Article Database - Called by this Mountain

There are few peaks in North America that are surrounded by as many legends as Mount Alberta. Its remoteness, its difficulty of access, the bleak and forbidding character of its fabled summit and the remarkable stories of its first and subsequent ascents have entered history as legends that celebrate mountaineering courage and the shared heritage of nations.

Mount Alberta rises out of the headwaters of the Athabasca River at the northern edge of the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park. At 3,919 metres, Mount Alberta is the third highest mountain in the Columbia Icefield area and the fifth highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies. Though far from being the highest peak, it is widely considered to be an extraordinary mountaineering challenge.

The mystery surrounding this mountain is heightened by the fact that you can’t see it from any highway. You can’t even catch a glimpse of Mount Alberta unless you visit the upper reaches of the Athabasca Valley. You can do that in two ways. If you are good at fording the fast water of countless streams, you can walk the 30-odd miles up the Athabasca River to where, near the river’s headwaters, you can stare at the mountain's incredible north face before passing under its daunting cliffs. Or, if you are up for a steep climb, you can cross the Sunwapta River near its headwaters at the Athabasca Glacier and climb to the crest of the Woolley Shoulder where the mountains presents an eyeful, especially for anyone with ambitions of climbing it.

The Alpine Club of Canada maintains a small alpine hut below Woolley Shoulder on the north ridge of Little Alberta, 2.5 kilometres east of the mountain. Though the Alpine Club of Canada’s hut guide notes that Lloyd McKay Hut is "probably smaller than what your lawn mower lives in," it does offer grand view of Mount Alberta.

In their highly influential book, Fifty Classic Climbs in North America, Steve Roper and Allen Steck describe Mount Alberta as "one of the most notorious peaks in the Rockies." Citing that the mountain is known for having no easy route to the summit, the authors go on to describe the problems of appalling weather, falling rock and the ice-covered walls that have intimidated generations of climbers.

While rockfall and bad weather are serious hazards on Mount Alberta, the greatest difficulty in climbing the mountain is posed by a formidable series of black cliffs that surround the mountain. These cliff bands are so steep that that, even in winter, they are free from snow. Most problematic is the final tier. These upper cliffs vary in height from 300 to 600 feet and are unbroken by a single low-angled couloir, or gully. Noting in 1979, 54 years after the first ascent, that fewer than 10 parties had ever achieved the summit, Roper and Steck rated Mount Alberta one of the 10 classic climbs in the Canadian West.

Finding and Naming the Mountain

Even the peak’s discovery is fabled. The peak was discovered in 1898 and named by Norman Collie the same fateful summer he discovered the Columbia Icefield from the summit of Mt. Athabasca. The following year, Collie named the black-walled giant Mount Alberta for Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the sixth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The naming of places as a repeated public expression of royal adulation continued into the next century and culminated in 1905 when the Province of Alberta was also named for Queen Victoria’s popular daughter.

The First Attempts on Mount Alberta

The first mountaineer to visit the Mount Alberta area was the American Howard Palmer, who passed along the mountain’s base during a reconnaissance of the upper Athabasca Valley in 1920. He did not attempt the mountain but brooded over its seemingly impossible summit before returning four years later. At the close of the 1924 climbing season, Palmer and his Canadian friend, Joseph William Andrew Hickson, joined the famous Austrian guide Conrad Kain on an expedition to the Mount Alberta area. Bad weather, unfortunately, forced an early end to the attempt.

Enter the Japanese

Though little known in North America mountaineering circles at the time, the Japanese had developed a substantial mountaineering culture of their own. This culture had largely been inspired by an English missionary named Walter Weston, who is revered in Japan as the founder of Japanese mountaineering. Weston, who was a member of the Alpine Club in Britain, introduced safe mountaineering techniques and wrote widely about his experience in what he called "The Japanese Alps." His books on climbing in Japan inspired the Japanese to form their own alpine club, based on the British model, in 1905.

The first internationally renowned Japanese climber was Yuko Maki, a man whose mountaineering ambitions were fully supported by Crown Prince Chichibu of Japan, for whom he served as aide-de-camp. Maki had boldly entered the world mountaineering stage by making a very daring ascent of the Eiger from the Mittelegi arête in the summer of 1921. The ascent made Maki famous in Switzerland and a national hero in Japan. With this impressive feat as a foundation for an expanded career, the world was watching and waiting to see what Maki would do next. The answer was four years in coming.

