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Sierra Club Bulletin 



PIONEERING IN THE SOUTHERN SELKIRKS 



By Marion Randall Parsons 



The Selkirk Range in British Columbia forms a great moun- 

 tain rampart around which the Columbia River makes its first 

 long bend. The river rises near the Canadian border and flows 

 northward for nearly two hundred miles before it makes its 

 southward turn down through the famous Arrow Lakes toward 

 the Washington line. The scenery of the Northern Selkirks 

 is celebrated the world over; but the southern part of the 

 range and the valley in which the Columbia rises are still off 

 the beaten track of travel. The section described here, a 

 part of the Purcell Range, is practically virgin ground to 

 mountaineers. 



My companion, Miss Lulie Nettleton, and I traveled north- 

 ward by train from Spokane to Cranbrook in British Colum- 

 bia, and thence motored ninety-seven miles to Lake Winder- 

 mere. For more than half of the way our road followed the 

 valley of the Columbia, bounded on the east by low, outlying 

 spurs of the Rockies and on the west by outposts of the Sel- 

 kirks, through forests of ponderosa and contorta pines, Doug- 

 las fir and western red larch. We reached Upper Columbia 

 Lake in time for an early dinner; then drove on through the 

 sunset, past the aspen-bordered lake, past curious "hoodoo" 

 cliffs of white clay, into the deepening dusk. The pines, out- 

 lined at first against the sky, merged gradually into the shad- 

 ows till only the sudden blotting out of the stars gave token 

 of their presence as we sped by. Darkness hid Lake Winder- 

 mere and the cluster of little towns about it — Windermere on 

 the eastern shore, Athelmer at its foot, and Invermere on the 

 western side. 



Invermere, where we joined Mr. and Mrs. Herbert W. 

 Gleason and Mr. E. W. Harnden of Boston, is prettily located 

 on a bench above the lake. It is a pleasure to remember our 

 short stay there — the lovely lake with its circle of low, cloud- 

 capped mountains, the comfort of the hotel, the old-fashioned 



