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A true mountain man

Film Fest to launch Conrad Kain Centennial celebrations in Invermere
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Old School Summit Legendary guide Conrad Kain belays climbers to a peak. Photo by Bryon Harmon, courtesy of The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.

As a teenager growing up in Kimberley, B.C., filmmaker Pat Morrow read one of the great classics of Canadian mountaineering literature, Where the Clouds Can Go, the autobiography of Conrad Kain, which was compiled from Kain’s diaries and other writings after his death in 1934.

Born in Austria in 1883, Kain’s father died when he was only nine, forcing him to leave school at 14 to support his family. He worked as a goatherd and quarryman, but soon followed his love of the mountains, beginning his guiding career in 1904. Before long he was regarded as one of Europe’s finest mountain guides, and in 1909 he accepted an invitation to guide in Canada at the Alpine Club of Canada’s 1909 Lake O’Hara Camp — the first guide ever hired by the ACC.

Although he spent three seasons guiding in New Zealand, where he made 29 first ascents, Kain chose to make Canada home, settling in the hamlet of Wilmer in the Columbia River Valley. It was also in Canada that Kain made his most impressive climbs, particularly his now legendary first ascents of Mount Robson in 1913, and in 1916, Bugaboo Spire and Mount Louis in the Bow Valley region of Banff National Park. Among the hundreds of Canadian mountains he guided clients up, 50 were first ascents, and many set new international guiding standards. In 1910, Kain started the Canadian Rockies’ first ski club in Banff.

“I’m a great admirer of his attitude toward the mountains,” Morrow said. “For him it was all about sharing, he made all his first ascents with clients.”

That life-long admiration, coupled with Morrow’s relocation to Wilmer (a hamlet of about 120 homes), last August after 20 years as a Canmore resident, resulted in perfect timing for him to become involved with the Conrad Kain Centennial Society.

Formed in 2004, the CKCS came together as fans of Kain’s, including several mountain guides, decided to mark the occasion of his arrival in Canada, and to celebrate his legacy of honesty, decency, respect and love for the mountain wilderness.

Kicking off the celebrations, which are planned to take place at intervals over the next few years leading to the centennials of some notable first ascents, the CKCS is hosting the first Conrad Kain Mountain Film Night in Invermere, B.C., just south of Wilmer, on Friday, April 4.

In addition to a selection of films from the 2008 Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival Tour, the event will include the unveiling of a new climbing wall at Invermere’s J.A. Laird School, and presentations on future events and one on Kain’s life by CKCS chair Hermann Mauthner.

“Conrad Kain was a very inspirational man and an exceptional human being,” Mauthner said.

Born in Austria about 120 kilometres from Kain’s native town, like Kain, once Mauthner arrived in Canada at the age of 20, he decided to stay, settling in Wilmer where he still lives in the house he bought 41 years ago, only two blocks from the house Kain lived in.

Ironically, the father of a friend of Mauthner’s in Austria was the man who sent Kain to work in Canada.

“It’s an Austrian-Canadian thing,” Mauthner said. “I really like the mountains and nature and he did a lot of things I admire.”

Like many Europeans, Kain fell in love with Canada for its undisturbed wilderness, the likes of which ceased to exist in Europe long before he left, and which is fast disappearing in the Columbia Valley as Invermere is consumed with development and construction of second homes and vacation properties.

“Conrad Kain had such a high regard for nature,” Morrow said. “In his day, everything was pretty wild without the protection of parks and protected areas. For him it wasn’t just about climbing, it was also big game hunting and trapping. He loved wilderness, he had quite a vested interest in it remaining intact. Today I think he’d be aghast at what’s going on. We’re hoping that these celebrations help to build people’s appreciation for the wilderness Kain likely took for granted, that he thought would always be there.”

While many of the celebrations will take place around the Invermere/Wilmer region, several Bow Valley residents have enthusiastically joined the CKCS. Banff’s Eleanor Luxton Historical Foundation has provided grant money to help promote the film night and support projects that will endure long beyond the planned events, including the design and building of a CKCS website, which will feature not just biographical information, but also details on Kain’s climbs and expeditions.

Banff’s Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies has pledged access to photos of Kain taken by Byron Harmon and others of that era. Bow Valley graphic artist Scott Withers of Rock Dog Designs created an interpretive panel to hang beside the climbing wall.

The CKCS also boasts author Brian Patton, former long-time Bow Valley resident who relocated to the Columbia River Valley, Banff Park biologist Jim Thorsell, who divides his time between Banff and Wilmer, and Banff resident Chic Scott who wrote fondly of Kain in his history of Canadian mountaineering, Pushing the Limits .

“Not only was he a great climber, he was a larger than life romantic mountaineer who inspired his clients and still inspires generations of climbers,” Scott said. “He was a philosopher who was observant of people and details. His writings show a keen observation and a keen intelligence.”

As well, the ACC is discussing ways to coordinate the celebration of Kain’s notable first ascents with the CKCS, and ways to contribute to the construction of a Conrad Kain Cairn monument to be built in Wilmer this summer in recognition of Kain’s trademark summit cairns, and which will carry bronze insignias of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG), and the alpine clubs of Austria, New Zealand, the U.S. and Canada.

In the preface to the 1979 third edition of Where the Clouds Can Go , long-time Bow Valley resident and Austrian-born Hans Gmoser, founder of the ACMG and Canadian Mountain Holidays who died in 2006 wrote, “ In his humble, thoughtful way of telling about his life, his climbs, his friends and companions, Conrad gives us a very wholesome philosophy of life. In his modest antiauthoritarian way, it is actually a code of behaviour in the mountains and among people.”

Among the CKCS’s plans are hopes for a fourth printing of the rare book.

To learn more, visit www.conradkain.com