Selkirk Mountains

“ The Selkirks themselves constitute an immense mountain system over 300 miles long, of interlocking ranges some 400 miles inland from the Pacific Coast. They are richly forested, vegetation being almost tropical in its rank growth, and bear innumerable snowfields and glaciers. They are ages older than the eastern or higher range and were once the crest of the chain "rearing their serrated and snow-capped summits above the prehistoric ocean when their neighbours, the Rockies, were as yet unborn beneath its ice-bound bosom." ”

“ It is not that the Selkirks are really more beautiful than the Rockies; it is only that they are differently beautiful. In all mountain ranges, the human association counts for much, and that was a true word of Sir Leslie Stephen's who said that the mountains retain every pure and tender emotion once associated with them. ”

“ Thanks to Selkirk, the shore which received him at his disembarkation, presents to-day an aspect not only picturesque, but animated. The hand of man has made itself felt there.
The bushes and tufts of trees which hid the view of the hills in the distance, have been uprooted and cut down; pretty paths, covered with gravel, wind over the vast lawn; one in the direction of the valleys at the right, another towards the mountains at the left; a third leads to a tall mimosa, whose topmost boughs and dense foliage spread out like a parasol. ”

“ Now that the Alpine Club has given such an impetus to mountaineering in Canada, the Selkirk Mountains will receive increasing attention; and that unmeasured and practically unknown field which borders the Windermere country, where glaciers and excellent waggon-roads almost meet, promises unrivalled sport for the climber whose holidays are short, to whom easy access is a grateful feature. It is through these hard working Canadians that mountaineering may become a national sport, that is, a sport for the many and not for the few only. The utilitarian uses of mountains are obvious ”

“ Our eyesight caromed from one bold peak to another for miles in all directions. The wind blew fiercely across the ridge and scuddy clouds were whirled in the eddies behind the great towering peaks of bare rock. Everything was covered with a shroud of white, giving the whole landscape the appearance of snow-clad desolation. Far beneath us was the timber-line and in the valleys below the dense timber seemed but a narrow shadow which marked their course. We had no wood for a fire, no bouglis for beds, were wet with perspiration and eating snow to quench our thirst—not a pleasant prospect for camp ”

“ Sir Donald and the black precipitous wall of the eastern escarpment of the Selkirks' Summit. At the base of this great wall, high on the slopes of Beaver Valley, a long array of pocket-glaciers are in plain sight, and the glaciers of Mt. Sir Donald, Uto and Eagle Peaks; and the climber gets a peep into Glacier Circle, an alpine park of rare beauty set in the ice and snows of the Dawson Range. Bald Mountain furnishes first-rate hunting for such big game as cariboo, bear and goat. It is a paradise for the botanist, brilliant alpine flora following each other in quick succession ”

“ When in the long geologic processes of fires and earthquakes and floods that went to the making of this planet, the giant ages upheaved the enormous chain of mountains which forms the main range, and shifted the continental divide eastward, they "relegated the Selkirks to a subordinate position and left only their older archaean formation to tell the tale." ”

“ As the Selkirks are a very old range, far older than the Rockies, they have undergone much destruction, and the great glaciers of the Ice Age had much to do with the moulding of the slopes and valleys, and the carving of the beautiful lake basins. ”

“ The beautiful forests on the floor of the valley are interspersed with open marshy meadows of bright green. These and the sinuous, milky river make striking though harmonious contrast in color. Much of the timber on the mountain slopes, where the valley is traversed by the railway, has been burned during construction days; and now nothing remains of these grand forests but an unsightly array of gaunt skeletons and fallen giants. Fires are the bane of the mountains. Since the advent of the railway, forests containing trees centuries old have been destroyed ”

“ Though a bit of a frolic in the pause of the hardships of mountain travel without even a trail—and unless you know devil's club and the jungle mixed with its forests you know nothing of trailless travel in the Selkirks—the perspective of the years now shows that prophetic episode in a fine glamour. ”

