Among the Canadian AlpsBurpee, Lawrence J. (Lawrence Johnstone)
History
Among the Canadian Alps
Burpee, Lawrence J. (Lawrence Johnstone)
Canadian Rockies (B.C. and Alta.)
The peculiar charm of Jasper Park, and of its sister reservation on
the western side of the Pass, is in the fact that it is almost virgin
ground. As a Park it is very young indeed, and there has not yet been
time to improve upon nature. Lest this should suggest a touch of
sarcasm, let us admit at once that nature can be improved upon when
the improvement takes the form of practicable trails into the heart of
the mountains, and the opening of such trails is one of the principal
objects of the Canadian Parks authorities. Nevertheless, however one
may appreciate the convenience of a good trail, there is a joy
unspeakable to the natural man in getting out into the wilderness, if
possible where no man has been before, but at least where nothing
exists to remind him of the noisy civilisation he has managed to
escape from for a time. And that is what you will find in Jasper Park:
no automobiles, no stage coaches, no luxurious hotels, no newspapers,
no luxuries of any kind, and very few conveniences; but a sufficiency
of plain food, the intoxicating air of the mountains to eat it in, and
the mountains themselves ever about and above you. What more could a
tired man ask? What more could any man ask?
At least so two eastern city men thought as they awoke one glorious
August morning to find their train crossing the eastern boundary of
Jasper Park, with Brulé Lake sparkling ahead and the curious outlines
of Folding Mountain dominating the landscape to the south. At a little
station called Pocahontas, a few miles beyond the western end of the
lake, they were dumped off unceremoniously with their luggage, and
welcomed by a stalwart park officer who had rashly undertaken to look
after them for the next few days, and particularly to pilot them out
to the Miette hot springs. While he trotted off to round up his
ponies, the two "tenderfeet" had leisure to look about them.
Pocahontas, what there is of it, nestles at the foot of Roche Miette,
a great frowning bastion of rock dropping sheer for nearly a thousand
feet toward the waters of the Athabaska. They tell you in the
mountains that it was named after a trapper who managed to clamber up
its precipitous sides many years ago, perhaps in chase of a mountain
goat, and sat himself down on the extreme edge with his feet dangling
over the thousand foot drop. No doubt the situation afforded him the
same satisfaction that is experienced by those praiseworthy citizens
whose names one sees carved on the extreme end of a log overhanging
the Horseshoe Falls at Niagara. Posterity has rather a rude name for
such heroes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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