The Appalachian Mountain Club began in 1876, and part of its mandate was ‘the advancement of the interests of those who visit the mountains of New England and adjacent regions, whether for the purpose of scientific research or summer recreation’. It did not take long for the ‘adjacent regions’ of the Appalachian Mountain Club to enlarge and expand into the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains of Canada.

 

The death of four guides in the tragic climb of the Matterhorn in 1865 had created a negative backlash. There were many that thought that mountain climbing should be banned if such a dire end was the fate of those that took to such challenging peaks. But, there were many others that were drawn to the challenge of the high spires and snow packed peaks. Charles Fay made his first full climbing trek to the Canadian Rockies and Selkirks in 1891 with a 20-member party (many were women) from the Appalachian Mountain Club. Fay had been in the Rockies before the 1891 trip, but the 1891 trek was an organized and more serious mountaineering trek. Philip Abbot was with Fay on the 1891 expedition. Both Fay and Abbot were drawn to larger peaks in the mountain ribbed region on their initial trek, and plans were made for future trips.

 

Fay and Abbot returned a few years later and climbed Mount Hector, and did a reconnaissance trip to Mount Lefroy. Abbot read his insightful and longer article, ‘The First Ascent of Mount Hector’ to the Appalachian Mountain Club on December 27, 1895. The essay is a fine read, and it tells,

in evocative and realistic detail, the nature of such a climb through forest, up glacier and the scramble to Hector’s rocky summit. I climbed Mount Hector in the summer of 2008 (it being one of the 11,000ers in the Rockies), and I found Abbot’s descriptions apt and telling.

 

The climb by Fay, Abbot and others to Mount Hector (near Lake Louise) merely whet their appetite for the grand guardians of the Louise area (Lefroy and Victoria). It was Lefroy, though, that was to be Abbot’s undoing, and his death on Lefroy created a sense of Matterhorn déjà vu in the mountaineering community. The tale is well recounted in Charles Sproull Thompson’s ‘Mount Lefroy, August 3, 1896’ (Appalachia, Vol. II, No. I (January 1897).  The article by Thompson begins in this manner:

 

     Shortly after dawn, on Monday, August 3, 1896, four men gathered,

     in eager preparation, upon the platform which surrounds the Canadian

     Pacific chalet at Lake Louise. A year before—to the very day, as it

     chanced,--Prof. Charles E. Fay, Mr. Philip S. Abbot, and the writer had

     endeavored to reach the as yet untrodden summit of Mt. Lefroy by a

     couloir which offers the only feasible passage through the cliffs of its

     northern face.

 

Most of the article described the actual climb up the Death Trap to the col between Lefroy and Victoria (now called Abbot Pass), then the ascent to near the summit of Lefroy. It is only in the last two paragraphs of the article that Thompson mentioned the gruesome fall by Abbot to his death. It is almost as if Thompson did not want to go to emotional places within himself in which the obvious pain of his climbing friend’s death can be discussed. The article is factual, to the point and descriptive of the events of the day—there is virtually no human feeling or emotions dealt with or described by Thompson in regards to Abbot’s death. The article is a must read for the first mountain fatality in both the Rockies and the Appalachian Mountain Club.   

    

 

        

 

 

                                                       II

 

The origins and early development of mountaineering in North America in the late 19^th -early 20^th centuries has been called the golden age. The Canadian peaks did beckon and the eager and curious heard the call and could not resist. The high noon of Alpinism in Europe had passed, as I mentioned above, with Whymper’s tragic climb of the Matterhorn in 1865. Many a mountaineering eye was turned from Europe to North America. A new era was about to emerge, and the Canadian Rockies were to be the hosts. 