In the early months of 1925, Maki went on a ski trip to Akakura in Niigato where he stayed in the vacation home of the Marquis Mori Tatsu Hosokawa. On the way home, while their train was climbing the foot of Mount Asama, Hosakawa1 produced a copy of A Climber's Guide to the Rocky Mountains of Canada, which had been published by James Munroe Thorington and Howard Palmer the year Maki had made his ascent of the Eiger. Hosokawa pointed out the frontispiece of the book, which featured an enticing photograph of Mount Alberta taken from the southwest by Howard Palmer during his visit to the upper reaches of the Athabasca Valley in 1920. Beneath the image was an utterly enticing caption that read "A Formidable Unclimbed Peak of the Range."

It is easy to recreate the scene on the train as it rocked back and forth on winding tracks. Snow-covered mountains are passing by the windows. Hosokawa and Maki are in adjacent seats facing one another. Their heads are bowed toward the picture of Mount Alberta in the climbing guide. "Why don’t you do that?" asks Hosokawa. "Hmm," says Maki thoughtfully.

Even with the Marquis Hosokawa’s considerable means, time was short for the planning of an expedition. Maki reasoned correctly that July should be the month for the ascent. This meant that his party would have to sail from Yokohama by the end of June. The planning process was very much hampered by difficulty in finding information on the Mount Alberta area. Beyond the Palmer-Thorington guide book and Norman Collie’s description of the mountain, there was almost no information about this remote area of the Rockies. It was clear to Maki that his expedition would have to walk into the blank spaces of the map of the Canadian West to reach the mountain. The remoteness of the Columbia Icefield area would require a large expedition not unlike the ones the British were sending to Everest at the time.

With the financial support of the Tokyo newspaper Nichi Nichi and the Osaka Mainichi, Maki began to put his team together. As Secretary of the Japanese Alpine Club,2 Maki was able to choose from the best experienced and most scientifically competent climbers Japan could offer. This first-ever Japanese overseas expedition would be composed of six members. Yuko Maki was the leader. The expedition’s secretary was Seiichi Hashimoto. The events of the expedition would be photographed by Nagatene Okabe. Masanobu Hatano was the expedition’s geologist and geographer. Yukio Mita was the expedition’s botanist and landscape artist and Tanezo Hayakawa performed the duties of the expedition’s doctor. Each of these, in turn, proved indispensable to the enjoyment and the success of the expedition.

Jasper Park Lodge

The Japanese Mount Alberta Expedition departed Yokohama on the steamer "Paris-Maru" on June 19th, 1925. On the first of July, the party arrived in Seattle and the following day took an express train to Vancouver where they stayed four days at the Hotel Vancouver. On the 6th of July, the party to a Canadian National Railway passenger train from Vancouver and arrived in Jasper the following day. After being met by a young man named "Macdonoe," the Japanese team was transported to Jasper Park Lodge, which Maki compared most favourably with the lodges he had seen in the Alps.

In order to promote mountain climbing in the Jasper area, the CNR, in 1925, had invited professional guides, Heinrich Fuhrer and Hans Kohler, from Switzerland to spend their summers at Jasper Park Lodge. It did not take Maki long to meet them. According to Maki, neither Fuhrer nor Hans Kohler even knew about Mount Alberta until he had told them of the mountain. Fully aware of the reputation that Make had established on the Eiger, they were both anxious to join the Mount Alberta expedition. Maki considered the offer and, conceding that it would be good for his colleagues to witness the qualifications and support that Swiss guides could offer, invited Fuhrer and Kohler to join the expedition. Fuhrer then "petitioned zealously" to include Jean Weber on the expedition. Weber was an amateur climber from Switzerland who was visiting Fuhrer in Jasper. The climbing party had quickly grown to nine.

The Maki party of six Japanese and three Swiss climbers left Jasper on the 11th of July, 1925. The expedition had food and supplies for 25 days on the trail. The pack train also carried movie cameras, ice axes, pitons, all manner of rock climbing tools and 500 feet of expensive silk rope.

On July 17th, the caravan reached Habel Creek. By the 19th of July, the expedition was ready to establish a bivouac on the very meadow Howard Palmer had discovered the previous year. As predicted by Palmer, the location of this bivouac site would become one of the keys to climbing this great peak. Weber and the two Swiss guides were interested in the technical equipment the Japanese brought. The Swiss were particularly curious about why an extra ice axe was being included in the gear being prepared for the bivouac camp. The use of the axe would be revealed to them later.

