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British Columbia Mountaineering Club turns 100

“The task of making these mountains known has been a heavy one. Unstinted toil and unflagging perseverance have been called for; and the financial demands on the members have been heavy. With absolutely no aid from government or any outside quarter, they have carried on a work of great public importance from year to year, finding their reward in the doing of it.”

— J. Porter, Editor, Northern Cordilleran, 1913

By Andrew Mitchell

Heavy leather boots lashed to rusted iron crampons. Sturdy wooden ice-axes with iron picks. Wool and flannel inner layers to keep in the heat. Treated leathers and canvas outer layers to keep out the wind and moisture. Coils of fibred rope for safety, kerosene lamps if it should get dark.

The year is 2007. Despite numerous advances in materials and technology, a group of six mountaineers will attempt to ascend Mt. Garibaldi (2,678 metres) this Canada Day long weekend using a variety of old school climbing equipment from the early 1900s. Among the climbing artifacts traveling with the group is the actual ice axe used by J.J. Trorey, one of the first mountaineers to ascend the peak in the summer of 1907.

Trorey was also a pioneering member of the B.C. Mountaineering Club (BCMC), and has a peak named after him on the Spearhead Traverse. You can see it from the shores of Russet Lake.

The 100 th anniversary of this ascent will mark the centennial of the BCMC itself, as the club celebrates 100 years of exploration, advocacy and education.

In many ways it’s also the story of the Sea to Sky region, which hugs the western flank of Garibaldi Provincial Park — protected in 1919 and formalized as a park in 1927 after years of lobbying by the BCMC’s passionate founders. The park’s northern boundaries were later expanded after more lobbying, and it now sits at close to 200,000 hectares — stretching to Pemberton in the north, to Squamish in the west, to Lillooet in the east, and bordering on Golden Ears and Pinecone Burke Provincial Parks in the south (both also BCMC projects).

Past and present members of the BCMC are true pioneers, climbing the highest and most inaccessible peaks throughout the province, traversing vast alpine ice fields, and filling in the blank spots on maps. They have a legacy of built trails and alpine cabins, of guiding innumerable trips into remote alpine areas, of making countless first ascents, of embracing their sport with so much dedication and intellectual fervor that it transcends mere recreation. The BCMC has always been just as concerned with the why, what and how of B.C.’s backcountry as with the more obvious who, when and where.

In any given year the BCMC has between 450 and 500 members, a list that frequently includes some of the most important names in mountaineering in Canada. The club also publishes one of B.C.’s most prominent guide books, 103 Hikes in Southwestern B.C., to raise money for camps and other activities.

Taken together, the BCMC’s accomplishments are too many to list — a 1967 index of club publications is 101 pages long, crammed with references to articles, trip reports, scientific studies, newsletters, guides, notices, and copies of the club’s not quite annual yearbook The Northern Cordilleran — cordilleran being the proper name for a group of mountain ranges separated by alpine features like ice fields. That index is now dated by 40 years, and would easily be twice as thick today.

Humble Beginnings

The Alpine Club of Canada was first formed in 1906, drawing the interest of alpine enthusiasts from across the country. It was an elite, well-educated group, and collectively regarded the Rocky Mountains of Alberta and B.C. as its main base of operations. And why not? Banff National Park, established in 1887, was easily accessible by rail and by the turn of the century there were comfortable lodgings at Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper for weary travelers. There were good maps and trails available, lots of areas still to explore, and some first-rate climbing.

In the BCMC’s early histories, it was suggested that the club — first established as the Vancouver Mountaineering Club — was created to organize and formalize early expeditions up the watersheds to the north and east of Vancouver. That may have been true, but it was also created as an affordable alternative to the Alpine Club of Canada.

According to Dr. Karl Ricker of Whistler — who has examined the history of the club extensively while preparing a summary of the club’s scientific research over a century of exploration — one of the catalysts for the creation of the B.C. club was the high cost of attending the Alpine Club of Canada’s summer camp in Yoho National Park in 1906, and the following year’s camp in Banff National Park.

