Policing the Fringe. Charles Scheideman

on Adamant Glacier

      Before the great BC road-building boom of the early sixties, the road from Golden to Revelstoke followed the Columbia River valley along a route known as the Big Bend. The river found a way around the Selkirk range by travelling about ninety miles northwest from Golden and then another ninety miles southwest to Revelstoke. The road was gravel-surfaced, narrow, twisting, and in places very high above the river. The Big Bend was an adventure when conditions were ideal. In any other circumstances it was pure hell. The positive thing along the route was the scenery; on one side was the vast canyon of the upper Columbia River and on the other, the Selkirk Mountains rose from the edge of the road to glacier covered peaks. Across the Columbia River to the east were the awe inspiring Rocky Mountains. Parts of the Columbia Icefield were visible from a few vantage points.

      The Selkirk Range is a favourite with mountain climbers from all over the world; it is the reason that Swiss mountaineers were brought to Golden and Revelstoke by the Canadian Pacific Railway. These people came to Canada in the late 1800s to apply their skills as mountain guides and provide a service that the CPR believed would encourage tourist traffic on their newly completed cross-Canada rail line. Their descendants still live in the area today.

      The north end of the Selkirks, which lies inside the Big Bend, is a very popular area for hikers and climbers; so much so, that the Alpine Club of Canada has established several permanent camps there. One of these camps is in the headwaters of a beautiful creek just below the base of an icefield known as the Adamant Glacier. The glacier fills the upper end of the creek valley where ragged mountain peaks form a three-quarter circle that is about eight miles in diameter. The Alpine Club hut is a rustic structure which provides shelter and a meeting place for the many climbers who gather there for part of the short high-country summers.

      There is no road to the camp. Hikers are dropped off where the creek crosses the Big Bend road, and they walk up a steep trail for about fifteen miles. Everything needed for their stay at the camp must be carried in on their backs, along with their climbing gear. Most of the visitors to the camp make two or more trips to get their supplies in. The people who choose to holiday at this location are prepared to expend a lot of energy and they are true lovers of the wilderness. I have seen the area from the vantage point of a helicopter seat and from that brief encounter I fully understand why people go there and return again.

      In the early part of one summer while I was working at the Golden RCMP office, we received a call that there had been a climbing accident on the Adamant Glacier. The information was that three climbers had been caught in a slide; there had been serious injuries and at least one was dead. The report came to us from a young woman who had run from the camp to the road where she contacted a passing vehicle equipped with a two-way radio. The fall had happened nearly twenty-four hours before we received the report.

      We were fortunate that the only helicopter in the community was at the hangar when the report came in. The pilot, a very skilled and dedicated man, prepared to leave at once. He suggested that we call for a stretcher-equipped machine from Calgary, about two hours’ flying time from the accident location. The second helicopter was requested just before the pilot and I set out for the glacier.

      As we turned into the creek valley below the glacier and started to climb sharply, the pilot told me that we would be operating near the maximum elevations that the little helicopter was capable of. The sketchy information we had been given indicated that the injured people were on the glacier at an elevation of 8,500 feet above sea level, which was about the maximum for our machine. The pilot did some calculations, considering the amount of fuel we would have burned by the time we reached the glacier and the approximate air temperature at that elevation; he concluded that we could reach a maximum of 8,700 feet. If the injured people were above that, we would have decisions to make. We could hope there were suitable containers at the camp to allow us to drain off fuel to lighten the craft, or we could wait for the larger machine to arrive from Calgary.

      When we arrived at the Alpine Hut, we were met by a group of very concerned people. We learned that two were dead and one severely injured. The injured man and the bodies were on the margin of the glacier just below the 8,500-foot level. There had been a snow and rock slide, which caught them as they were making a descent onto the glacier from one of the surrounding peaks. The three were from the Washington, DC area of the USA. The survivor was a medical doctor who taught at a university; the two deceased were instructors at the same university, one in the mathematics faculty and the other in nuclear physics.

      We were now fairly certain that our machine could reach the scene with both of us on board. We rose out of the camp and in a few minutes we were able to see the awesome scene of the glacier and the surrounding mountain peaks. We flew over the ice in a constant climb, staying to the right margin of the glacier. To our left we could see only the undulating white surface of the glacier to the horizon. Our altimeter indicated about 8,400 feet when we saw where a large section of very thick snow had broken away from a near vertical mountainside and fallen onto the glacier. The snow slide had crossed three narrow bands of bare rock along its course and had then spread out in a fan shape as the mountain tapered out to the relatively flat surface of the glacier.

      We continued to climb over the scene so I could obtain photographs and gather evidence for the coroner’s inquiry. With some favourable winds, the pilot coaxed the little helicopter to just over 8,800 feet; from there, we were able to see three sets of boot tracks coming from the bare rock of the mountain onto the edge of the snow patch just above where the slide had started. The three tracks ran parallel and straight down the snow-covered mountainside for several hundred yards, then two of the tracks came together. After another one hundred yards, the three tracks came together. The single track continued straight down to the point where the snow had broken loose and taken the track with it. The slide had run down the mountain for half to three quarters of a mile as it crossed three bands of bare rock and tumbled over some near vertical sections of the slope before finally fanning out onto the glacier. The snow was extremely heavy from the summer melt and as it slid, it picked up rocks and mixed them into itself. Some of the rocks were the size of motor vehicles.

      As we got closer, we could see people on the snow near the centre of the slide fan. We landed nearby and met the people who had been assisting the injured man. He was conscious and fully aware of everything that had gone on in the twenty-four hours since the slide. He told me of having hiked out of the camp at dawn the previous morning with his two companions; they had stayed along the right rim of the glacier bowl and at about midday decided to go down onto the glacier. The survivor had not been in favour of the glacier route because, in his experience, travel was very slow on the ice. He explained to me that to traverse the glacier surface they would have to be roped together at all times and they would have to keep to the end of their rope in case one of the party fell into a crevasse. A group moving on the glacier surface would be continually searching for the least hazardous route. To travel down the length of a ridge would be very reckless because that is the most common course of a crevasse.

      The two dead climbers, being the least experienced of the three, had looked at the snowfield as an easier route back to the camp, and they were tired due to the exertion of the climb and the high altitude. Because they had all done a considerable amount of Alpine hiking, each had a vote in such decisions. Two out of three, the majority, chose to go down. Having made that decision, they next chose to go directly down from where they were rather than seek out a better route. They roped themselves together and discussed the need to stay at the end of their rope and to descend parallel to each other. The tracks above the slide showed that they had started out in this manner but one had drifted into the track of another and then all three had been in a line when the snow broke loose.

      The survivor told of the terrifying ride in the tumbling snow and how they had yelled to each other and kept their arms and legs spread in the hope that they would stay on the surface of the falling snow and rocks. Their plan to try and swim over the fall was partly successful, but they were all under the snow for part of the trip down. The doctor told of his going under, and the horrible sound of the snow and rocks crashing down around him; just before he was thrown back onto the surface he felt both his feet getting caught between two huge rocks. He knew at once that his feet were crushed inside his climbing boots, but he felt no pain until after he found himself on the glacier at the leading edge