report to the Minister of the Interior for 1887, Mr. McArthur, of the Topographical Survey, mentions its triad of summits as the "Three Sister Peaks," and then says: "The 'Three Peaks,' as I have named them, are the highest that are established by my survey, the western one towering 11,000 feet above the sea." Later measurements have not diminished its relative height, but have accorded it an altitude of 11,676 feet, making it thus the highest of the Canadian peaks south of the line of the railway, or indeed north of it until one reaches the great peaks near the sources of the Athabaska.
Little wonder, then, that it made an early appeal to the alpine instinct growing stronger in me with each new visit to that inspiring region. But it was not until the year 1901 that an opportunity offered to make a real assault upon it. Kind Fortune gave me as companions two men of utterly different mould, yet pleasantly complementing one another—the Rev. James Outram and Mr. J. H. Scattergood—both athletes of the intellectual type, both accustomed to physical conquests, one twenty, the other thirty years my junior—but for that glorious week we were all of one age. It joined to us as our guide the honest, kind and trustworthy Christian Hasler, under whose leadership Professor Parker and I had already, two years before, scaled Mt. Dawson.
Our main camp was to be established in Ice River valley, and around to it we sent Ross Peecock by way of the Beaverfoot valley. This was as yet traversed by nothing more definite than an old Indian trail, but almost immediately was to furnish ready access to Ice river by a good wagon road. The troubles Scattergood had endured there, the year before, he has narrated in Appalachia.[1] We ourselves were to leave the railway at the bridge over Ottertail creek and make
- ↑ Vol. ix, p. 289f.
