Hooker and Brown

Hooker and Brown are two mythical mountains, once reputed to lie on the great Divide of the Canadian Rockies in Jasper National Park, bordering the Athabasca Pass, the old passage for the fur trade. These two peaks were reputed to be the highest mountains in North America at over 16,000 feet (4,900 m), and were maintained to be so on maps and atlases, for almost a hundred years, spurring the early mountaineers arriving on the railway (1890) to explore the Rockies and discover features such as the Columbia Icefield.

David Thompson, a Canadian surveyor, explorer and geographer, first established the route through Athabasca Pass in January 1811 when the Peigan Indians closed Howse Pass to prevent his trading with their rivals, the Kootenay people. Although he mapped the route carefully, Thompson was not interested in mountains and did not name or note them in his journals. His journey joined with the Columbia river and the trail became the premier trade passage over the Rockies until the decline of the fur trade.

In April 1827, David Douglas, a Scottish Biologist collecting for the Royal Botanic Institution of Glasgow, and sponsored by Sir William Hooker, crossed the pass. Lagging the other voyageurs, he made an unprecedented decision to abandon the trail and to ascend the northern peak in deep snow.

“After breakfast at one o’clock, being, as I conceive, on the highest part of the route, I became desirous of ascending one of the peaks, and accordingly I set out alone on snowshoes to that on the left hand or west side, being to all appearances the highest. The labour of ascending the lower part, which is covered with pines, is great beyond description, sinking on many occasions to the middle. Halfway up vegetation ceases entirely, not so much a vestige of moss or lichen on the stones. Here I found it less laborious as I walked on the hard crust. One-third from the summit it becomes a mountain of pure ice, sealed far over by Nature’s hand as a momentous work of Nature’s God. ... The view from the summit is of too awful a cast to afford pleasure. Nothing can be seen, in every direction as far as the eye can reach, except mountains towering above each other, rugged beyond description. ... The height from its base may be about 5,500 feet; timber 2,750 feet; a few mosses and lichens 500 more; 1,000 feet of perpetual snow; the remainder, towards the top, 1,250, as I have said, glacier with a thin covering of snow on it. The ascent took me five hours; descending only one and a quarter. ... This peak, the highest yet known in the northern continent of America, I feel a sincere pleasure in naming Mount Brown, in honour of R. Brown, Esq., the illustrious botanist... A little to the southward is one nearly the same height, rising into a sharper point. This I named Mount Hooker [after his sponsor, William Hooker] ...”

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