PAPER MANUFACTURER EXPLORERS THE WEST
BY JACKIE
GOLD SPECIAL TO THE CRAG & CANYON
Robert L. Barrett, a Chicago paper manufacturer and businessman,
developed a serious interest in mountaineering while in Europe
.
When Barrett visited the Canadian Rockies in 1893, he became
entranced with their beauty and height. On his initial visit,
Barrett took a three-week trip with Laughlan A. Hamilton of
the CPR. He later followed that up by following old Indian
trails over Simpson Pass to the Simpson River , accompanied
by guide Tom Wilson, and cook George Fear.
After arriving at the Simpson River , they struggled on, reaching
the Ferro Pass , and continuing into the valley of the Mitchell
River before becoming the first to visit the base of Mount
Assiniboine .
Barrett wrote to Tom Wilson some years later after visiting
the Himalayas that, “K2 at 28,000 feet didn't look as high
and imposing and terrible as Assiniboine when you and I finally
won through to where we could get a look at him.”
Two years later, in 1895 Barrett returned to the area with
Walter Wilcox, J.F. Porter and their guide Bill Peyto, who
had arrived in the Rockies in 1886, and worked for the CPR,
homesteaded, and prospected before entering the outfitting
business with Tom Wilson.
After the group reached the base of the mountain, they made
the decision to circumnavigate the mountain to see the southern
slopes. The trip was easier thought of then done however, as
it became a 46 hour struggle through downed timber which was
on occasion ten feet off the ground. The forest around them
was burnt as well, which turned the group, “black as coal heavers,” according
to Wilcox. After making it up a 500-foot slope, that “appeared
nearly vertical,” the group finished the 51-mile trip around
the base of the mountain.
Barrett returned home only to return to the Rockies in 1896,
a year later, to join Wilcox, Tim Lusk, and Fred Stephens on
a trip to the north of Lake Louise . There they began their
search for Mount Brown and Mount Hooker , which were the target
for many mountaineers of the day. Barrett wanted to head into
the area after Tom Wilson sent him some photographs of the
area. Barrett said that the photographs, “It knocked me flat.
I've got to go!”
The party decided to travel north over Bow Pass, which Wilcox
described in his book The Canadian Rockies as, "Open,
treeless moors, abounding in irregular mounds and depressions,
covered with a scant growth of grass, stunted willows, and
a dwarfed underbrush, extended in a gradually rising valley
to a pass about three miles north-west of the lake (Bow Lake).
The view on the other side of the pass is one of the most inspiring
in the mountains.”
They became the first to reach Sunwapta Pass , striving to
complete their sixty-day expedition to find a pass to reach
the Athabasca River .
Barrett was so impressed by the “tremendous grandeur of mountain
scenery,” the group was exploring that he tried to climb, “a
beautiful, glacier-hung peak,” which it was decided by others,
must have been Mount Athabasca .
Though the Little Ice Age had passed by the time the group
had reached Sunwapta Pass , the Athabasca Glacier still stretched
out to where the Icefields Parkway exists today.
In order to see if the group would be able to continue over
the pass to their goal, Fred Stephens made his way between
the toe of the Athabasca Glacier and what would become known
as Mount Wilcox . Stephens determined that though the route
appeared to be the most promising on first glance, it was actually
blocked by a canyon.
The party decided to proceed over a high grassy pass to the
east of Mount Wilcox , descending into Sunwapta Valley beyond
Tangle Falls and into the steep canyon. This pass was later
named in honour of Walter Wilcox too.
Walter Wilcox wrote that during the same trip he and Robert
L. Barrett, "... set out to climb the peak north of the
lake ( Fortress Mountain ) in order to discover the location
of the highest mountains.”
“We had a long and tiresome walk, through a heavy forest,
and discovered a very old trail, so much blocked, however,
by fallen trees as to be almost useless. After reaching a point
about forty-five hundred feet above the valley, the weather
became threatening, and I set up my camera at once and took
a set of views around the horizon.
“The clouds formed constantly a few yards above my head, but
I got the distant mountains, though the smoke and gloom made
the results very poor. Barrett continued up the mountain, though
the climb involved some rather perilous work among rotten limestone
cliffs.
“He reached the summit, which is about ninety-six hundred
feet high, where the clouds shut out everything from view."
Walter Wilcox wrote a letter to J.M. Thorington saying that, "Barrett
. . . was very efficient in all that concerned camp life and
a marvel for taking punishment on the trail. For instance,
on our trip north to Fortress Lake he would join up with Fred
Stephens after seven or eight hours on the trail and explore
the new region ahead for half a dozen miles and return to camp
with full knowledge of every ford and burnt timber patch in
the distance. This of course was a killing proposition for
any normal man but it saved us a lot of time the next day.
"While on the Wilcox Pass , several days were spent trying
to locate some trail or route off the pass and into the Athabasca
. Barrett disappeared and did not turn up for three days without
so much as saying goodbye and then walked casually into camp
one night about eleven pm. So far as I understand it, he got
lost in burnt timber down the Brazeau."
Though Barrett proved his prowess in the field of mountaineering,
and was among those in the first group to travel around the
Sunwapta Pass and Athabasca area, no mountain, pass, valley
or river was named after him like his co-explorers. For him,
the thrill of the trips themselves would have to be enough. <<back |
