Canadian Alpine Journal/Volume 1/Number 1/The Ascent of Mt. Goodsir

by Charles E. Fay

THE ASCENT OF MT. GOODSIR

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By Charles E. Fay

I well remember how deeply I was impressed at the time of my first visit to the Canadian Alps in 1890 by the sight of the superb Ottertail range, as the eastbound train approached the old bridge over the creek of that name, and the peculiarly alpine features of the range were revealed, with the portentous towers of Mt. Goodsir looming in the distant background. Though we had just passed a glorious day at Glacier House and had revelled in the grandeur that the intervening journey offers in so rich measure, this seemed the fitting climax. Little did I suspect that I was to return to these scenes again and again, that I was even destined to be of the first party to scale the frowning, glacier-crowned rampart dividing the Ottertail from the Ice River valley, to tread the virgin snows of the summit of Mt. Vaux, and to have the alternate experiences of failure and success in assaulting the highest peak of the monarch of them all.

At that time the name of Goodsir was, to be sure, on the Palliser map, but it was not yet generally recognized as belonging to the mass that now bears this name. Indeed, it is more than doubtful whether Dr. Hector intended to apply it here, and not rather to some peak of the Bow range.^[1] In the first photograph of it that I saw on sale in those early years, the massif was entitled "The Beaverfoot Mountains." In his report to the Minister of the Interior for 1887, Mr. McArthur, of the Topographical Survey, mentions its triad of summits as the "Three Sister Peaks," and then says: "The 'Three Peaks,' as I have named them, are the highest that are established by my survey, the western one towering 11,000 feet above the sea." Later measurements have not diminished its relative height, but have accorded it an altitude of 11,676 feet, making it thus the highest of the Canadian peaks south of the line of the railway, or indeed north of it until one reaches the great peaks near the sources of the Athabaska.

Little wonder, then, that it made an early appeal to the alpine instinct growing stronger in me with each new visit to that inspiring region. But it was not until the year 1901 that an opportunity offered to make a real assault upon it. Kind Fortune gave me as companions two men of utterly different mould, yet pleasantly complementing one another—the Rev. James Outram and Mr. J. H. Scattergood—both athletes of the intellectual type, both accustomed to physical conquests, one twenty, the other thirty years my junior—but for that glorious week we were all of one age. It joined to us as our guide the honest, kind and trustworthy Christian Hasler, under whose leadership Professor Parker and I had already, two years before, scaled Mt. Dawson.

Our main camp was to be established in Ice River valley, and around to it we sent Ross Peecock by way of the Beaverfoot valley. This was as yet traversed by nothing more definite than an old Indian trail, but almost immediately was to furnish ready access to Ice river by a good wagon road. The troubles Scattergood had endured there, the year before, he has narrated in Appalachia.^[2] We ourselves were to leave the railway at the bridge over Ottertail creek and make our way to a bivouac at timber-line at the high sources of Haskins creek, just below a promising looking cleft at the rear of Mt. Hurd. From here we hoped, with an early start, to find a lead up to the ice-field that covers the broad eastern slope of Mt. Vaux, to scale its virgin summit, and thence to find our way down to the Ice river by the glaciers sweeping southward. And all this, with numerous other unexpected details, we accomplished with perfect success, turning up at our camp in the late afternoon of our second day.

Up to that time, as far as I am aware, none but prospectors had visited this upper portion of the Ice River valley. Our camp was at the southern edge of a large meadowy glade of perhaps ten acres in extent, possibly a mile and a half above the junction of the stream from Zinc gulch and the main stream. It was a beautiful pastoral picture, with the pack horses browsing in the plentiful herbage—the more striking from its wild surroundings and the news that a grizzly bear had accorded but a surly welcome to Ross on his arrival a few hours before. Studying his plantigrade tracks in the gravel of the river bed, photographing the unfamiliar aspect of the Chancellor and other leading features of the picture, and refreshing ourselves in general idleness from the somewhat strenuous labors of the day before, we passed the forenoon, and soon after our simple dinner we set forth for the high bivouac from which we should make our attack on Goodsir the following day. To reach it, we followed a short distance down the valley, then up the eastern sloping path of an avalanche, overgrown with rank hellibore—a torrid stretch,—then over the crest of this ridge and across the torrent-washed rubble of the ravine from which spring the two great towers.