 

Charles Fay (1846-1931) was a pioneer in such a tale waiting to be fully told, and he was there at the beginning when the drama was yet young. Fay is held high in Phil Dowling’s The Mountaineers: Famous Climbers in Canada (1979), and it was Fay, more then most, that revealed the vision that many would heed and hear. Fay’s initial mountaineering years were in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. These mountains are not much more than small hills when compared with Fay’s more mature climbing days, but all must begin somewhere. It did not take long for Fay’s faithful and consistent turn to the mountains to be noticed, and as more and more mountain keeners gathered and took to the hills, it became obvious that a mountain club was needed.

 

Fay was there at the founding of the Appalachian Mountain Club in 1876,

and he played a significant role in its growth and maturation. But, Canada was also in the birthing season of mountaineering. In 1872, George Munro Grant and Sanford Fleming did a cross Canada tour, and the latter part of the trip took the trekkers over and around many a summit in the layered mountain ranges of Alberta and British Columbia. The latter chapters of Ocean to Ocean: Sanford Fleming’s Expedition Through Canada in 1872 is now a time tried classic in Canadian mountaineering literature. There was much more to come, though. Fleming and Grant teamed up again in 1883 for a tougher and more demanding trip through the mountain ranges of Alberta and British Columbia.  It was on this trip, at the height of Rogers Pass (where glaciers were abundant and glistening white), that the first Alpine Club of Canada was envisioned and organized. The Appalachian Mountain Club was formed in 1876, and the Alpine Club of Canada by Fleming/Grant in 1883. Mountaineering visionaries and organizations were about to converge.

 

 

                                                        III

 

It did not take Fay long to realize that there were higher peaks to climb, and grander sights yet to see. The idea for the Alpine Club of Canada was there in 1883, but getting into the Canadian Rockies was not the easiest and most accessible. The opening up of the Canada West was brought into being when the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was hammered into the rock hard soil of the vast mountainous ranges of British Columbia in 1885. The fact that a railway could now slice through immense mountain terrain meant that those with a passion for the mountains now had a means to reach the feet of the fabled giants. The federal government in Canada signed into being Banff National Park in 1885, and with the building of Glacier House in the Rogers Pass area in 1885 and Banff Springs Hotel in 1888, mountaineering in Canada was about to be launched. Charles Fay could not but miss what was about to unfold.

 

Fay made the first of his many Canadian visits in 1889. Glacier House was the mountaineering bee hive in those years as was Mount Stephen House in Field (the site of the famous Burgess Shale discovery in 1909 by Dr. Charles Doolittle Walcott). Fay could not miss such shrines, and he was in the area many times.  It was from Glacier and Mount Stephen House that many a rigorous and not to be forgotten climb was made. Peaks soared like eagles, glaciers tantalized the eager, and rock ridges and slabs offered hikes, scrambles and climbs for all levels. The tale, so evocatively told, of the rise and fall of Glacier House in the Rogers Pass area can be found in Putnam’s The Great Glacier and its House: The Story of the First Center of Alpinism in North America 1885-1925 (1982). There remains little of Glacier House at the present time, but for the Alpine archeologist and historian the foundation stones still remain to remind the curious of the beginnings of the Alpine tradition in Canada and North America. 

 

The growing excitement about mountaineering in the Rockies was furthered intensified by the publication of William Spotswood Green’s Among the Selkirk Glaciers in 1890. It was this book more than most that awoke and stirred a generation of mountain keeners. Green had previously published The High Alps of New Zealand, but it was Among the Selkirk Glaciers that  became the earliest sacred text for devotes of the untapped and untrekked

rock slabs and glaciers in the Selkirk mountain area just west of the Rocky mountains.  Green had captured the imagination and curiosity of a new generation of mountaineers with his adventure tome, and the mountain pilgrims began to arrive in the Rockies and Selkirk turrets and glacier castles with much hope and anticipation. They were not to be disappointed.

 

 

                                                         IV

 

There was no doubt that momentum was building as mountaineering in the Rockies and Selkirk Mountains waxed. It was just a matter of time before the heady idealism and excitement of untried terrain would meet with some form of tragedy and sadness. The mountains do demand, in time, their exacting due. Even the best can be beaten by the aged rock sentinels.   

