Mountain High

Mountaineering in the Canadian Rockies is almost a secret world — known only to the few hardy souls willing to risk their lives high up on an isolated peak. But, thanks to the Calgary Mountain Club, which recently donated its records to a Banff museum, we now have a new window into that world.

“You really feel that personal connection to the mountains and that passion about just climbing for the sake of climbing,” said Kate Nielsen, an archivist at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.

The donation includes photographs, logbooks, handwritten descriptions of first ascents, stories, and artwork dating back to the 1960s. It’s hoped that the records will help researchers understand the history of climbing in the Rockies, said Ken Wiens, the club’s director of communications. Wiens has been climbing since the late 1960s and knows well the pull of the mountains.

Among the climbers whose work is included in the records is the late Billy Davidson, a pioneer rock-wall climber who introduced extreme climbing to the Rockies. A nearfatal fall in the mid-1970s prompted him to leave the climbing scene and to pursue painting and kayaking instead. John Lauchlan’s notes are also in the donated material.

Lauchlan, one of Canada’s leading mountaineers, died at age twenty-seven when he was swept away by an avalanche near the Columbia Icefield in Alberta in 1982.