A 1909 Expedition Through the Yellowhead Pass

     I have been reading an old book; “Trails, Trappers, and Tender-Feet in Western Canada”  published in 1912.  It is a memoir written by Stanley Washburn that chronicles the pack-horse expedition he was on through the Yellowhead Pass.  Washburn knew that the Grand Trunk Railway was going to put a line through the pass into BC, and he wanted to see the country before it changed, before the mass influx of people that would follow, due to the railroad.

    Washburn’s description of the bushwhacking pack horse trip makes it sound like a totally horrible experience, but surprisingly, his narrative is light-hearted and optimistic, despite the terrible hardships they encountered.  Below is a section from the book:

    “ The second day of travel in the pass was a long and arduous one, for on that first trip I made through the great cleft, the trail was beyond the compass of all expletives.  The trail was narrow, and when the way lies along the bottom, its is feet deep in mud--not the ordinary mud of the muskeg, but the kind that has a foundation of boulders, lying a foot beneath the surface.  The poor pack-horses are constantly putting their feet down into a muck-hole, and just as they think they have a firm foothold, their hooves slide off the surface of some submerged rock, and perhaps go a foot deeper into the slime, bringing them to their knees with a grunt.

    Every mile or two, the stream cuts in close to the mountain, necessitating a long detour around some shoulder and a climb of a thousand feet.  Then when we would come back into the bottom, we had to pick our way among fallen timber and abysmal black mire, which means horses down and frantic exertions to get them back up.

    Once when we were getting one unfortunate animal up, two others wandered too near the river bank and got stuck in quicksand.  One we hauled out by the tail, but the first horse in this venture who went for a drink, was buried up to his neck.  It took us an hour’s work, and two saddle-horses, with lariat ends fastened at strategic points on the downed horse, to drag him out. 

    In one place the trail wind up among the rocks, some fifty feet above the river, and then goes down again in great steps over slippery boulders, down which, the horses half slid and half hopped.  A single mis-step here would mean a somersault and a dead horse at the bottom, but over this  bit, they went one at a time, and each was given all the leisure in the world to pick and choose his way in the hazardous descent.

    Below was more muck and then a long climb on to a side hill and another stretch of a soft place where the uttermost exertion was necessary to keep the horses from getting mired.  A stop of even a few minutes to chop a trail, meant that some fool horse would blunder on a tour of investigation, and get into trouble.”

    

    Today, we get into a comfortable car and drive down a smooth, gently-sloped highway admiring the majestic scenery, as we travel through the Yellowhead Pass.  We never give a thought about the hardships those early explorers had to suffer, to get through it.

    

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