Looking Back: Labour Day - Up the Crow

It all started with a fault.  An enormous geological thrust fault west of the Pass that runs for hundreds of miles north/south. It is named after Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition fame. 

The Lewis Thrust Fault took Paleozoic limestone, formed up to 600 million years ago, and thrust them over top of 220 million year old Mesozoic sandstones and shales. Then millions of years of erosion did the rest. What was left, north of Highway #3, west of Coleman, was the High Rock Range to the west, the eroded Allison Creek Valley in the middle and the magnificent Crowsnest Mountain and Seven Sisters to the east.

Having grown up in the shadow of that erosion resistant limestone parliament, known as the “Crow”, I had often contemplated climbing her. She is not your typical looking Rocky Mountain but there are few that can match her grandeur.  

When an invite to “do the Crow” came my way, back in 1991, I found myself in a bit of a quandary. The big question was: “Did I have it in me to keep up with the mountain climbin’, sea kayakin’ hot dogs who had invited me along?” I anguished for about a week about whether my bad knees, sciatic leg and torn rotator cuff were too much of impairment or not. I wondered did I have the nerve to go up that steep tricky chute halfway up the Crow’s north face. I threw dozens of mental blocks and excuses out but in the end I realized if I didn’t try there was a good chance that a dream of mine might never happen. 

This unlikely mountaineer showed up at the trails head on a Labor Day Monday, be-decked in my $19.95 high top sneakers from Pay Less Shoes and sporting a small nylon packsack that cost me a whole $1 at a garage sale. The long trail that leads up from the Allison Creek valley to the toe of the mountain keeps a constant grade and is well worn. At the beginning of the scree at the mountain’s toe is where this whole trip took a very different twist. After much discussion and review of a hiking book’s confusing route description we turned left at a wet weeping rock wall at the face of the mountains first palisade and began our assault. Turns out we should have turned right!

We spent an hour or so scrambling up an incredibly steep chute before we finally realized this couldn’t be the right way.  After some precarious scaling up and over steep rock faces this green horn climber determined that we had to head west at the toe of the second palisade above us to find the main trail. Eventually our somewhat un-nerved group connected back to the most commonly used route only to be confronted by a second long steep chute complete with a roped section above the second wet wall area. 

The day had started out with clear blue skies but by now the firmament above the chute had darkened somewhat with rainclouds. A scary memory came back to me then of an uncle of mine who was trapped on top of Turtle Mountain many years ago in a lightning storm. 

It was a tricky scramble up that long chute that splits as it merges with the top of the second palisade.  As I hoisted myself out of its top I was greeted by two Hutterite women in dresses and sneakers who were on their way down. I thought to myself, “Good grief, if they can do it surely I can.” 

 The wind picked up some then and I could now smell the rain in the air. A glance up-wards revealed a tortuously long winding zigzag trail on mostly talus, and some tiny human dots were visible on the skyline at the summit. The top backside of the Crow looks like an ice cream cone that has been licked hard on one side only and has a surprisingly gentle slope to it compared to what the photos depict. 

Part way up that trail fear and anxiety started to work me over again. I couldn’t imagine being on top of this mountain in a wind and rainstorm nor could I picture myself climbing back down a wet limestone chute. 

My heart was pounding, my breathing labored and my leg muscles screaming. I was seriously contemplating giving up when a cheery voice from my injury prone past greeted me from above. It was a physiotherapist named Sheila and her young son who were also on their way down. She assured me, as she assures all her candidates of rehab, that I had it in me and that another half hour would put me at the top. Thus inspired I resumed my climb and shortly after experienced, for the first time in my life that marvelous physical resurrection referred to as a “second wind”. 

When I finally crested the summit the vista that exploded for 360 degrees around me was overwhelming.  Away in the distance to the southeast I could make out the massive outline of the sacred “Chief Mountain” at the east entrance of Waterton Park. Glancing more northeastward, the massive Livingstone Range stood out, running north/south like the Wall of China. That limestone wall, which is broken only by the Pass to the south and the “Gap” to the north, where the Oldman River cuts through it, is an impressive sight. It was through that gap in 1858 that Palliser Expedition explorer Thomas Blakiston looked west and observed and christened a prominent peak after a British ornithologist named Gould. That peak, the Gould Dome, lay before me that day, a few miles directly north of the Crow. Scanning more to the west from Gould I was able to observe part of the Wisukitsak Range north of Sparwood and a very familiar canyon that cuts through its south side. I have never failed to be impressed by that canyon’s scale and precipitousness in the 30 years I had passed through it on the way to work at the Line Creek Mine. On that day I found its size quite diminished when placed in the visual context of the expansive vista I was now exploring. Over top of the canyon more to the northwest the glacier on Mt. Joffre that is the source of the Elk River stood out as the only surviving white patch in the Rockies that time of year. 

Directly west a whole series of ranges lay in various hues of grey with the occasional high peaks, like Fisher or Empire State, rising above the rest in prominence.  In the Front Range, directly below me I could see Window Mountain Lake but being perpendicular to Window Mountain, it was not visible. To the south the Pass lay below me with the sulphur plant, Crowsnest Lakes and the towns of Coleman and Blairmore spread out like a miniature display. The amazing Flathead Range to the south rose up from the val-ley and  right to left I counted them, Sentry, Chinook, McLaren, Parrish and Coulthard.

There were sporadic curtains of rain drifting over top of Turtle Mountain and slowly moving towards us then, so our stay at the surprisingly small summit was short. Before we headed back down to that dreaded upper chute I glassed my old hometown of Coleman and could just make out the house where I grew up.  A story came to mind then about my father’s first years in Canada after emigrating from Scotland.  For a time they lived in the Pass and then moved to Calgary where dad went to grade school at St. George’s.  He recounted to me a story one day about an arrogant Prussian art teacher he had in 1929.

His last name was Von Valkenberg and one day he had instructed his class to draw “Prevent Forest Fire” posters with some prominent scenery, such as a mountain they had seen, on them. On observing my father’s sketch of the Crow he exclaimed: “Where did you ever see a mountain shaped like that?” and promptly drew a big X through it and exclaimed, “Utter trash”.

I remember thinking then to myself, “ I’ll tell you where he saw it Mr. Von Valkenberg.  Right smack dab in the middle of the beautiful Crowsnest Pass, standing guard over us with magnificent isolated parliamentary splendor.”