“The only way to get there in those days was by train, and the cost to take part in the camps was very prohibitive to any laymen,” said Ricker. “It was a big trip to make, especially since there was so much to explore right in their own backyards.”

While some of Vancouver’s mountaineers could afford the journey, a lot of the best local exploration was being done on weekends and holidays by students, teachers, railway workers, and other blue-collar enthusiasts. They also recognized that there was a lot of great alpine to explore just outside of Vancouver, while the Rockies had no shortage of pioneers.

As a result, the Vancouver Mountaineering Club was formally launched on Oct. 28, 2007 with a starting membership of 16 climbers.

Earlier that summer an expedition of climbers, led by J.J. Trorey, became the first to summit Mount Garibaldi, the highest peak in this part of the Coastal Mountains. The following summer, club members made the first recorded ascents of White Mountain, Seymour Mountain and Loch Lomond Head, and members cut a new trail up Grouse Mountain that would open up Vancouver’s mountains to further exploration.

Trips frequently included biologists, botanists, geologists and other experts, but were always bolstered by pure adventurers who were more into the recreational and spiritual side of the sport. A great number of enterprising women, usually the wives of mountaineers but not always, wore cumbersome dresses over their clunky climbing boots, and happily joined in the fun.

Some of those pioneering women, like the legendary Phyllis Munday, went on to make history. Munday was the first woman to scale Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, as well as joining in on numerous other first ascents in the Waddington Range. She once chased off a grizzly with an ice axe, made frequent trips with a child strapped to her back, and saved her husband Don when he injured his leg in the backcountry. By the time she was 33, in 1928, she had a peak named after her, Mount Munday (3,367 metres). She earned the Order of Canada in 1973 for her contributions to Girl Guides, St. John’s Ambulance, and mountaineering, and in 1998 was featured on a stamp as part of Canada Post’s Legendary Canadians Series.

Through all the club’s early years, records of all BCMC expeditions were methodically and meticulously kept. Maps were made and remade, and members followed up on their explorations with numerous submissions to the federal government department responsible for keeping geographic place names.

Summers were a particularly busy time, and dozens of organized trips were made each year after the club was founded — each one forming the starting point for yet another trip as climbers returned at the next opportunity to climb the next peak in the chain. Every destination was another starting point.

As it stands, the BCMC and its members are formally credited with hundreds of first ascents of B.C. peaks, including Mt. Waddington in 1928 — the highest peak in the Coast Range with a summit of 4,019 metres. Members of the club have also participated in hundreds of other ascents on their own, or as members of private expeditions or joint expeditions with groups like the Alpine Club of Canada and the University of British Columbia’s Varsity Outdoor Club.

BCMC First Ascents

Mt. Garibaldi — 1907

Mt. Seymour — 1908

The Needles — 1908

Mt. Cathedral — 1908

Lynn Peaks — 1908

Mt. Burwell ­— 1908

Mt. Bishop — 1909

Sky Pilot — 1910

Golden Ears — 1911

Castle Towers — 1911

Glacier Pikes — 1911

Black Tusk — 1912

Parapet Peak — 1922

Isosceles Peak — 1922

Blackcomb Peak — 1923

Mt. Waddington — 1928

Mt. Munday — 1930

BCMC members also made up the first Canadian team to climb Mount St. Elias on the Alaska-Yukon border in 1971. This year, in late May-early June, a team of BCMC climbers summited Mount Fairweather from the Canadian side, both in recognition of the centennial and as a 40 th anniversary celebration of the first Canadian ascent of the peak by a joint BCMC-Alpine Club of Canada expedition.

Members of the most recent group, led by BCMC club president David Hughes, will be presenting a slideshow on their journey back to Mt. Fairweather this fall.

The BCMC Then and Now

By the time the BCMC started its first major advocacy campaign — establishing a provincial park around Garibaldi — it had an established membership, a raft of honourable achievements, and a solid reputation in the province for science and exploration.

Since 1911, when the BCMC drew up its constitution, the club has included the advancement of natural science and history in its mandate. Ricker’s very abbreviated 2007 summary of that scientific work, “A Century of Scientific Query by the British Columbia Mountaineering Club”, runs more than 60 typed pages in its draft form.

