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Sierra Club Bulletin 



Just beyond Berg Lake lay our camp at Robson Pass, the 

 site of the Canadian Alpine Club camp of 1913. We started 

 afoot with Donald next m_orning over the Robson Glacier to 

 Snowbird Pass. It was a day of easy climbing, up the glacier 

 for three or four miles and then along grassy slopes and rocky 

 ledges. The mountain tops were still hidden, though now and 

 again the clouds would sweep apart and disclose the icy crown 

 of Whitehorn, the saurian head of "Mugger," the sharp tooth 

 of the Lynx, or white Resplendent, the snowiest and most ra- 

 diant of them all. 



From Snowbird Pass we climbed to the summit of Ptarmi- 

 gan Peak whence we overlooked the Coleman Glacier and the 

 deep blue rift of the Smoky River Valley. A timely break in 

 the clouds showed us an avalanche on Robson, tons of pow- 

 dered ice pouring down for a thousand feet like the mist of a 

 waterfall. The Robson Glacier, whose whole length we could 

 see, is the fountain of rivers flowing into two oceans. Its ter- 

 minal is split by a rocky point. The northern half of the ice 

 stream drains into Lake Adolphus, whence it flows to the 

 Smoky River and ultimately to the Peace; the southern half is 

 the source of a branch of the Eraser. 



Not until morning did we see the whole of Robson. Donald 

 called us at sunrise, and we looked from our tent to see it shin- 

 ing in golden glory in a cloudless sky. We were close under 

 it, hardly more than a mile from its base ; it rose abrupt, nearly 

 eight thousand feet above us. From a snow cornice at the 

 summit the Tumbling Glacier swept down the whole flank of 

 the mountain, each ice pinnacle alight and glittering. The 

 right hand slope was a long rock ridge, broken by ledges and 

 precipices; that on the left swung around in an icy ridge to- 

 ward black Rearguard. Even more cruel and formidable did 

 the mountain appear in its sharp-cut brilliance than as we had 

 heretofore seen it in fleeting glimpses through the clouds. 



By this time we were ready to admit that Robson was no 

 mountain for women to cHmb — not for two women with only 

 one man at any rate. So that afternoon we decided to move 

 camp about ten miles northeastward to Moose Pass. From 

 this camp we made the ascent of Mount Pam, about ten 

 thousand feet, a snow peak of little difficulty or danger except 



