Vol. XXI, No. 6 



WASHINGTON 



June, 1910 



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SOME TRAMPS ACROSS THE GLACIERS AND 

 SNOWFIELDS OF BRITISH COLUMBIA 



By Howard Palmer 



Illustrations from Photographs by the Author 



BRITISH COLUMBIA is preemi- 

 nently a land of mountains. From 

 its eastern boundary — the conti- 

 nental divide of the Rockies — to the roll- 

 ing Pacific, 500 miles away on the west, 

 the traveler is kept in constant bewilder- 

 ment by the endless succession of ranges, 

 peak piled on peak and glacier on glacier. 



Gaze upward from any forest-filled 

 valley and the gleam from some snow- 

 cap will dazzle you through the tree- 

 tops. Follow that valley to its head and 

 a glacier tongue will stretch downward, 

 luring you still higher to the frigid won- 

 ders above. 



Other natural features demand admi- 

 ration — dark gorges, roaring torrents, 

 spraying cataracts, beetling cliffs, dense 

 forests, glorious wild flowers — but the 

 dominant note above all is glistening ice 

 in pinnacle and crevasse. 



The climax of this grandeur is attained 

 in the Selkirk Range, whose highest 

 summits indent the clouds ti,ooo feet 

 above tide-water. From its rugged shoul- 

 ders more glaciers hang than are to-be 

 counted in all the Alps. Even a native 

 Swiss has acknowledged that the Sel- 

 kirks "surpass our mountains in laby- 

 rinthine organization, in the production 



of primeval thickets, and the vast num- 

 ber of glaciers."* One can count as 

 many as a hundred of these from even 

 one of the minor summits. 



To reach this mountain wonderland 

 there is only one way : take the main line 

 of the Canadian Pacific Railroad and 

 alight at Glacier Station. You are then 

 very nearly at the summit of the range, 

 with splendid peaks and glaciers on every 

 side. 



One of the finest of these, the "Great 

 Illecillewaet," pours seemingly out of the 

 sky only two miles away — a short hour's 

 trip from the Pullman car. Another, the 

 Asulkan Glacier, four miles to the south, 

 may be explored by way of an excellent 

 trail leading up through a flower-strewn 

 valley of the same name. At the heads 

 of both these glaciers lie magnificent 

 fields of permanent snow, the one above 

 the Illecillewaet being especially remark- 

 able. Here, at an altitude of 8,500 feet, 

 rounded billows of spotless neve stretch 

 awav to the south for 15 square miles— 

 an inexhaustible reservoir for the rifted 

 ice-streams which flow from it at either 

 extremity. 



* E. Huber in Schweizer Alpenclub Jahrbuch, 

 1890-1891, p. 278. 