At about 7000 feet and at the very base of a spur from the southern, higher peak, near to a refreshing rill, we found two gnarled firs with ample tops, promising a tolerable shelter in case of a sudden shower, and under these we spread our blankets with good hope for the morrow. The sun set clear, the stars gleamed with joyous brightness, and with such omens we saw ourselves already the victors over the untamed monster at whose feet we dared to lie so serenely. But "man proposes."

At crisp daylight we were astir, and after a formal breakfast set out at a good pace over the lower flanks of the first ridge south of our bivouac. The evidences of the earlier presence of the gold-hunter were about us; indeed we had been fully twenty minutes under way before we passed the last trace of such a visitation, a claim-stake with the name of the prospector and the bounds of his claim. We merely gave it a sidelong glance in passing, for it seeed to have been tacitly agreed that no one of the three should first call a halt, so that it was fully an hour before we made our first stop, and then for the purpose of putting on the rope at the beginning of the first real climbing. Still it had not been severe, save as a test of lung power.

Considerable snow lay at the base of the rocks we skirted, and unfortunately it was soft and little promising. At about 10,000 feet, not far, if I remember, above where one ridge joins another striking more to the south, we paused for our second breakfast. Things were now growing more interesting. A superb prospect had opened over the western ridge of the Ice River valley to the gleaming snows of the limitless line of the Selkirks, and near at hand were the forbidding crags and cornices of our own peak. Just above us rose the snowy shoulder over which we were to pass, and from that rose a steep cliff seen in all our reconnaissances, which was apparently the chief obstacle in the way of our success.

Again getting under way, we soon were upon that shoulder, and anon making our way under most ticklish conditions to the base of the hindering cliff. A narrow arête of several rods in length connected it with the snow shoulder, and this arete was itself ominously corniced, and with snow in a most treacherous state. Seldom have I seen Hasler so trepidant, so insistent that the ice-axes should be so planted as not to serve as levers to start a crack that would imperil the entire party, should the cornice fall; but, in good time, we were standing at the base of the cliff.

On either side of us, steep couloirs swept down thousands of feet; before us rose this beetling face of dark rock, with little snow-patches here and there revealing possible stations, between which only cracks and slight protuberances offered scanty holds for foot and hand. Hasler led off and attained the first anchorage; then Scattergood boldly followed. My turn came next, and I remember having some doubts as to the entire safety of the sport of alpinism for the next few minutes; indeed, for the next half hour. On my reaching the anchorage, the same tactics were repeated by the first two, after which Outram came up to my level, and I then went forward. Our third station brought us to the top of the cliff—and to the end of our ascent.

A most ominous situation revealed itself. The final peak was before us, and its summit hardly three hundred feet distant—a great white hissing mass,—a precipice on the hidden left side, a steep snowslope of perhaps 65 to 70 degrees on the right. Under the July sun its whole surface was seemingly in a state of flux, slipping, over the underlying mass with a constant, threatening hiss. A second narrow arete led across to this final summit. This, too, was corniced, and in a remarkable way. The swirl of the wind had produced an unusual spectacle. At the beginning and at the end, the cornice hung out to the right; in the middle, a reversed section of it overhung the abyss on the left.

THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT GOODSIR
South Tower

THE NORTH GABLE OF THE SOUTH TOWER
Mount Goodsir

The two similar ones could doubtless have been passed. To cross the middle of the section meant trusting ourselves to the sun-beaten slope already in avalanching condition. Indeed, while we studied it, and as if to furnish the final argument to our debate, the snow on our right impinging against the cornice, well back upon which Hasler was standing, broke away, and down went a well-developed avalanche a couple of thousand feet over that much-tilted surface, and vanished in a sheer plunge that landed it perhaps three thousand feet below that. It was a suggestive and persuasive sight. Feeling sure that we had seen enough for one day, we beat a careful retreat. With even greater caution we descended the cliff in reversed order, and, with well-justified trepidation, returned over the treacherous arête to the snowy shoulder. Never did I feel less certain of the safe outcome of a climb, or breathe more freely on leaving snow, surely the worst condition in which it was ever my fortune to meet it. We glissaded down the lower greasy snows, made good time below our bivouac, and dusk found us with colossal appetites back at the lower camp and Ross's bannocks. And so, repulsed, we turned our back on the sullen mountain, yet harboring intentions of getting even with it on some future occasion.