 

Chic Scott, in his visual and textural tour de force on the history of mountaineering in Canada, Pushing the Limits (2000), had this to say about Mount Lefroy, the site of the first climbing tragedy in Canada in 1896:

 

       Mount Lefroy is still a classic climb for modern mountaineers,

       and the trip to Abbot Pass, where a handsome stone hut now

       stands, coupled with ascents of Mounts Lefroy and Victoria, is

       the quintessential Rockies climbing adventure.

 

Fay was there for the first climbing tragedy in Canada in 1896. Lake Louise (called Laggan in those years) was the site from which significant climbs on rock faces could be made. The lure of Mount Lefroy and Victoria could not be resisted. Charles Fay and Philip Stanley Abbot (and other friends) had decided to climb Mount Lefroy on August 3 1896. Abbot took a terrible fall to his death, and Fay watched in horror as his climbing friend, like a rag doll, tumbled to the snow packed col below. It was this tragedy that partially initiated the tradition in Canada of Swiss Guides. The history of this Canadian tradition of Swiss Guides is well recounted in Mountain Climbing Guides in Canada: The Early Years (1977), The Guiding Spirit (1986) and High Ideals: Canadian Pacific’s Swiss Guides 1899-1999 (1999).

 

Italian mountain guides had led the Duke of Abruzzi to Mount St. Elias in the legendary 1896 expedition, and this precedent heralded, alongside Abbot’s sad death, the growing interest in mountain guides. The sources drawn from were Switzerland rather than Italy, though. The Vaux brothers (amateur scientists and photographers) from Philadelphia suggested to the receptive Canadian Pacific Railway in 1898 that Swiss guides be hired to facilitate glacier and rock treks and climbs for a variety of interested patrons.

A ground swell of interest in the Canadian Alps was afoot, and the CPR knew that they had to respond to keep the coppers flowing like a fast and foaming mountain stream in spring season. The CPR went so far as to call the Canadian Rockies ‘fifty Switzerlands, all in one’. The image could not be resisted, and many were convinced by it.     

 

The fact that mountaineering was becoming more and more popular meant that there was a definite need for training, clubs and guides. Charles Fay was there yet again. Fay’s reputation was so high in the American mountaineering world that when the American Alpine Club was formed in

1902, Fay became the first president. Fay had bagged many a peak by 1902, and he knew the small but growing Canadian mountaineering world well.

The original Alpine Club of Canada faltered, stumbled and never amounted to much, but the fact that Fay brought many from the Appalachian and American Alpine Clubs to Canada on a regular basis meant that some decisions needed to be made.

 

The leading light and organizational force in Canadian mountaineering at the time was Arthur Oliver Wheeler. Wheeler and Fay consulted often about the drift and direction the Canadian mountaineering tradition should take. Fay knew the Appalachian and American Alpine Clubs well, and he knew the Canadian Rockies better than most. Wheeler had tried, for a few years, to start a Canadian Alpine Club, but enthusiasm was not strong. Fay suggested that Canadians should join the fledgling American Alpine Club, and Wheeler was quite open to the idea. But, just as Wheeler was about to bring one and all on board, a dissent voice blew the Ram’s horn long, loud and clear. It was not a man, but a woman that stood her nationalist ground. Elizabeth Parker from the Winnipeg Free Press argued that Canadians were quite capable of forming their own Alpine Club, and such a Club need not assimilate into the American Alpine Club. Wheeler concurred with Parker, and in 1906, in Winnipeg, the Alpine Club of Canada was formed. Two women cannot be missed in the photograph of the founding of the Alpine Club of Canada. Elizabeth Parker stands with a hemp rope round her right shoulder, and her climbing daughter, Jean Parker, makes it more than clear that women would play a leadership role in Canadian mountaineering.

