The careers of Norman Collie, the great Anglo-Scottish mountaineer, and of myself share something. We both started on small hills in rural Aberdeenshire, he on the Hill o’Fare and myself on nearby Bennachie. Thereafter, though I have done some of Collie’s climbs on Skye, our trajectories – sadly - diverge somewhat.
He went on to excel at everything he touched; science, exploration, climbing, writing, photography, and art, including the first ascents of many Canadian Peaks.
I meanwhile, was lagging behind this “epitome of a Victorian Gentleman”, so decided to rectify the situation with a trip to the Rockies to experience some more of Collie’s exploits. To help with the quest, I teamed up with Chic Scott, a local mountaineer and historical aficionado, whom I’d previously introduced to the delights of the Sligachan Hotel, and Collie’s activities on Skye.
Our first port of call was Mount Athabasca. Collie had climbed on-sight to the summit in 1898, in an early display of “alpine style”, and I’m told the route is still a testpiece for trainee mountain guides, and his descent now the standard ascent. But the variable hand of Rocky Mountain weather had other plans, and after several fruitless days we turned our attention elsewhere, to Abbots Pass. Heavy snowfall put paid to that, and I was beginning to fear our mission was over before it had begun.
Time was running out when Chic picked me up at the Chateau Lake Louise below Mount Victoria, there were just four days left before my plane home. But we were optimistic - the weather had turned in our favour. Like us, Collie had set out from the very same hotel here in 1897 after his first ascents of Victoria and neighbouring Lefroy, to head north to Bow Lake. However in his time the hotel was a four-room log cabin, now it’s a 500-room 5 star luxury hotel. Another slight difference was that, in 1897, though the Canadian Pacific Railway had been blasted westwards through the Rockies to Vancouver, there was no road north of Lake Louise. To reach Bow Lake, Collie and his party had to hack their way through virgin forest, swamps and rotting vegetation for three days. We simply had the Icefields Parkway, taking us the 40 or so kilometers in about as many minutes.
Collie took a horse-team of outfitters with him, carrying supplies and laying the camps along the way. This was led by the legendary Bill Peyto, a real Wild West character, and it was found that whenever Peyto got problematic, the answer was to feed him with whiskey. Chic seemed less problematic, but had a similar taste in whiskey, so I kept him fed.
His rusty beat-up Chevy, which caused many a raised eyebrow at the Lake Louise Chateau, was not comparable to the horses under Peyto’s charge but his outfitting skills were easily up to scratch, and his knowledge of Canadian mountain history is second to none. In fact his book, Pushing the Limits, the Story of Canadian Mountaineering, is a classic, and should be read by anyone with the intention of visiting.
Collie’s party camped at Bow Lake, below the Wapta Icefield, originally intending to climb the sharp peak visible from the lake - Mount St.Nicholas. There were no trails of course, so they sailed across the lake, and to the Bow Glacier, and ascended this to gain the icefield. Once there, they noticed a higher peak, subsequently named Mount Gordon, further over the icefield, and changed their plans to make that their target.
This peak was our goal as well, though we had an easier day on the approach. A good track now follows the lakeside, through the glacial debris, avoiding the Bow glacier (which has massively retreated in 100 years) and makes its way up a narrow canyon which would have been almost impassable in Collie’s day. After a freezing river crossing, the comforts of the Bow Hut were reached, another benefit of following over a hundred years later.
Mount Gordon is a straightforward ascent, but Chic’s concern was the icefield and its crevasses. Collie’s party were heading back after their ascent when one of the party, Charles Thomson, fell head first, unroped, into a crevasse. “Someone must go down to him” was the conclusion. Collie as the lightest man, at the end of two full rope run outs, climbed down and managed to attach the rope round one of Thomson’s arms, and the men emerged unscathed but almost hypothermic. Collie recalled, “We were both of us nearly frozen and wet to the skin, for ice-cold water was slowly dripping the whole time onto us, and I had gone into the crevasse very scantily clad.”
These were some of Collie footsteps I wasn’t so keen on following so we set out from the hut wearing snowshoes, and roped together with jumars and etriers attached just in case. We were lucky in that the visibility was good, high winds had swept most of the new snow from the crevasses, leaving them clear. And these are big holes, the ice being upwards of 400 feet thick; global warming has some way to go here.
But as we summitted in a cold thick fog, it occurred to me that retracing our steps might not be as easy as it seemed. Chic came into his own, and with a set of back bearings and a knowledge of the mountain born of double figure ascents of it, led off, with the occasional mutter to me to keep a tight rope. We cautiously wound our way back, and after a while the mist tugged away and we caught a view of the entire icefield, over 500 square kilometers of it, with the peak we had climbed unseen now visible behind us, and away to the north, the larger bulk of Mount Collie itself.
From then on it was a scamper (if you can scamper in snowshoes) back to the Bow Hut and the celebratory consumption of the last of the whiskey. Raising a small glass to Collie, who’d have still had to fight his way back to Bow Lake right now. But that would have been the least of his worries I figured, since whilst I was wincing at an eight hour return flight, the man himself would have had a week on the Canadian Pacific across Canada, then a good few weeks on the ship home. Now that's dedication.
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