. Climbs & exploration in the Canadian Rockies . nching out below intomysterious caverns and long winding grottoes,their sides tinged with that strangely beautifulglacial blue, and festooned with enormous icicles. We had been going nearly five hours whenwe emerged on to the upper glacier, and thewonders of that vast region of snow and icewere unfolded to our view. To Stutfield it wasall new ; for neither the great glacier nor thehigh peaks on its western side are visible fromWilcox Pass or Wild Sheep Hills: and theupper rim of the ice-fall was to him as the thres-hold of the unknown. We stood
. Climbs & exploration in the Canadian Rockies . nching out below intomysterious caverns and long winding grottoes,their sides tinged with that strangely beautifulglacial blue, and festooned with enormous icicles. We had been going nearly five hours whenwe emerged on to the upper glacier, and thewonders of that vast region of snow and icewere unfolded to our view. To Stutfield it wasall new ; for neither the great glacier nor thehigh peaks on its western side are visible fromWilcox Pass or Wild Sheep Hills: and theupper rim of the ice-fall was to him as the thres-hold of the unknown. We stood on the edgeof an immense ice-field, bigger than the biggestin Switzerland—that is to say, than the EwigeSchneefeld and the Aletsch Glacier combined—which stretched mile upon mile before us like arolling snow-covered prairie. The peaks, wenoticed, were all a long way off, and sparser andfewer in number than in the Alps, rising onlyhere and there like rocky islets from a frozen sea. Westwards the magnificent Finsteraarhorn- ii8 Mount Columbia. Diadem Peaks from Wild Sheep Hills THE COLUMBIA ICE-FIELD like mountain (Mount Bryce) sent its threepeaks high into the air. North of it the goal ofour ambition, that great glacier-clad, wedge-shaped peak, Mount Columbia, loomed grandand mysterious through the still prevailingsmoke-haze. A double-headed mountain on thenorth hid the high rock peak (afterwards namedby us Mount Alberta) which Collie, when onthe top of Athabasca Peak, thought might beMount Brown. The weather was very sultry,and thunder was in the air ; for several hours wetramped steadily on over the almost level ice-field, but Mount Columbia proved to be muchfurther off than it looked. The ascent, wesaw, would be quite easy—merely a long snow-grind — but we were still a long way evenfrom its base. The weather was very threat-ening — it was now past noon, and we hadalready been going nine hours—so we decidedto give it up. Before retracing our steps we halted aw^hile
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectmountai, bookyear1903