The BCMC’s extensive archives — housed at the North Vancouver Museum and Archives — tells the club’s whole history — in duplicate, if something should happen to one set of records.

Celebrating the centennial is bringing that history back to life.

“The people who have looked after the club’s archives all these years have done an amazing job, there is so much in there,” said David Scanlon, the cabin and trails representative on the BCMC executive and co-ordinator of the club’s centennial activities.

“Our members have done amazing things.”

Some of the club’s history is on display at the museum through the summer, including photographs from the first summit of Garibaldi, the ice axe of founder Charles Chapman that was taken on several first ascents of Lower Mainland mountains, and Phyllis Munday’s trusty compass. There is also information on the club’s most famous climbers, including the late and legendary John Clarke, who made over 600 first ascents in his life, most of them in B.C., and is Canada’s most decorated climber with an Order of Canada of his own.

While true first ascents are getting harder to make after a hundred years of exploration, interest in the mountains is far from fading. As a member of the Federation of Mountain Clubs of B.C., the BCMC continues to be a voice for conservation, and a voice for the mountains in the face of global warming.

“One of the interesting things that people do not realize is that the Saskatchewan River begins in the Rockies — it goes through Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, but what feeds it in the summer are the glaciers in the Rocky Mountains,” said Scanlon. “When the glaciers are gone, that river is a question mark, and all the towns and farms that rely on it. It’s important to think about, because there are going to be some major problems if those glaciers disappear forever.”

While the creation of provincial parks throughout the province has helped the BCMC’s conservation efforts, the work is never-ending. The expansion up the Fraser Valley and Sea to Sky is bringing more development and recreation to the mountains, and balancing the needs of people with the needs of nature is a constant challenge.

“We have members that sit on different boards, like the Sea to Sky Forum, and try to get some semblance of order to the backcountry,” said Scanlon. “We’ve got heli-skiing, cat-skiing, snowmobile tenures, and all kinds of other user groups that want into these areas. The backcountry is shrinking. Places where almost nobody went before are becoming more easily accessible, which is why conservation is a big issue for us.”

The BCMC’s mandate has also been about access. In addition to cutting many of the trails that climbers use to access the alpine throughout the Sea to Sky area and in the Lower Mainland, the club has also been active building backcountry huts.

The club built its first cabin on Grouse Mountain in 1909 as a rudimentary base of operations. That was followed by a much bigger club cabin in 1927, and an even bigger cabin in 1947. The club also had a cabin on Seymour that was quite well used. The addition of lifts to those areas in the 1960s meant that the cabins were no longer needed, and when vandalism became an issue both cabins were sold.

By then, however, the BCMC had expanded its range of operations considerably, and was hard at work building huts in other areas. The BCMC helped build the cabins at Russett Lake and Wegemount in the 1960s that were shortly afterwards donated to Garibaldi Provincial Park.

The BCMC still has title to three other cabins, including Mountain Lake, on Mount Sheer above Britannia Beach, North Creek in the Lillooet Valley, and Plummer Hut on the Claw Ridge of Mount Waddington. All three huts are still widely used by mountaineers on a year-round basis, and most ascents of Mount Waddington start out at the Plummer Hut at 2,680 metres.

All three huts are made in the “Himmelsbach style”, crediting the work of Whistler’s own Werner Himmelsbach. Himmelsbach was involved in the construction of most BCMC huts in the 1960s and 1970s, and was one of the club’s most prolific climbers through those years. He was part of the first team to explore the Lillooet Icefield, making first ascents on Mount Toba, Mount Compton and Mount Tisiphone, as well as first ascents on Mount Winstone, Mount Harrison, Mount Folk and countless others.

Most famously, Himmelsbach was on the first all-Canadian expedition to Mount Mckinley/Denali is Alaska in 1961, and returned in 1967 as part of the team that ascended the peak to commemorate Canada’s 100 th anniversary since Confederation. He has also made two attempts on Mount Waddington, but was forced to turn back both times because of weather — a common affliction for that particular peak.