 

Fay was made an honorary member of the Alpine Club of Canada in 1907, but his strength was not as it once was.  The CPR built the Alpine Swiss Guides village (Edelweiss) in Golden/BC in 1911. Charles Fay was at the annual Alpine Club of Canada’s 1913 summer camp when Mount Robson (the highest and one of the most demanding peaks in the Rockies was finally climbed by Conrad Kain). Fay was very much an elder of the clan by 1913.

 

There is an interesting story that is often missed in the telling of the Fay legend and lore. Edward Feuz Jr., the Canadian patriarch of the Swiss Guides until about 1950, recounts the drama well.

 

       Back of Moraine Lake there’s a valley surrounded by ten peaks.

       The Geographic Board had just named the first peak Mount Fay

       in the Professor’s honour. It was unclimbed.

 

       Naturally, Professor Fay wanted to be the first to climb it. He hired

       Hans Kaufmann to take him up. But just then an English lady,

       Gertrude Benham, a very strong climber who had been all over the

       Oberland, sneaked up to Christian and asked him to get her up there

       ahead of Fay.

 

        Christian knew the country. He’d been there with an American named

        Allen, who had made a map, and climbed several of the peaks. Those

        he hadn’t climbed, Mount Fay included, he’d seen from the Deltaform

        across the way, and he knew exactly how to find the easiest way up.

        Both brothers thought it would be a great joke to fool old man Fay.

 

        The two parties started out at the same time by different routes.

        Christian went the easy way with Miss Benham and romped up the

        mountain. Hans took the old professor up Consolation Valley where

        everything goes straight up. The two of them puttered around and

        couldn’t get anywhere. So when they finally gave up and went back

        to Louise they found the others had made an ascent but weren’t

        talking much.

 

        It was some time before Professor Fay found out what the Kaufmann

        brothers had been up to. When he did, he went straight to the big boss

        of the CPR: ‘Either they go’, he stormed, ‘or I won’t come back’.

        ‘Don’t worry’, replied Mr. Van Horne, ‘we’ll take care of those bums’.

        They wrote my father a letter from Montreal: ‘NO MORE

        KAUFMANNS’ it said. That was the end of them—and good riddance.

 

 

The Guiding Spirit (pages 84-85)          

 

 

                                                           V

 

The fact that Philip Abbot had died such a tragic death could not go unforgotten. It was the Swiss Guides that wanted to honor the death. Edward Feuz suggested in 1921 that a hut should be built at Abbot Pass (the col where Abbot had fallen to his death). Feuz and another Swiss Guide (Rudolf Aemmer) put a plan together. The takers were few, but the guides were persistent.  The idea was to construct a rock hut (similar to many Swiss Huts) at 9600 feet between towering and snow robed Lefroy and Victoria. Material had to be hauled up the avalanche prone Death Trap. Construction began in 1922, and by 1923 Abbot Hut was completed. Twenty members of the Appalachian Mountain Club made the trek from Boston to commemorate the opening of Abbot Hut (the highest hut in Canada at the time) in 1923. Feuz had this to say at the christening of Abbot Hut:

 

   

    Down in the valley, a house, a big house, is just a big house.

    But up here, in the ice and snow, with all these beautiful peaks

    everywhere, this simple hut is home.

 

Abbot Hut can be approached from either the Lake O’Hara side or from the Lake Louise Death Trap side. The trip and trek to Abbot Hut is well worth the ascent and overnight stay. Climbs of Lefroy, Victoria and the many other ancient guardians in the area are a paradise not to miss—surely one of the wonders of the world. It was in 1930 that Charles Fay (then in his 85^th year) made his 25^th trek to the Canadian rock ranges. He came to attend the annual Alpine Club of Canada’s camp at Maligne Lake. His memories must have been full. Fay had published an article in The Canadian Alpine Journal in 1921-1922 called ‘Old Times in the Canadian Alps’—the reflections are tender and sensitive--an elder of the mountaineering tribe had much to share with a new and eager generation of aspiring climbers.