“ Sir Donald, rising 10,625 ft. above the sea, with five miles of almost sheer cliffs 3,000 ft. high. To our left, and west of the Beaver for more than twenty miles, peak after peak towered aloft surpassing 10,000 ft., but one and all, from top to base, were clad in glacier and snow. Not a living thing was visible and the sense of desolation and awful loneliness conveyed was overpowering. Nowhere else in the mountains have I seen such immense masses of glaciers and ice-fields and I believe that little of the area in which these lie has yet been trodden by man. ”

“ At the upper end of the valley the trail, rising high above the brook, has been cut from the mountain side. Here the tongue or snout of the Asulkan Glacier first comes in sight, partly buried in the piles of rock, mud, and boulders forming its terminal moraine, an accumulation borne down and deposited by the glacier through the course of ages. ”

“ But to appreciate fully the magnificence of the spectacle it is necessary to study it; to see it under different aspects, in light, in shadow with the sun sparkling on its many ice-points, or covered by a soft mantle of fresh snow; to go up among its crevasses, to stand beside its seracs. to follow its snow-slopes to the sky-line and there gaze upon the dwarfed landscape below. Unless one is an expert mountaineer, it is not safe to go on the glacier or to travel across its névé without a Swiss guide. ”

“ Although lower than the neighboring Rockies, the Selkirk Range is much more Alpine in character, and consists of rugged peaks, snow fields, glaciers, and precipices, below which the slopes are densely timbered to a height of 6000 feet. The highest peak is Mount Sir Donald, with an altitude of 10,645 feet. The Canadian Pacific Railroad crosses the range at an altitude of 4300 feet through Roger's Pass, which, with the surrounding magnificent region, is a national park reserve. ”

“ In the recesses of the Rockies immediately behind the house are the deer and the goat and the big-horn and the grouse; and the Selkirks with more game are across the river. The fish are in nearly all the streams. Everywhere, in the valley and on the edge of the foothills, there is grazing for the cattle. Here too, the nearer mountains rise more abruptly and to a higher altitude, providing first-rate rock-climbing for one-day's outing. Some of the peaks are, at a venture, placed at 10,000 feet. ”

“ The ice bridges all through the mountains are in good repair, the turbulent streams flowing under them with a dash and a roar of the Selkirk’s own.
All along the way to the summit is visible on the opposite side of the pass, the foot trail of the Indians. This narrow path lies along the sheer cliffs, dropping suddenly into deep ravines, then almost straight up the precipitous side of the mountain.
An enterprising company has built a wagon road to the summit, but a nervous person had best run his carriage on more level ground. This road stands on end in many places. ”

“ Ponies can be taken to the alps below the final rock-ridge, whence the climbing is all rock.
Just beyond Marion Lake a path branches to the left leading for three-quarters of a mile southerly along the mountain side and terminating at a vantage spot from which there is a perfect bird's-eye view of the Asulkan Valley and the glacial amphitheatre at its upper end, very striking in contrasts, and showing the slow stupendous achievements of the Glacier. Here the merest layman may read the testimony of the rocks concerning glaciers as erosive factors. ”

“ For it is here that their resources are developed, "rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, stooping to look into the ravines, hiding from the search of glacier-winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams." Then he shows to every lover of forest landscape how great is the advantage of mountain over plain. And who that watches the mountain, has not been conscious of it. ”

“ J. C. Herdman, of Calgary, one of the first two Vice-Presidents of the Alpine Club of Canada. Also, the second ascent by a lady, of Mt. Sir Donald was made, and in the face of a blinding snow storm. The plucky climber, who refused to forego the triumph she had set out to win, was Miss Marion Raymond, A.C.C, of Boston, Mass.
1901–2—These are two outstanding years in the modern history of the Selkirks. They mark the Topographical Survey of the region by the Federal Government resulting in an accurate detailed topographic map showing contour lines at 100 feet equi-distance. ”