Once a climber, always a climber. Now in his 60s — Himmelsbach races in the 60 to 69 age category at the Kokanee Valley Race Series, after picking up the sport in his retirement — he still ventures into the high alpine on a regular basis.

“I have a friend who is actually now with the Alpine Club (of Canada), and on Saturdays we climb the Lions, Mount Harvey, all these climbs over 5,000 feet,” Himmelsbach said. “There were several people that I went hiking and alpine climbing with all the time in the ’50s and ’60s, and we all had our families and professions and drifted apart. Now that we are all retired, in the last 10 to 20 years we’ve all gotten together again and still go climbing together. We did a trip in the Tantalus Range last summer for a few days, and we’re going to go again this September.

“It’s amazing. Everybody kept going, through all those years. They stayed fit and kept climbing.”

A few weeks ago Himmelsbach did a solo ascent of Whistler Mountain from Creekside, going up Peak to Creek, into West Bowl and up through Cockalorum to the peak.

“I just have crampons, an ice axe and my snowshoes with me,” he said. “At least once a year I make that climb to the peak just to make sure I’m not getting too old.”

Evidently Himmelsbach is still on top of his game. Twenty years ago a trip to the top of Whistler on snow would have taken him three and a half hours. His last trip was just four and a half hours, at times through heavy snow.

Himmelsbach has seen a lot of changes in 50 years of mountaineering and leading trips. The most dramatic have been upgrades to climbing gear, which he says has opened up more possibilities.

“Not long ago I went through my old equipment and the tent we used to go up Mount Mckinley weighed 35 pounds. Now my tent weighs a quarter of that. All of the clothing, the ropes, the axes, the sleeping bags, everything, was much, much heavier. Even the food we bring today is lighter. So now you can bring more, go out for longer, and weather is not as much of a factor as it used to be,” he said.

“I used to be a rock climber, mostly playing around the Squamish Chief, and in those days we didn’t know anything about chalk, cams, friends, and we didn’t use many pitons. Not too long ago I climbed Shannon Falls (in Squamish) with my son when it was frozen using the lighter ropes and screws — you couldn’t do things like that 20 or 30 years ago because we didn’t have the equipment.”

Advocating access

In addition to building trails and cabins, the BCMC has encouraged access by publishing the very first maps and guidebooks for the province in yearbooks and newsletters. The first printing of 103 Hikes in South Western B.C. in 1973 was a huge success, and by the fifth edition had sold more than 100,000 copies.

Not content to build the trails and then show others how to get there, the BCMC has also fostered accessibility through education. Every year the BCMC hosts basic and advanced rock climbing courses, summer and winter mountaineering programs, and guides dozens of trips to alpine areas where participants can make ascents of the surrounding peaks.

“We have dozens and dozens of people who lead trips, which also has an educational element to it because the people taking part can learn from some of the most experienced climbers in the province,” said Scanlon, who will himself lead four trips this year. “All of us learned what we know from somebody, and having that knowledge just makes it that much safer and more enjoyable.”

Scanlon turns 60 this summer, and is just as enthused with mountaineering as ever. Like several BCMC members, he met his wife while climbing, joking that the BCMC is sometimes referred to as the B.C. Matrimonial Club.

“Off-hand I can think of four other couples that have met and married through the club, and I know there are many others,” he said. “I don’t honestly know what it is. Maybe it’s spending all those days in tents waiting for the weather to break, or spending time in some of the most beautiful places in the world. There’s a real passion for the mountains in our membership, and for living life. There are so many incredible people.

“We live so close to these mountains, it only makes sense to want to climb them and get to know them better.”

The BCMC Legacies

Not many people know that the Mountain Rescue Group formed in the 1940s became North Shore Search and Rescue (SAR). Now there are SAR groups throughout Sea to Sky and the rest of B.C., staffed by highly trained volunteers.

Teams regularly find people who are lost, trapped or injured in the backcountry, deliver first aid, and bring together all kinds of specialized mountain expertise to perform daring rescues. Several members of BCMC are also members of various Search and Rescue teams, as it takes a climber to rescue another climber.