 

Many are the fascinating tales that have been told from Abbot Hut. Roger Patillo, a veteran of Lake Louise in its earlier years and raconteur of the Rockies, recounts this story.   

 

     The event occurred on July 24, 1959 when a relatively inexperienced

     climbing party of four adventurers from Montreal was starting down

     Abbot Pass.  It was just about 9:30 a.m. on a bright and cloudless

     morning and the group was still exhilarated, after an exciting ascent

     of the North Peak of Mt. Victoria and a traverse to South Peak along the

     mountain’s knife edge like ridge, the previous day. The pass was in good

     shape that year and they started down in high spirits—expecting an easy

     trip down the pass and back to the Plain of Six Glaciers teahouse, where     

     they’d started from the previous morning. Three members of the party

     roped-up and started out following the footsteps of a previous climbing

     group, who had come up the pass earlier that morning on their way to

     climb Centre Peak.

 

     The fourth member of the party was detained at the hut for some reason

     and he hurried to catch-up with his colleagues as they proceeded down

     the pass. About five minutes later his friends, looking back toward the

     top of the pass, saw their friend cutting diagonally across the slope from

     the hut to join the tracks further down. Suddenly he disappeared from

     their view. Waiting anxiously, as the minutes dragged by, they became

     alarmed and rushed back to where he disappeared. About 200 yards

     from the hut, the three climbers discovered their friend’s tracks leading

     to a deep crevasse that had been hidden by a weak snow bridge. Looking

     into the crevasse, they saw their motionless friend. He was head-first in

     the snow and ice, some forty to fifty feet down. One of them rappelled

     down to him and found that their comrade was dead from a massive head

     wound.

 

     His traumatized friends managed to pull him from the crevasse and then

     they tried to revive him using CPR but it was to no avail. Sadly they

     dragged his limp body up the slope and into the hut, where they laid him

     on a table and covered him with a blanket. Collecting themselves, they

     stayed at the cabin for a long time, hoping that someone would arrive to

     help. At about six p.m. they gave up their vigil, and left the hut. Once

     outside they roped up and headed down the Lake O’Hara side of Abbot

     Pass to get help.

 

     About an hour later, a party of two young men and two gals, each of

     whom were on staff at the Deer Lodge, arrived at the hut. They had just

     come up Abbot Pass from the Plain of Six Glacier’s side. They were

     expecting a pleasant night at the hut and had their steaks and wine

     carefully packed. Unaware the something was wrong, they opened the

     door of the hut and enthusiastically began unpacking their supplies. Then

     one of the group spotted the blanket with something under it on the table.

     Having a look, he discovered the ghastly cadaver and you can imagine

     the rest. Apparently his voice failed him completely and all that he could

     do was point and gesture. Without stopping for supper, the four then

     proceeded to set the still unsurpassed speed record from the top of Abbot

     Pass back down to the Plain of Six Glaciers.

 

                                           Lake Louise at its Best:

     An Affectionate look at life at Lake Louise by one who knew it well (2005)

    pgs. 162-163

 

 

Many are the tales that could be told that are similar to the one above about Abbot Pass and Abbot Hut. The place is legendary for its beauty (surely one of the paradise places of the world), its challenges and its many tragedies. Charles Fay and Philip Abbot were but two men that were drawn to the peaks and pass, and knew the wonder and sadness of such an alluring place.

 

 

                                                         VI

 

The fact that the Swiss Guides have played such an essential role in the history of Canadian mountaineering cannot be ignored. These Swiss guides brought with them an older approach and attitude to mountains and guiding. Yes, there were the summits to reach, but there were also the many huts to stay in on the traverses and treks through the rock and ice sentinels of old. Some trips could be lengthy, so tea huts were also important station stops on the way from hut to peak and back. The tea huts, high in the mountains and by glacier’s edge, in the Lake Louise area, remind the curious about the origins of the Swiss tradition in the Canadian ethos. It was from such tea huts that Swiss guides did the building of Abbot Hut.                

