The change of route across the plains had made it essential to pierce the Rockies by a more southerly pass than the Yellowhead. The Kicking Horse or Hector Pass, short but steep, was finally chosen, but here, as at the Yellowhead, to cross the first range did not mean victory. The towering Selkirk range faced the pass, as the Cariboo Mountains flanked the Rockies farther north. Until the rails reached the hills the engineers had found no way through them, and had contemplated a long detour to the north, following the winding Columbia. Then Major Rogers, the engineer whom James J. Hill had suggested to take charge of the location of the mountain section, following up a hint of Moberly, an earlier explorer, found a route, steep but practicable, across the Selkirks, following the Beaver river valley and Bear Creek, and then through Rogers Pass into the valley of the Illecillewaet, {163} and so through Eagle Pass to the settled location at Kamloops. Both in the Kicking Horse and in the Rogers Pass gradients of 116 feet to the mile were found necessary, but these difficult stretches were concentrated within one operating section of a hundred and twenty miles, and could easily be overcome by the use of additional engines. Unique provision was made against the mountain avalanches by erecting diverting timbers near the summits and building mile upon mile of snow-sheds, over which the avalanches passed harmless. As a result of these expedients and of raising the road-bed across the prairies unusually high, the Canadian Pacific lost less time through snow blockades than the great railways of the eastern United States. It was not until 1884 that the wilderness north of Lake Superior was attacked in strong force. Nine thousand men were employed here alone. Rock and muskeg, hill and hollow, made this section more difficult to face than even the Fraser Canyon. In one muskeg area to-day seven layers of Canadian Pacific rails are buried, one below the other. The stretch along the shore of the lake was particularly difficult. The Laurentian rocks were the oldest known to geologists, and, what was {164} more to the purpose, the toughest known to engineers. A dynamite factory was built on the spot and a road blasted through. One mile cost $700,000 to build and several cost half a million. The time required and the total expenditure would have been prohibitive had not the management decided to make extensive use of trestle-work. It would have cost over two dollars a cubic yard to cut through the hills and fill up the hollows by team-haul; it cost only one-tenth of that to build timber trestles, carrying the line high, and to fill up later by train-haul.