None offered the following year, but, in 1903, my friend Parker, just back at Field from an unsuccessful try at Goodsir with the two Kaufmanns as guides, wrote me of their discomfiture by reason of a heavy snowfall encountered at about 10,000 feet, invited me to hurry out from the East and join him in another attempt, as soon as the melting of the snow would permit. No urging was necessary. I came with all haste, and at once we were under way, with Christian Kaufmann and Hasler as guides. We were encamped well into the Ice River valley by six o'clock of the day on which we left Leanchoil at noon; such was our eagerness, and such the quick access by the new wagon road. The following day we moved our camp up into Zinc gulch; starting in summer heat and meeting a chill blast with snow squalls as we arrived at our chosen camping spot shortly after noon. This camp was almost at the identical height of the bivouac of 1901, but south of the great peak. Dubious weather conditions prevailed for the rest of the day; but we turned in early with good hopes for the morrow, which were dashed about two o'clock by Kaufmann's report that it was snowing. Morning revealed a picture more appropriate to Christmas than to mid-July. The evergreens were bearing wintry loads of wet snow, and the grey sky gave little promise of good weather. In any event, Goodsir was secure from assault for the present; for how long it was impossible to say. Many inches must have fallen higher up, and, of course, prudence counselled awaiting its disappearance. We had come relying on steady atmospheric conditions, intending to make quick work of it, and so were scantily furnished with supplies. Fortunately, Nixon, our outfitter, had come along with us on his handsome grey, rather for an outing than for business. After a brief council, he was despatched back to Leanchoil to send up supplies for a prolonged siege. It was now or never.

As the day wore on, the sun came out, and to our great relief, we saw the clinging snows on the peak diminish hour by hour, as we studied it in a practice-climb to the col joining "Little Goodsir"—the third "Sister"—to Zinc mountain, whose crags rose above our camp on the south. It was soaring just above these that the waning moon looked down on our party on the following morning—July 16th—as we prepared our breakfast. By the first good daylight we were under way. The first hour was similar to that of our climb of two years before, and led us up to our roping place on that occasion. In general, our course from

Photo, H. C. Parker

THE SWISS GUIDES CHRISTIAN AND HANS KAUFMANN,
WHO ACCOMPANIED PROFESSOR H. C. PARKER
On the Summit of Mount Hungabee

Photo, Chas. E. Fay

THE NORTH TOWER OF MOUNT GOODSIR

here to the cliff was identical with that of the former trip, but, to our great satisfaction, the snow was in perfect condition, and so remained the entire day. Accordingly, we made sufficiently good time, with the same stops as before. The arête from the shoulder to the base of the cliff was now child's play. The cliff was the same old story, though I recall one variants—the hand and foot holds on one occasion lost their grip on the man passing between the first two anchorages, and left him for a moment in a state of what might be called "suspended animation." Arriving at the top, all was changed from the conditions of 1901. The broken arête was indeed under a draping of recent snow, but no cornice was in evidence. It was "plain sailing"—and yet very interesting, for the arête was so narrow and thin that one astride it could have his left leg vertical over a sheer drop, at first indeed overhanging, of hundreds if not thousands of feet, while its mate pointed down that 70° slope of snow, as silent now as it was noisy in 1901. At eleven o'clock we were on the summit—Goodsir was ours. The repulse of two years before was forgotten, and our affections went out to the graceful peak, no longer a sullen monster, and, for the joys of that one glorious hour spent on its pure snowy summit, we granted it our love for a lifetime.

1. See Appalachia, vol. xi, p. 131.
2. Vol. ix, p. 289f.