Origin of the name unknown.
Tumbling Glacier and Berg Lake N.W. face of Mt. Robson. Photo: A.L. Mumm, 1909
Canadian Alpine Journal 1910
View of Blue or Tumbling Glacier from its névé on the slope of Robson Peak to where its foot enters Berg Lake, a descent of 5,000 feet. Photo: R. C. W. Lett
National Geographic Magazine 1913
In 1917, while serving in the Canadan Army Medical Corps in France, George R. B. Kinney [1872–1961] wrote to Arthur Hinks, the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society in London, that he would be pleased to deliver a lecture on mountaineering in the Canadian Rockies, illustrated by “100 choice colored lantern slides, second to none (by report), and taken from my own negatives.… Mine are the original photographs taken of these hither to unexplored regions, and names like ‘Berg Lake,’ ‘Tumbling Glacier,’ ‘Robson Glacier,’ ‘Mt. Rearguard,’ ‘the Helmet,’ and ‘the Extinguisher’ that now have a permanency, were my suggestions, while Dr. Coleman gave the name of Lake Kinney on Mt. Robson’s western foot” (1). Kinney delivered the lecture in January 1919, and was subsequently elected a Fellow of the RGS (2).
Kinney had accompanied Arthur Philemon Coleman [1852–1939] and Coleman’s brother Lucius on the first mountaineering expedition to Mount Robson in 1907, when they approached from the Fraser River side and got little further than Kinney Lake. They returned in 1908, guided by Adolphus Moberly [1887– ?] and John Yates [1880– ?], who took them up the Moose River valley and approached Robson from the north. They became the first people to report on Berg Lake, Tumbling Glacier, Robson Glacier, Rearguard Mountain, The Helmet, and Extinguisher Tower, features Kinney named after their appearances.
“From the elevated ice-field, fed by avalanching snows from the sides of Robson, a gigantic ice cascade tumbles down rock precipices and buries its nose in the waters of Berg Lake,” wrote Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] after his 1911 visit. “At frequent intervals great chunks of ice break off with a report like cannon, and, bounding and rattling down the steep incline, plunge into the clear water of the lake. Dr. Coleman has named the overhanging ice-fall ‘The Blue Glacier,’ The term is not strong enough: ‘Tumbling Glacier,’ though not so euphonious, is a better name to express the activity of such a unique feature” (3).
“Blue Glacier is a wonderful stream of slipping, sheering, blue, green, and white ice. Why it does not slip and slide as a whole down into Berg Lake is one of the unsolved secrets of this great mountain,” wrote Charles Doolittle Walcott [1850–1927] in his report on the 1912 Smithsonian expedition to Mount Robson (4).
The creek where George Monroe decided to homestead as he rafted down the Fraser in 1914 has “always been called Tumbledick,” according to his daughter Sadie Frye. The name appears on the 1915 Provincial Pre-emptor’s map. “Near the creek was Ralph Veale’s little white cabin, made of boards when most houses were made of logs.”
The stream flowing southwest through Lot 5341 into the Fraser River is labelled “Tumbledick Creek” on BC map 3H, Tete Jaune, from 1914 to 1958. The main channel has since been re-named “Monroe Creek” and the name “Tumbledick” assigned to a tributary on the north side. Large scale air photos indicate that the mid-channel of Monroe Creek has been diverted by road construction in the vicinity of Lot 9315 and now flows south into the Fraser River; Tumbledick Creek now appears to flow directly into the Fraser River via the original channel through Lot 5341.
During the 1911 Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition, the exploratory party of Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] climbed “the high rock buttresses that stood out prominently behind our camp to the northwest. The station was a low one, but commanded fine views up the valley of Moose River and of the valleys surrounding the Colonel. The station was named ‘Trios’ on account of its shape.”
Topographic Survey of Canada advises “the origin of the name is obviously that it has three peaks.”
Descriptive. A trigon is a triangle or triangular shaped body.
A treadmill is a horizontal cylinder made to revolve by persons walking on its periphery. Though doing work, they do not gain any distance.
The feature was named by the Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission in 1922.
After Thomas Torpy, a tunnel construction foreman during the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
In the report of his survey of the upper Fraser River in 1910, John A. Coryell mentioned the Torpy Range, “where grizzly bear are plentiful and black bear through the bench lands, where they can feast on the raspberries, huckleberries, blueberries, low-bush and high-bush cranberries found throughout this valley. Beaver are too plentiful for the comfort of the actual settler when he invades this district, and marten have been trapped for years. Three trappers and several Indians were in the district when the survey was completed.”
Formerly called the Clearwater River.
Named in association with Tonquin Pass.
Tonquin Pass is mentioned by surveyor Richard William Cautley [1873–1953] of the Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission in 1922.
“Tonquin Pass has no history, as far as your Commissioners are aware,” wrote Cautley’s associate, boundary commissioner Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] in 1924. “The name, Tonquin, as applied to the valley and the part of it that constitutes the pass over the continental watershed, was given by the Geographic Board of Canada. It was conferred in commemoration of John Jacob Astor’s ship, the Tonquin, which in 1810 sailed from New York and founded Fort Astoria, a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River.”
Leaving Astoria, the Tonquin sailed to Clayoquot to trade for furs, where the insolence of Captain Thorn so outraged the native Americans that they seized the ship and massacred all but three or four of the crew. These survivors, before escaping in the ship’s boat, lit a fuse leading to the Tonquin’s powder magazine. Some 200 local inhabitants were killed when the ship blew up.
Named in association with Tonquin Pass.