The club’s contributions to the natural sciences over the past 100 years are also a formidable legacy.

Whistler’s Dr. Karl Ricker guides two trips for the BCMC each year, including a summer camp in the South Chilcotins and one to Mount Sir Richard, and is a participant in other BCMC expeditions. Although he has been a prolific mountaineer in his own right, climbing and naming his share of peaks through the province, one of Ricker’s biggest claims to fame is his participation in the Varsity Outdoor Club expedition that first skied the Spearhead Traverse — a year before Whistler Mountain opened to the public. Ricker later helped to officially name most of the peaks along the traverse, formally recognizing long-standing names like Blackcomb and Whistler (erroneously named London Mountain on a 1928 map), while filling in blank spots on the map.

Dr. Ricker’s resume as a geologist is long, and he is actively involved in the ongoing monitoring of ice at Wedgemount and Overlord glaciers. He is also an active birder, participating in Christmas bird counts throughout Sea to Sky and the annual breeding bird survey, and is a regular contributor to the Whistler Naturalists’ Naturespeak columns in Pique Newsmagazine.

In his summation of the BCMC’s scientific activities over the past 100 years, Ricker has browsed through hundreds of articles and journals starting with submissions from the club’s earliest scientific members.

In 1911, the club’s scientific studies were divided into five sections by botanist John Davidson — botanical, geological, zoological, mapping, and meteorological. A section on entomology was added in 1912, and the first club journal published in 1913 had submissions from each section.

Over the years those sections have been combined and divided, and with every generation of climbers the focus on science has waxed and waned depending on the credentials of club members.

According to Ricker, the accumulation of studies has been significant.

“The wilderness management thrust by the Conservation Committee has tackled the following issues: operations and the development of master plans for provincial and federal parks, forest management including old growth forest destruction, protected areas and wilderness preservation, endangered species and hunting, public participation and intervention problems, motorized access and commercial backcountry use including huts, rock climbing parks, and hydroelectric development.”

Some of the real work the BCMC has helped shape over the years includes conservation and management plans for provincial parks, as well as making a case for the establishment of the parks themselves. Members of the BCMC also made sure to preserve valley bottom and wetlands as well as the alpine areas, a difficult task in a province built on selling natural resources.

Thanks to the BCMC’s zoological section, we know that the North Shore mountains and Sea to Sky once provided habitat to the Spotted owl and Rock ptarmigan — both of which are believed to be extirpated. BCMC members also recorded the impact of hunting on grizzlies and caribou populations over the years, changing the way those species are currently monitored and protected.

Before ski resorts in the Lower Mainland and Whistler, the BCMC also recorded annual snow depths in those regions, providing baseline data that is still referred to today. In 1932-33, the Lower Mainland mountains recorded a 10-month snowpack with a record mid-winter depth of 6.25 metres, while 1939-40 saw a dearth of just 2.1 metres. In December of 1939, now recognized as an El Nino year, there was no snow recorded below 1,300 metres.

The impact of that collective work is significant, as scientists revisit studies on glaciers, snow packs, plants and animals to get a handle on the issue of climate change. Photographs of glaciers and mountains by BCMC explorers are used to drive home the issue, dramatically showing the loss of ice over the years when contrasted with recent pictures. Glacier data has been tracked nationally since the 1930s, with the Alpine Club of Canada using reports from groups like the BCMC when filing their measurements with the federal government.

The study of avalanches has also benefited from BCMC study in this area. There have only been three avalanches reported on BCMC trips, and just one fatality, on the Monarch Ice Cap. The club did lose a cabin in the mountains surrounding Chilliwack to an avalanche, an embarrassing chapter in the history of the group, but it was empty at the time. Still, their observations have allowed countless other mountaineers to follow safer paths into the alpine, avoiding terrain that is prone to slides.

Other areas of scientific study and interest to the club include health, especially at altitude, and the testing of gear and equipment. Every piece of mountaineering clothing and equipment is put to the test by BCMC members and sometimes those items have come up short. The first avalanche transceivers were tested by the club, as well as every kind of natural and artificial fibre used in rope. Some items were recommended to members and have since become standard issue, while others were not.

