Page:The Selkirk mountains (1912).djvu/103

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Places Reached from Glacier.
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an early start and so secure good travelling on the snow. For those unskilled in mountain climbing a guide is necessary.

View: From the summit the views are wonderful. In every direction there meets you an ocean of rock and snow; an endless maze of valleys with glittering streams winding through. Immediately below is Rogers Pass, its southern slopes green in forest and meadow, and with its mark of humanity in Rogers Station and Village, that mark which is a part of Swiss mountain landscape, but almost never of the Selkirks. Nearby rises Sir Donald's sharp grey peak; and yonder is the Illecillewaet Glacier and the green Asulkan Valley leading to its own white Glacier; and farther yet the Dawson Range uplifts its splendid, snowy mountains. To the south, Mt. Bonney and its glaciers are clear in a bird's-eye view; west are the nearer crests of the Hermit Range; and north, the wooded valleys of Mountain Creek and its tributaries, and beyond them in clear summer weather, appear the great masses of Mts. Sorcerer and Iconoclast, and the snowy heights of Mt. Sir Sandford beckoning and challenging for conquest. Eastward, the Beaver Valley glances: and far off in a chaos of peaks the knowing climber hails Mts. Columbia, Bryce, Lyall. and Forbes, giants of the Rockies. In describing the sights seen from high altitudes, a vocabulary is wanting. The familiar words convey so little to those who have never gazed in wonder upon the splendours of immense and multiform mountain scenes reaching to the eye's utmost ken including forest and stream, valley and ravine, passes and peaks, glaciers and snowfields. It is because Mt. Rogers commands such superb sights of valleys that the whole immensity of view is so grandly varied.

To all beginners in the sublime and noble sport of mountaineering, the climb of Mt. Rogers is recommended. Of the first ascent Professor Little writes: '"Three hours of such clambering brought us to the summit . . . The sense of fatigue disappeared with the sight that greeted us. We had crossed the rock-rib that joins Rogers Peak to Swiss Peak and justifies Herr Sulzers use of Mt. Rogers as an inclusive term, and were now standing on the snow that covers the crest of the mountain like a thick fold of flesh. Mr. Abbott called me to its northern edge, saying: 'Look down and see what I have never seen before in Europe and America.' The sight was a fall of snow at least fifteen hundred feet in height that seemed perpendicular, as we cautiously peered over. From its base a glacier swept away over an ice-fall, marked by huge irregular seracs, into the valley beyond. To us, toiling for hours over blackened rocks, this sudden transformation of the peak into pure untrodden snow, rising from a foundation of glistening ice, was as startling as it was beautiful." (See Wheeler's "Selkirk Range" page 308-310.)

Ross Peak—Name: After James Ross, in charge of railway construction for the C.P.R. Company.

Altitude: 7,718 feet.

Location: On the west side of Loop Brook at its junction with the Illecillewaet River, 3 miles from Glacier House as the crow flies. First Ascent: By Messrs. C. S. Thompson and G. T. Little in 1896. It is a low peak showing some very interesting views. particularly of the Bonney Amphitheatre at close range. From it you look across the Illecillewaet River directly up the Cougar Brook