Descriptive.

Descriptive.

Summit City, Yellowhead Pass, 1911. Photo, Byron Harmon
Canadian Alpine Journal

Summit City, Mile 1, GTP camp, E. J. Cann store, 1910-1911. L. J Cole photo. Donated by H. A. Cole. The E. J. Cann Store is also visible in the Byron Harmon photo.

Valemount & Area Museum

“The summit of the Pass, like that of the Main Divide at Stephen, is not very attractive,” wrote Arthur Wheeler of his visit in 1911. “The timber on the north side has been burned and is now an unsightly array of fallen and standing skeletons. It is sad to think that the beauty of this naturally charming spot has been for ever spoiled through reckless carelessness. In the eastern watershed, the Miette River, here a glacial torrent, comes from a canyon almost directly at the summit, and has cut in on the height of land to such an extent that the old channels that carried water westerly to the Pacific are still to be seen. Now, the flow has been confined entirely to the east by a line of crib-work the railway company has built to protect its property.”

The railway construction camp at Yellowhead Pass consisted of three or four make-shift stores, rough log buildings with canvas roofs, as many billiard and soft drink saloons, a railway contractor’s camp and a blacksmith shop. “The place was tough and rowdy,” Wheeler reported. “There was a shooting the night we were there, but no one seems to have been hurt. Outside of the refuse they accumulate and the despoiling of natural beauties, these places, though necessary at the time, are of little moment. They pass with the passing of the steel, and in all likelihood Summit City has passed since our party was there last August.”

Wheeler did not indicate “Summit City” on the map accompanying his report.

Origin of the name unknown.

This glacier was called “Terraced Glacier” by Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945], leader of the 1911 Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition, “owing to a fine glacier at its head which rises in three distinct terraces to the Reef Névé and forms one of its outlets on this side. All three will furnish splendid fields of exploration and many fine climbs of peaks that are as yet untouched, midst whose recesses are hidden wonderful alpine valleys.”

A steppe is an extensive treeless plain; in this case the word seems to mean “stepped.” A névé is the field of frozen snow on the upper part of a glacier.

“Steppe Creek” was adopted in 1951 as labelled on Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission Sheet 31, 1922, and as listed in the 1930 BC Gazetteer.

This creek, and glacier at its headwaters, were labelled “Terrace Creek” and “Terrace Glacier” on the 1912 topographic map of Mount Robson by Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945].

“We travelled south for 12 miles on a wide-open flat, until it became flanked on either side by steep mountains,” wrote Ervin MacDonald of his family’s 1907 trip through the Yellowhead Pass. “Here on the west side of the valley close to the base of a mountain range was McLennan River. The valley itself, we had been told, was called Starvation Flats. Nine years earlier a party of eastern Canadians heading for the Klondike had lost their way in the late fall. Trapped in this seemingly pleasant valley by sickness and injuries, heavy snow and bitter cold, they had run out of grub. Without snowshoes it was impossible for them to walk through the drifts. Having no idea how to fend for themselves in the bush, they became worn out and discouraged, and before spring all of them had died of starvation. ”

According to another report, “Dad Gordon first came into the area with pack horses. They had nothing to eat and had to kill their horses for food to keep from starving. One man died and was buried in the area known as Starvation or Deadman Flats.”