On the 20th of July, the bivouac camp was established on the tiny meadow below the forbidding cliffs of Mount Alberta. The party rose at 2:30 a.m. on the morning of July 21. In their excitement, none of the climbers had slept well. A frugal breakfast of cheese and bread and butter washed down with a couple of cups of coffee allowed them an early departure. Shouldering their heavy packs, the camera and motion picture equipment and the spare axe, the party departed their bivouac site at 3:30 a.m. The first hour on the southwesterly slope was easy going. The distinct forms of peak and valley, river and glacier gradually assumed shape as the dawn approached.

They approached the first wall. Heinrich Fuhrer, or Henry, as the party normally called him, led the first pitch. The climbers were immediately introduced to the most constant hazard present on Mount Alberta: loose debris and falling rock. Because of the particularly friable nature of the rock that composes the upper cliffs, the constant rockfalls were not just a problem from on high, it also collected under foot and created another type of danger for the climbers. This debris was so thick that the climbers often sank to their ankles in it. Each step would send waves of the debris over the edge and down the face of the peak.

The climbers found themselves next in a gigantic fractured bowl over-towered by dark, frail spires connected to the main arête of Mount Alberta. Above the buttress, perpendicular walls of black rock rose, cliff upon cliff, into a brownish, smoky mist that had advanced upward from a forest fire burning in the lower valley. It was on these cliffs that the Swiss guide Fuhrer offered proof of his competence and reputation. Fuhrer discovered a rough stairway of natural steps that rose slowly along the dark sheer wall. The climbers, advancing on three ropes, realized that the rock they intended to climb was not solid. Composed as it was of rotten shale and loose gravel, it cam away in the hands of climbers who gripped it. The climbers advanced one at a time without using holds, to prevent the rock from collapsing on them.

Now the party faced and even more extreme obstacle in the form of a rock overhang 12 feet above them. Through the deliberations that took place on the crowded ledge, it became obvious that it would take an extreme act to make the summit theirs. The climbers moved to their places. On the edge of the abyss, Mr. Hayakawa stood facing the wall. Then Mr. Kohler climbed up on his back and anchored his legs around Hayakawa’s shoulders. Heinrich Fuhrer then climbed up the human ladder to stand upright on Kohler’s shoulders. A half step separated the three from a thousand-foot abyss. After tottering for a time on the top of the human ladder, Fuhrer finally disappeared onto the ledge above and drew the others up after him.

Above this very difficult obstacle, the walls continued to rise, ledge upon ledge to the ridge. The climbers clung to walls so steep, on ledges so narrow, they couldn’t look down to see where they could place their feet. Each climber had to feel his way along and up, hoping the the hold they picked wouldn’t collapse or that the almost continuous rockfall wouldn’t strike them.

The Summit at Last

By 4:00 p.m., Fuhrer had led the party to the lower southerly end of the summit arête. Near the peak, the arête narrowed so much that it was dealt with in a horse-riding style by the climbers, who had become near-giddy with the 5,000-foot near-vertical drops on either side. After being exasperated by two difficult gaps in the summit ridge and exhausted by 16 hours of extraordinarily difficult climbing, the Maki party reached the summit of Mount Alberta at 7:35 p.m. on the 21st of July, 1925. Maki, inexplicably, was moved to tears.

Deeply moved by the summit experience, Maki then did something that would have huge historical implications for the history of mountaineering in Canada:

"The summit was covered with snow, but a few steps below we noticed uncovered rocks. At this point, we made a cairn by piling up rocks and planted the ice axe presented by Marquis Hosokawa, which Okabe carried with care. In an empty tin, we left a note with our names. ‘Half past seven in the evening, twenty-first day of July in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-five. After sixteen hours of strenuous climbing, we, nine, got to the top of the Mount Alberta. Party of six. And with Fuhrer, Kohler and Weber.’

"We came from Japan so far called by this charming great mountain."

Yuko Maki extended his sincere thanks to the Swiss for the aid they provided his party in this wonderful achievement in alpinism. The extra ice axe was left at the summit to commemorate the ascent and the climbers made their gradual, dangerous descent arriving at their base camp after another night out on the mountain.

The Second Ascent of Mount Alberta

Despite the fact that Mount Alberta had already been climbed, mystery continued to surround it. The rumour somehow emerged, fuelled perhaps by the practical joking of the cowboy outfitters and horse packers who attended the expedition, that the Japanese left a solid silver ice axe on the summit of Mount Alberta. It took 23 years to dispel that rumour.

