On July 24, 1906, it was 327 feet from the same boulder. On the 19th July, 1912, the ice was found to have retreated 615 feet from the boulder. Since then the ice has receded very considerably and the forefoot shrunken greatly in size and spectacular appearances. Of late years the measurements do not seem to have been continued and the distance from the boulder is not known to the writer. The average maximum surface flow of the ice forefoot during the periods 1898 to 1912 appears from the observations referred to above to have been approximately five inches per day.

Directly above the icefall towers the Selkirk giant, Mt. Sir Donald, 10,808 feet above sea level, which furnishes one of the most attractive climbs of the region for mountaineers. From its summit is seen a world of snowy peaks, widespread icefields, tumbling glaciers and winding silver streams in the depths of darkly forested valleys filled with violet haze.

_Asulkan Glacier._

Tributary to the valley of the Illecillewaet glacier is the Asulkan (Wild Goat) valley, which is, perhaps, the most beautiful specimen of a mountain valley traversed by a rushing glacier torrent, that can be found. On either hand are towering mountain slopes and precipices, exalted rock ledges from which spectacular waterfalls leap from great heights, overhanging snow crests which often send roaring avalanches sweeping all before them into the valley below and far up the opposite side.

At the head of the valley lies the Asulkan glacier. It is of the _piedmont type_, created by three commensal streams of ice. According to Dr. Sherzer, it is now in its second childhood. The piedmont characteristics are disappearing and the glacier resolving itself into the original glaciers of alpine type which gave rise to it.

It is easy of access from Glacier House, and of great interest to observers. It has its chief source in the Asulkan icefield, which leads to a snow crest or col, known as the Asulkan pass. On the opposite side of the pass a steep descent brings one to the ice stream of the Geikie glacier, the southern overflow of the Illecillewaet icefield. Beyond, lies the steep icefall of the Dawson glacier and Mts. Dawson and Selwyn, over 11,000 feet above sea level.

In the case of the Asulkan glacier, also, observations and measurements were carried on by Messrs. Vaux and Miss Vaux.

On August 12, 1899, a rock in line with the farthest advanced ice of the forefoot was marked. On August 8, 1900, the ice had receded 24 feet. On August 6, 1901, the ice had advanced 36 feet. On July 23, 1906, the ice was again in line with the rock; that is in the same position as in 1899.

Subsequent observations by Miss Vaux show that between August 20, 1909, and July 27, 1912, the ice had retreated 259 feet from the marked rock. During the interval the observations on August 9, 1911, show that the ice had again advanced 51 feet. No measurements made since that date have come to the knowledge of the writer.

Transcriber’s Notes

--Some palpable typographical errors were corrected.

--Copyright and publisher’s information was included from the printed copy: this eBook is public domain in the country of publication.