 

Fay Hut was built in 1927 by the Alpine Club of Canada (the first Alpine Club of Canada hut to be built). The first Fay Hut that was built in the Prospector’s Valley of the Kootenay Park lasted from 1927-2003. The horrendous fire that swept through Kootenay Park in 2003 wiped out the original Fay Hut in minutes. The Alpine Club of Canada was more than committed to build a second Fay Hut, and this they did; the hut was completed in 2005 after much work and committed labour. Sadly so, the second Fay Hut was reduced to cinder by another fire in April 2/3 2009. The Alpine Club of Canada is in the process of pondering the next rebuilding project for a third Fay Hut in the exquisite Prospector’s Valley (Gazette: Vol. 24, No. 2, Summer 2009, pages 4 & 8-9).

 

Wheeler Hut was built in the 1920s in the Rogers Pass area to replace the failing Glacier House and to remind mountaineers of the origins of Alpinism in North America. Parker Hut is located in the attractive and much desired Lake O’Hara area in which many from around the world visit each year. Lake Louise, Lake O’Hara, Abbot Pass-Hut and Elizabeth Parker Hut walk the interested into magical kingdoms that awaken the imagination, legs and heart to do greater and grander things. The stately rock guardians in the area

welcome one and all—day walkers, alpine hikers and technical climbers. There is a feast and banquet not to miss, and those who take to such a place

return with a soul full of satisfaction.

 

Charles Fay died in 1931, but his line and lineage lives ever on. It was Fay that did much to bring the energy, history and enthusiasm of the Appalachian Alpine Club to the Rockies. Philip Abbot was from the Appalachian Alpine Club, and Abbot Hut in Abbot Pass is a rock solid

testament to his climbing memory.  Charles Fay, Philip Abbot, the Appalachian Alpine Club, the American Alpine Club and the Swiss Mountain Guide Tradition are all deeply etched into the origins and early development of Canadian mountaineering and the Alpine Club of Canada.

 

Ron Dart     

 

 

Selected Reading List

 

Dowling, Phil. The Mountaineers: Famous Climbers in Canada (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1979).

 

Fraser, Esther. Wheeler (Banff: A Summerthought Publication, 1978).

 

Griffiths, Alison & Wingenbach, Gerry. Mountain Climbing Guides in Canada: The Early Years (Parks Awareness Program book: 1977).

 

Jones, Chris. Climbing in North America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).  

 

Kauffman, Andrew & Putnam, William. The Guiding Spirit (Revelstoke: Footprint Publishing, 1986).

 

Leslie, Susan. In the Western Mountains: Early Mountaineering in British

Columbia (Victoria: Provincial Archives of British Columbia, 1980).

 

Patillo, Roger. Lake Louise at its Best: An Affectionate look at life at Lake Louise by one who knew it well (Aldergrove: Amberlea Press, 2005).

 

Patillo, Roger. The Canadian Rockies: Pioneers, Legends and True Tales (Aldergrove: Amberlea Press. 2005).

 

Putnam, William. The Great Glacier and its House: The Story of the First Center of Alpinism in North America 1885-1925 (New York: The American Alpine Club, 1982).

 

Reichwein, PearlAnn. Guardians of a Rocky Mountain Wilderness: Elizabeth Parker, Mary Schaeffer, and the Canadian National Park Idea, 1890-1914 (MA thesis: Department of History, Carleton University, 1990).

 

Reichwein, PearlAnn. Beyond the Visionary Mountains: The Alpine Club of Canada and the Canadian National Park Idea, 1906 to 1969 (Ph. D. dissertation: Department of History, Carleton University, 1995).  

 

Sanford, Robert. High Ideals: Canadian Pacifics Swiss Guides 1899-1999

(Canmore: Alpine Club of Canada, 1999).  

 

Scott, Chic. Pushing the Limits: The Story of Canadian Mountaineering (Calgary: Rocky Mountain Books, 2000).