On the 30th of July, 1948, the second ascent of Mount Alberta was made by Fred Ayers and John Oberlin. On the summit edge, Ayers and Oberlin encountered a 60-foot gap in the ridge, an obstacle that had also confronted the first ascent party. In fog and dangerous snow conditions, Ayers and Oberlin were certain the dimly visible snow crest in front of them was the summit. Not wanting to abandon the climb so close to its conclusion, they drove one of their axes into the hard snow a short distance back from the gap and used it as a rappel point from which they could descend to the saddle. After reaching the snow summit they had seen in the fog, they were confronted with the fact that it was merely one of the many false summits Maki and his party had had to overcome to reach the true summit further on. Oberlin, who was in the lead, let out a shout that terrified Ayers, who, without an ice axe, was little prepared to deal with a serious problem. However, as Fred Ayers explains in his Canadian Alpine Journal account of the climb in 1949, Oberlin was only shouting out with delight that he had found the fabled Japanese ice axe.

"It was standing in the top of the cairn, which was all but completely buried in the snow. The axe, far from being silver, was of standard Swiss manufacture, though weather-beaten by long exposure. On the head, bright against the rusty steel were the initials, ‘M.T.H.' in flashing gold letters. If the axe were new and shining when placed the cairn, it must almost have looked like polished silver. The record was inside in an inverted and very rusty can and was in a remarkably good state of preservaton, considering the length of time it had been there."

The Legend of the Ice Axe Grows

In need of another axe to ensure their safety during descent, the Americans decided to take the one protruding from the first ascent cairn. From John Oberlin’s well-written 1949 American Alpine Journal account, we learn what happened next and what made the Americans decide to take the famous Japanese summit register:

"The axe was not silver but a good Swiss make, weather-beaten and rusty. On the side of the pick, in large block letters of gold leaf, were the initials 'M.T.H.' Since the spike and ferrule were frozen in solid black ice between the lower rocks of the cairn, our best efforts could not chop them free. Moreover, the shaft was cracked near its end, so that little leverage could be applied. We were determined to take it with us, partly because we felt that it should be preserved in the museum of one of the Alpine Clubs, but particularly because Fred needed an axe for the return along the ridge to the notch. I had no desire to witness a repeat performance of his balancing act, however expert. (As a matter of fact, I had kept constantly in mind the possibility of jumping the cornice if he should slip.)

"What to do with the record was more of a problem. To return it to its rusty can in the snow-buried cairn seemed tantamount to throwing it in the wastebasket, as it certainly could not last there much longer. We remembered our disappointment at the collection of mushy paper, mostly illegible, we had found on the summit of Mount Assiniboine two years before and decided to take the record to accompany the axe. At 6:30 p.m. we started back along the ridge, leaving a scribbled note in the cairn to the effect that we had found the Japanese axe and record and were bringing them down."

The Ice Axe Returns to Jasper

The fact that the ice axe was not silver or gold and that it had not been presented to the Japanese expedition by the Emperor was slow in reaching Canada. Two decades later, the story of the Emperor's silver ice axe was still circulating in Jasper. The story of how the famous ice axe was returned to Canada is the story of one man's determination and the support he got from a local museum.

Greg Horne works as a park warden in Jasper National Park and is a member of the executive of the Jasper-Hinton section of the Alpine Club of Canada. Over the many years he has spent in the park, Horne has taken a special interest in climbing history and is particularly interested in Mount Alberta. In his many discussions, Horne heard a lot of climbers lament that the Americans had no business taking the ice axe in the first place and certainly no business keeping it in New York. Among ill-informed climbers, Horne noted, there were many who still believed that the ice axe was really silver. In 1992, Horne visited the American Alpine Club offices in New York to undertake library research. During his visit, he discovered the broken Mount Alberta axe in a bundle of old axes tied up and lying under a table.

Back in Jasper, Horne contacted Edith Gourlay, a historian with the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum. Together they determined that the ice axe should be the centrepiece for a future display on the mountaineering history of the park. In May of 1992, Horne and Gourlay wrote the American Alpine Club to formally request the return of the axe. In early 1995, the axe was quietly returned to Jasper where it became part of a permanent exhibit on the mountaineering history and legend of Mount Alberta.

Meanwhile Back on the Mountain

After the successful 1948 American expedition, the mountain was not climbed again until the first Canadian ascent on August 18th, 1958. This expedition was composed of Neil Brown, Heinz Kahl, Sarka Spinkova, Leo Grillmair and Hans Gmoser.

