The Alountaineer 31 
*CLIMBS IN THE SOUTHERN SELKIRKS 
Epwarp W. Harnpren 
“Hail Columbia!” That is what I could have appropriately 
sung, even in Canada, on the Fourth of July this year, as the 
“Klahowya™” laboriously foreed her shallow breadth against 
the winding current of the ninety-mile stretch from Golden, on 
the Canadian Pacific road, to the head waters of the Columbia 
river. The visit of 1910 with Mr. Herbert W. Gleason to the 
snow and ice clad sources of the s ream, as told to readers of 
the Mountaineer last year, had been fascinating but disap- 
pointing. Like Moses, we kad seen but had not entered upon 
the promised land. Our trip to the head of two of the western 
tributaries, Toby and Horse Thief creeks, rising in the very 
crest of the southern Selkirks, had afforded us glorious Alpine 
views of unclimbed and almost unknown peaks; but protracted 
forest fires had enforced an idleness which had left us in bad 
climbing condition and had so shortened our time that, instead 
of leaping joyously from crag to crag, we could simply scurry 
about and size up what we would like to do another year. In- 
stead of sitting haughtily aloft, “hke Jupiter on Olympus, 
looking down from afar upon men’s lives,” we had simply 
“Walked right in, and turned around, 
And walked right out again.” 
Mr. Gleason’s plans for 1911 did not permit of a resumption 
of activities in the region; but I had greatly interested two 
x 
Boston mountain-climbine friends—Mr. George D. Emerson, 
a fellow Mountaineer and Appalachian, and his wife—and they 
were awaiting me on the morning of July 5 at the head of 
navigation. A hurried breakfast together was followed by a 
lightning change of “duds” and throwing together of dunnage, 
and we, accompanied by Mr. Charles D. Ellis of Windermere, a 
climbing companion of last year, were packed and off for Toby 
Creek. 
*A continuation of Mr. Harnden’s “A New Mountain Country” in the 
Mountaineer of November, 1910. 
