The chief feature of the Balfour group is the great expanse of upper snow-fields on the Wapta névé. The highest peak, Mount Balfour, 10,873 feet, was ascended in 1898 by Messrs. Charles S. Thompson, C. L. Noyes, and C. M. Weed. Once on this central reservoir of ice none of the peaks are difficult to climb. The Bow river, which has its source at the north-eastern corner of this Wapta snow-field, flows down the Bow valley, which skirts for more than twenty-five miles the eastern slopes of the Balfour group. This Bow valley is an excellent example of the numberless valleys that are to be found amongst the Rocky mountains, flat-bottomed and filled with pine woods and marshes or muskegs. Two beautiful lakes, the Upper and Lower Bow lakes, filled with trout, give good sport to the fisherman; but to fish successfully a raft must be built, for there are no boats as yet on the lakes. The Upper Bow lake is particularly beautiful, for in many places on its shores are great expanses of open grassland, covered here and there with clumps of dwarf rhododendron bushes, or, it may be, studded with thickets of pine and other trees, whilst on the opposite shore the mountains rise sheer for several thousand feet, and more than one glacier hangs poised high up on the cliffs, above the clear blue water beneath. The next group further north, the Forbes group, has not been visited as yet by many mountaineering parties. But it contains possibly the highest peak in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, Mount Forbes, which is certainly considerably over 13,000 feet, and may be as much as 14,000 feet high. The Bush peak and Mount Freshfield also must be about 12,500 to 13,000 feet, and Mount Lyell is not much less, perhaps 12,000 feet. Many ice-fields lie underneath these high peaks: the Freshfield, Bush, and Lyell snow-fields being the most important. In this group as yet none of the peaks have been ascended, and up to the present only on the Freshfield glacier has any one set foot. This is largely due to the difficulty of getting to the foot of the peaks and the time necessary to expend on such an expedition. To get to the bottom of Mount Forbes from Laggan, the nearest spot on the Canadian-Pacific railway, would take about nine days, and, should the Saskatchewan be in full flood, it might take four or five days more.