Just a week after the first Canadian ascent in 1958, Brian Greenwood and Dick Lofthouse made the fourth ascent of the mountain. This climb is often referred to as the first British ascent. But on this ascent, neither climber remembered seeing the broken piece of axe on the summit.

In the meantime, the Japanese maintained a serious interest in Mount Alberta. In 1965, a Nagano Old Boys Alpine Club expedition came to Canada to make a 40th anniversary attempt on the mountain. The climbing team was composed of expedition leader Mamoru Tajima and climbers Tadashi Nakamura, Kenichi Hara, Kazunori Shimodaira and Hajime Watanabe.

The expedition left for Canada in June of 1965. Theirs was a modest expedition compared to the one in 1925. Hauling 800 lbs. of gear on foot from the Icefields Parkway, they finally set up camp at the base of the mountain on the 23rd of July.

On July 25, the climbers carefully inspected the route up the first rock wall. After resting a day and another day of bad weather, the climbers advanced up the crumbling rock of the vertical cliff bands and, as late afternoon snow began to fall, bivouacked on a rock shelf. The next day, undertaking some of the most dangerous climbing on the expedition, they advanced toward the main ridge. The incredible steepness of the cliff faces and falling rock created continuous hazard. At 3:00 p.m., they reached the famous gap, the obstacle that challenged the first Japanese expedition. Conditions were poor. First Watanabe, then Shimodaira and then Tajima crossed the gap. Forty minutes later, at 3:40 p.m., July 29, 1965, the climbers reached the cairn below the summit. In the cairn they found two pieces of crumbling paper and a business card. And there, by the cairn, one of the climbers found the broken shaft of an old wooden axe. They left behind a can with their own record and strode to the actual peak just above.

Watanabe and Tajima were photographed by Kazunori Shimodaira on the summit. In the photograph, the two jubilant climbers are shaking hands. Looking carefully, the viewer can see that Mamoru Tajima is holding the bottom part of the ice axe that they picked up at the cairn. Tajima thought it might have belonged to the American expedition of 1948. He stuck it in his pack and took it home. He also took the pieces of crumbling paper found in the cairn. These included the summit register from the American expedition in 1948, the summit register from the first Canadian ascent in 1958 and Dick Lofthouse's business card from the first British ascent.

That Which is Lost is Often Found

Stirred by an invitation by the Alpine Club of Canada to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Alberta, members of the Japanese Alpine Club gathered in the spring of 1997 to examine all of the artifacts the club had collected relating to the mountain. Among the relics was the broken base of a wooden ice axe. An exact balsa wood copy was made and sent to Satch Masuda in Canada. A trip to Jasper was made to see if it might fit into the top of the original ice axe that was now on display in the heritage gallery of the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum. Like Cinderella and her shoe, both parts of the axe fit together. When the JAC realized that both parts of the broken axe from the 1925 expedition still existed, a Canadian delegation was invited to a special ceremony in Tokyo to bring about the reunification.

In August of this year, Japanese mountaineers will be returning to Jasper Park Lodge. On the 75th anniversary of the first ascent, a joint Japanese-Canadian team will join the ice axe again on the summit of Mount Alberta. Each of the major partners in the Mount Alberta celebration has selected a member for the Canadian team. As appointed by the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC), Cam Roe will be leader of the Canadian team. The Vice-President of Activities for the ACC, Cam is an experienced and highly competent climber. Sylvia Forest, who is well known in Jasper, will represent Parks Canada. (Sylvia is the daughter of the legendary Don Forest, who has climbed all 52 of the 11,000-foot peaks in the Rockies, including Mount Alberta, which he climbed in 1970.)

Peter Amann, a professional mountain guide at Jasper Park Lodge, will represent Canadian Pacific Hotels. Greg Horne has been invited to be the base camp manager and safety coordinator for the climb.

Kazuhiro Kumasaki will be the team's leader. He will be joined by climbers Hirotake Takeuchi and Takaaki Morikami. In the summer of 2000, nearly 100 Japanese including 60 hikers, a group of VIPs and international media, will converge on Jasper for this anniversary celebration.

Following what we hope will be a successful climb, the Mount Alberta ice axe will be rejoined once more at ceremonies at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum and at Jasper Park Lodge. After this historic ceremony, this remarkable artifact will remain intact, here at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum, where it will symbolize the common history and enduring heritage that links the mountaineering communities of Canada, the United States and Japan. That which was lost has finally been found and that which was separated will at last be rejoined.

The Legend of the Silver Ice Axe and the Climbing History of Mount Alberta