Havergal College - Magazine Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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HAVERGAL COLLEGE MAGAZINE 21 feast spread on a pack-mantle under a tree, and fel l to on pork and beans and corn and jam and johnny-cake and tea! On the Saturday we reached Moose Pass, where the alplands are covered thick with flowers of every color and kind, a riot of blue and white and red and yellow and pink and purple. In the distance we saw the pure and gleaming point of Whitehorn. From there we moved over to Mount Robson Pass. As we came onto the moraine the clouds lifted for a moment from that monarch of mountains and smilingly he gave us greeting, though the next Photo by Mary L. Jobe NEAR MOOSE PASS moment his satellite clouds shielded him once more and the awful thunder of his voice echoed up the valley. On our way to our house-tent we saw the framework of the Alpine Club camp of the previous year. They had snug quarters up there, and what soul- satisfying views to greet them night and morning! Robson, Whitehorn, Resplendent, Tumbling Glacier, Berg Lake — all at their very feet, with every hour bringing added beauties! Here Curlie left us alone for two days while he went back to Jasper to get fresh supplies for the trip. He went off early one morning after showing Miss Jobe how to set dead-falls to catch the mice, and with the final cheery words: Well, be good and don ' t get eaten by bears! We took advantage of his absence to sleep in, for getting up continually between 4 and 6 is not a useful habit to form. Those days were pretty full ones, what with re-packing and washing our

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20 HAVERGAL COLLEGE MAGAZINE 9 SMtbap in tije Jttountam J2orti)toe t of iUlount ob on. Ever since 1907, when two Havergal mistresses of that time, and one of a former day, set off for the unknown perils of the Al- pine Club Camp in Paradise Valley, and returning jubilant, spoke loud and long of the glories of Alpine meadows and snowy crests, of the triumph of conquered peaks, of the charm of the evening camp-fire, and stirred the imagination with tales of miraculous adventures, of stupendous app etites and of undying friendships, the mountains as a holiday playing-ground have gathered every year from among the ranks of the staff some additional disciple and slave. Last year Miss Jones joined their number. Some have gone a second or even a third time, for in the heart of one who has once felt their spell, the mountains know they need fear no rival. If one has once eaten soup and bacon and beans and tomatos and jam and pudding all on one tin plate at their very feet; if one has once endured the heat and breathlessness and fearful rapture of a graduating climb ; if one has once from the summit of a real moun- tain seen range after range of snow-topped peaks unfolding in the blue distance, looked into gleaming tree-filled valleys and far, far below caught a glimpse of the tiny white tents left so long ago — then nothing else has power to charm. With what delight, then, would an enthusiast seize the opportunity of spending six long glorious weeks among ranges off the beaten track ! Such an opportunity came to me last summer when I was asked by Miss Mary L. Jobe, of New York, to make a trip with her to a big unnamed mountain lying about a hundred and fifty miles northwest from Mount Robson. So on the morning of July 29 we left Jasper, Alberta, by train for Grant Brook, where Curlie Phillips, our guide and packer, had his outfit. There we lay over a day, but early the next morning were up and off. First of all went Curlie on his horse, Baldy. Then followed the three pack- horses — Kid, Roany and Wendy — carrying our belongings. Next in line came Miss Jobe in her capacity of pack-driver, and lastly, at a respectful and admiring distance, myself. On looking back, those first few days seem a succession of soothing creaking joints and aching limbs, of wading through muskeg or, when mounted, of frantically dodging branches and boughs bent on knocking off an arm or a leg, and devoting our spare moments in camp to patching torn bedding or clothes. But dimly against this painful background there floats the ever-vary- ing beauty of stately firs and glimpses of white peaks and swirling torrents. And then the unspeakable rapture of sitting beside croon- ing waters, drinking deep of the aroma of the pines, with eyes lazily searching the opposite hillside for goats, and to be brought back to earth by nothing more disturbing than the cheery word All set. Then with what alacrity one hobbled painfully to the

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22 HAVERGAL COLLEGE MAGAZINE clothes, baking and cooking pork and beans in accordance with the rigorous camp etiquette which compels one, when one waits over two days, to boil a pot of pork and beans. The last night was wonderful. Both Robson and Whitehorn had been under cloud all day, but towards night the clouds lifted and a radiant moon came sailing over the sky, touching with silver their topmost peaks and gleaming on their high snow-fields. The next day we moved over to Coleman Creek, where we lay in wait to rob an outgoing party of another packer and another horse. In time they came and delivered up to us Bert Wilkins and Nigger. It was then that our trip proper began. For several days we followed trails made by Curlie in previous years up the Big Smoky, then over Bess Pass and Shoulder down into a beautiful valley of huge spruces and no underbrush. On all sides rose peaks, many even unnamed, all presenting a pleasant summer ' s work for the skilled climber. If we had known what we were coming to later, we should have lingered longer in that broad valley of no underbrush. For ahead of us over Jack Pine Pass Curlie forced a zig-zag trail up the mountain side through heart- breaking shin-tangle that closed in around one ' s feet and beat one back. But there is an end to all things, and at the top on Jones ' Pass we had our reward. There, from our high camp, we had such a view of blue haze-cradled mountains stretching away beyond the flowers at our feet as McWhirter has given us in June in the Austrian Tyrol. After lunch Miss Jobe and Curlie climbed a ridge to plan the course for the morrow. Our tinned stuff was already getting low, so that we all rejoiced when they returned with a goat which Miss Jobe had shot. For some time after that, goat mulligan was the order of the day. The next day we made camp in Avalanche Pass in the muskeg. From a neighboring ridge Curlie had seen that he must go ahead and cut a trail before he could take his horses up. So, early the next morning, he and Bert started off with a biscuit each, and we heard the sound of their chopping dying away gradually up the hill. Now, this was August 13, the fifth anniversary of the day when Curlie and Rev. G. B. Kinney had climbed Mt. Robson, so Miss Jobe and I spent the day preparing a banquet to be tendered to him on their return. It was a wonderful banquet and most successful. There were, I think, four courses, of which the staple was goat mulligan. But the piece de resistance was a wonderful combination of cake and pie baked in the frying-pan. Suffice it to say that at the end, even the knowledge that there were goats to be seen on a nearby ridge failed to arouse us to the needed effort of going to look at them. In the morning we moved up over the trail cut by the men and down onto a branch of the Fraser Smoky. Here the woods were so dense that there was scarcely room to put up the tents, but yet there were moose trails so deep that we sank in them nearly up to our knees. There we lay over a morning while the men cut