Celebrating 100 Years

The BCMC’s centennial celebrations are already underway, and have been planned for almost four years.

To date, centennial activities include a standing display at the North Vancouver Museum and Archives, the successful expedition to Mount Fairweather in Alaska, the publishing of a centennial calendar and the launch of a new logo and stamp.

On Friday, June 22, climbers held a bug light parade up Grouse Mountain, guiding their journey with lights placed in tin cans. In the club’s heyday, hundreds of these lights could be observed from the city heading up Grouse Mountain to the club cabin on a Friday night for social events and in preparation of a new weekend of exploration.

Participants were not allowed to use candles in their cans this year because of the fire risk, but modified their cans using flashlights to achieve the same effect.

On the Canada Day weekend, trip leader and current BCMC president Todd Ponzini will lead a six-person expedition up Mount Garibaldi using antique equipment.

Martin Kafer, a member of the BCMC for more than 50 years, is overseeing the production of a centennial video commemorating the club’s achievements and ongoing commitment to mountaineering. That video will be completed by the end of the summer, and shown to the public on Oct. 28 — the actual 100 th anniversary of the club’s founding. More than 160 tickets have already been sold for the anniversary banquet, which will take place on Grouse Mountain, the BCMC’s de facto base of operations for 60 years.

For Kafer — who has made 73 first ascents with his wife Esther and has been climbing for more than 50 years as a member of the BCMC — the centennial has been a wonderful experience.

“It’s been very interesting, and I’ve been interested in the history for a long time,” he said. “I’ve already studied a lot of the history, read the old bulletins and the newsletter that dates back to 1923. There was always a lot of material. But with the centennial, a lot of new things are coming forward as well. We had very few pictures to go with the history, but now with everything that has been submitted to the archives over the years — a lot of it because of the interest in the centennial — we now have an archive of 2,600 pictures.

“The video will show the activities of the club, which is the exploration of new country and new mountains, and the preservation of it all where possible. We did the first exploration of Garibaldi, long before anyone else was going into the mountains in this area.

“In those days they used to have a boat that would go to Newport Landing, which is now Squamish, they would get horses, and there was always an Indian Trail that connected the people there to the Mount Currie Band, and went north from there to Lillooet. That trail got bigger with the gold rush, but those early climbers started on the same trails that were used a long time before the white man appeared.”

The early climbers used horses to haul their gear and build access trails, and had very little information to go on when making their ascents up drainages in Garibaldi Park. Once the route was discovered, and the potential for mountaineering recognized, the club knew that it had to be preserved.

“Club members have been busy climbing and hiking in this province for a long time, getting into the blank spaces, the empty white spaces on the map,” said Kafer. “They were made known and given names, and climbed for the first time.”

Naming was particularly difficult. The geographical naming commission was a bureaucracy first and foremost, and had a massive job tracking names in a country as large and diverse as Canada. To make things easier, they insisted that all names in a region follow a theme so the group of mountains can be identified by a single name within that group.

In one area north of Garibaldi Park the mountains are named for BCMC’s prominent members — Henderson, Mills, Binkert, Stanley, Fowler, Lord, Bishop, Boulanger-Farrow, Compton, Gilbert, and others. All people worth remembering.

“I’ve been involved in the club for 40 or 50 years, and I’m very proud of being a part of it,” said Kafer. “Through it I’ve met a lot of energetic, interesting, and wonderful people. The social aspects have been enormously rewarding. And the physical activity has been very important for keeping healthy through the years, because when mountaineers get old they still get to go hiking.

“And as for spirituality, the mountains certainly offer much of that. It helps to concentrate your efforts, your mind and your spirit. There’s nothing more wonderful than to be on the top of a mountain and looking around, seeing the country, and distant places. It’s about enjoying nature, the mountains obviously, but also trees and flowers and birds. My wife went hiking with a group up Grouse the other day and saw three beautiful deer, and that’s always a special thing. Enjoying nature has always been the biggest part of being a mountaineer.”

For more information: www.bcmc.ca



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