tarian overalls, waterproof clothes, hiking
boots . . . for while most bridal parties
travel by boat or train or automobile, our
means of transport was a group of five
horses, two of them not yet broken.

Somehow the boyhood vision of British
Columbia being a mass of mountains that
started at the foothills stayed with me.
The mountains, as one progressed further
into this western province, grew higher
and higher, reaching the apex at the centre
of the province, then dropping to the
coast where one found long beaches of
hard sand with breakers rolling in and
pounding, all the way from mid-ocean.

CoLLectinG SrTorES FoR TRIP

The last week or so before June 17th,
1933, when the trip actually started, was
filled with the collecting of equipment and
horses. Films and cameras and food;
clothes and blankets and dishes ; tents and
horseshoes and hammers; saddles and
_ first-aid equipment and maps; mirrors
and a portable typewriter and tarpaulins
.... they were all mixed up together and
bundled into packs for the horses.

There were five horses, and when I
took them, like a wild-west stampede, in-
to the little town of Okotoks to get them
shod, the smithy took one look at them
and asked me to please take them to his
competitor. Competitor did have more
courage, and the broncs were shod, and
although we had to pack two of the colts
in a squeezer, preparations were some-
what on schedule.

Neil Mackay, who had adventured on
many a mountain trip with me, and
another friend, Ed Coward, took the
horses ahead several days’ journey. Ruth
and I were married in Calgary at noon
on June 17th, and drove with the family
car into the foothills, following them. We
had not yet overtaken them when we
came to a point where the car could not
proceed, so, taking our luggage, we pro-
ceeded on foot. My sister’s husband,
Norman Gateman, had come along to take
the car back, but he now proved a very
useful assistant. In ten or fifteen minutes
we met Neil returning with a pack-horse
to meet us. He had accumulated a three-
days’ growth of beard, a two-days’ layer
of dirt, but was still a sight for sore eyes.

A half hour later we were encamped
at the foot of a steep hill beside the rush-
ing Sheep Creek. Neil and Ed and Nor-
man had walked over the brow of the
hill, turning to wave their good-byes.
They were driving the car back to eiviliza-
tion and we were to take the horse-outfit
and ride fifteen hundred miles north-
westward to the Pacific Ocean.

The great adventure was on!

I*ifteen hundred miles is a long way.
It is a good thing we could not foresee
what was going to befall us.

The first day we got acquainted with
our outfit, rearranged packs, did some
riding and hiking.

Page Ten

A Day’s Diary

The second day of our adventure was
an exciting one...

(1) We got up at five-thirty.

(2) We went back along the trail about
two miles to collect our horses, who
had decided they didn’t want to go
to the coast.

(3) Got on the trail about eleven
o'clock, each of the three pack-
horses trying to go a different
direction, creating the necessity of

Carving in a living tree at Kananaskis Lakes.

This was done by a guide who had a knife, an

axe and a few hours to spend. The tree marks
the site known as “Squaw Camp”.

persuading them with Swinging
hemp that it was better to fall in
line.

These arguments knocked some of
the packs (great, bulky packs that
were hard to lash tight, and dan-
gerous) awry, so we had to re-pack
and it was one o’clock in the after-
noon when we finally got onto the
trail westward.

The trail was still in the nature of
a tote-road so Ruth led while I
brought up the rear, driving the
pack-animals. Suddenly, when we
were going up a sharp pitch, the
pack on one of the colts started to
roll. I dismounted just as the colt
went into a frenzy and started in
my direction, bucking, blind, and
ten times as big as I. I had much
to live for, so jumped off the road,

right through the slashed brush. ]
went right through it, and some of —
it through me. But I lay still,
There was the sound of an aya-—
lanche, a gale of wind, thunder, a
rock-slide, all of which combined
and echoed into the distance. The
colt had passed, taking with it all
but Ruth’s mount. The one pack
had been dislodged and Ruth was
surveying her smashed camp effects
with dismay.

By the time we had re-collected
the horses, collected the spilled
goods and gone three miles to
another camp-site it was six o’clock
in the afternoon. We decided we
had better camp. I had rope-
burned hands, Ruth had overlap-
ping bruises. By the time we were
encamped again we had been going
for thirteen hours, had gained five
miles toward our goal.

The next day we did better, and that
night camped among the snow banks, well
into the eastern ramparts of the Rockies.

The beautiful slopes and peaks of the —

Sheep Creek source rose into the heavens.

We used the Indian method of naming
our horses. Of course the older mounts —

already had names, but the two colts were
to be named according to their actions. —
One colt got its name of Hash at that

mountain camp, because the only use we _

could foresee for the creature was to use

it for food if and when the need occurred. —

This morning Hash refused to be
packed. Despite all the trussing we could

do, as soon as we got to the point where
we were to lash the pack down with the —
Diamond Hitch, the colt would erupt, —

and after we had spilled the pack several
times, and burst a tin of syrup into an —

generally smashed the outfit up, we had
to admit the horse was too much for us.

We doubled up packs on the other horses —

and let Hash run free.
That day we ascended over the source

of Sheep Creek, plunged through snow at —
Elbow Lake, dropped off Elbow Pass to-

71

Gorge Hotel

A. Mawer, Manager

¥
“The Home of Comfort’

LICENSED PREMISES
ova

Tillicum Road " VICTORIA, B. C.

THE SHOULDER STRAP

1

.

q

[

i

open tin of Klim and a sack of flour, and

camp at Kananaskis Lakes. From here
we looked at peaks nine and ten and —

eleven thousand feet high that rose to —