“ As yet the peaks of the Dogtooth Mountains have not been named and consequently, it is not possible to refer to them individually. At the heads of many of the deep indentations running into the group from the Columbia and Spillimacheen Valleys, are charming little lakes of beautiful blues and greens, and some very picturesque waterfalls; nearly all the major valleys have trails leading into them, which will be fit for travel when the fallen timber is cleared away. ”

“ Of these, the Rockies and the Selkirks are the greatest. Within all this vast mountain region are resources to sustain a large population—agriculture, forests, mines, fisheries; resources of health—mineral springs, remote valleys without number where tents or chalets may be set up and where transportation is by broncho and pack-train; resources of sport—hunting, fishing, mountaineering.
The early history of the Canadian Rocky Mountains holds stories, written in reliable journals, of high and hardy and desperate adventure—adventure as dangerous as any story of any Norseman of old. ”

“ Modern discovery and Exploration began in the Selkirks in 1865, under Mr. Walter Moberly, an eminent engineer who came to Vancouver Island in 1858 by way of Cape Horn, his ulterior purpose being to search for the shortest low-level route through the Rocky Mountain system. A man of vision, he saw the day when the mountains would no longer separate east and west in Canada, when men would ride to and fro on a trans-continental railway. Mr. Moberly's career is part and parcel of the history of the great railway's advent, and in itself is a record of historic importance. ”

“ Wheller writes with enthusiasm of this upper valley, none more beautiful among alpine valleys. In every direction silver water falls leap from the snows and glaciers above, uniting in one central stream which falls in foaming cataracts to the little lake-bed whence, continually increased by fresh falls, it rushes through luxuriant meadow-lands in a second series of cascades that have worn down to bed-rock showing the veneer of soil overlaying it. ”

“ This trail of the Beaver Valley will be rebuilt; and many an old trail, blazed by the prospector and woodsman and long since abandoned, will again respond to the human foot and the tread of the pack-train. When the Selkirk jungle is cleared away from the narrow path, the newcomer, albeit a common-place globe-trotter and quite inferior in interest and picturesqueness to those earlier, ruder treaders of the trail whose goal was some fabulous eldorado, will be travelling that hidden way for pleasure only. May the day never come in the Selkirks when the pack-train will cease ”

“ Where in Switzerland we would expect to find patches of snow, in the Selkirks we may expect to find ice. The great snow-fall in the Selkirks may perhaps explain this. The pressure exerted upon the lower layers of the snow by the great depth of the snow which lies above them tends to consolidate and make into ice these lower layers."
"The great drawback to travelling in the range is the thickness of vegetation at the bottom of the valleys and the difficulty of procuring men capable of acting as porters over a mountain country." ”

“ Climbing for pay and paying for climbing are not the same. "I climb because I must," says one; "I climb because I like it," says the other: each phrase an apologetic, supremely terse and unanswerable. And though mountaineering as a sport—now and always the sublimest of all sports—followed the railway, which ran hard by group after group of unknown attractive alpine peaks, Canadians were not of it. True, in 1883, occurred that picturesque incident on the summit of Rogers Pass, when a Canadian Alpine Club was organized with three members, a president, secretary and treasurer ”

“ It is hoped that the Guide will be of use to the mountaineer, and may enable the general public to enjoy more readily the unique alpine beauties of these white-shrouded peaks, mighty ice-falls and hazy blue valleys, where wild glacial torrents foam through primeval forests and silver falls leap down precipices from the snows above. ”

“ There is no geological field in the world providing more enchanting scenery, more charming excursions.
The Selkirks occupy the loop made by the Columbia River in the first 600 miles of its course. Rising in Columbia Lake over 100 miles south of the Railway, the river flows north some 300 miles, when, not far from Athabasca Pass, the historical portage of the early fur-traders, it turns again, making the "Big Bend" and, 300 miles south, joins the Kootenay which forms the southern portion of the Eastern boundary and the whole of the southern. ”