HISTORY
The British Columbia Mountaineering Club (for the first two years
it was called the Vancouver Mountaineering Club) was started in
Vancouver on October 28, 1907 at a meeting called by a small group
of local mountaineers. At the next meeting in November the Club’s
objectives were adopted: they have always included exploration of
the BC Mountains, the preservation and protection of significant
alpine areas in BC and all scientific, artistic and recreational
activities to promote those objectives. At the same meeting a “A
chaste and artistic design for a crest was prepared and presented
by Mr. A. E. Sherman. It is the one which has been in use ever since,
and shows the best-known and most climbed peaks near the city: The
Lions, Crown, Goat, Dam and Grouse” (quotation from the
club’s first publication, the 1913 “Northern Cordilleran”).
MEMBERSHIP
The Club quickly grew as it organized weekend trips to the North
shore mountains, public lectures given by prominent club members
and summer club camps in locations suitable for mountain climbing
and hiking. Within a few years the Club had formed subgroups of
members such as the Botanical (later the Natural History), the Geological
and even an Entomological Section, whose pioneering efforts on Club
and private trips are accorded a large portion of the space in the
Northern Cordilleran.
In a 1957 article, “Early days of the BCMC” Honorary
Member R. M. Mills notes with great satisfaction
that the BCMC was a very democratic group having members from a
wide variety of professions and all levels of income from lawyers,
land surveyors, bankers to nurses, stenographers, cigar maker, piano
tuner and real estate men, “all gentlemen and gentlewomen.”.
It is well to remember that the club from the very start in 1907
was a model of gender equality, the charter members elected a woman
as Vice president at the first AGM!
TRIP SCHEDULE
One of the most important and also most continuous Club functions
has been to provide a regular schedule of weekend climbing (and
starting in the thirties, skiing and later even snow-shoeing) trips
open to all members, most often led by the trip director or by more
experienced members. This trip regime has always included the ideal
of less skilled climbers learning “the ropes” from more
experienced fellow members and leaders who knew the routes and the
hazards of the climbs offered.
They involved more complicated transport arrangements and often
two or three day walk-ins/-outs. It was the pioneering climbs during
those years that prompted the President in fall 1966 to announce
that “ possibly fifty first ascents have been achieved at
the last three expeditionary camps.”
An expeditionary ski camp in spring 1967 was a new venture, involving
access to the Manatee range by ski plane and snow caves instead
of tents with a three day ski/walk-out along the Lillooet river,
a young John Clarke on his first major foray into
unexplored backcountry was one of the lucky seven Club members in
that camp. Other ski expeditions followed , such as a crossing of
the Pemberton Ice field, snow camps in the Manatee Range, the Lord
River/Lillooet Ice field, the Whitemantle Group, at Dais Glacier
near Mt. Waddington and even two summer ski expeditions near the
Alaska Panhandle/Stikine area. Christmas ski camps are also an annual
feature of the trip schedule.
PUBLICATIONS
The 1913 Northern Cordilleran has already been mentioned.
In March 1923 a monthly newsletter was started which is now in its
82nd year having been published regularly in one form or another.
Its first editor was the well known climber Don Munday.
Don and his wife Phyl Munday were members of the
BCMC until 1930 during some of their early and productive years
as the explorers of the mountains around Mt. Waddington or Mystery
Mountain as it was known then.
Another special publication was the 1957 fiftieth anniversary
issue called “The Mountaineer”, which contains
“a selection from articles submitted by members ..., and it
is fitting that there is emphasis on the early days of the Club.”
The longest serving and present editor is Honorary Member Mike
Feller, who has been putting out the BCMC bulletin for
over 23 years and has recently completed a comprehensive index of
club publications up to 1969. He is also in charge of the BCMC archives
and has been responsible for producing the bi-annual “BC
Mountaineer”, a more elaborate journal of major Club
and private trip reports and other articles of interest to the members,
first published in 1976.
In the mid-sixties the BCMC joined other local hiking/climbing
clubs in organizing a Mountain Access Committee to coordinate and
improve trail work and maintenance in the mountains accessible from
Vancouver and environs. In 1971 it was replaced by its more formal
successor, the FMCBC. From 1966 to 1972 these two
groups also published four editions of a “Mountain Trail
Guide” , which, in the last issue, described 43 trails
(with access and maps) in a radius of about a 150 km of Vancouver.
In 1967 the BCMC established a committee to write a more detailed
and larger trail guide for the local mountains. The committee chair
was entrusted to the able leadership of a Past President and Honorary
Member, the late John Harris. With the help of
many club members and other climbers/hikers input the first issue
of “103 Hikes in South Western BC” was completed
and published (by the Seattle Mountaineers) in 1973. It was an immediate
success: three more revised editions were prepared over the years
by Honorary Members Mary and David Macaree
with a fifth, updated one in 2001 by Jack Bryceland.
Over a 100,000 copies of these trail guides have been sold and they
have helped countless hikers find their way into (and back from!)
the hills around Vancouver.
The Club has also assisted in the publishing of mountaineering
guide books, such as The Alpine Guide to South-western BC,
A Climber’s Guide to the Squamish Chief and A
Guide to Climbing and Hiking in South-western BC.
ENVIRONMENT
Over the nearly 100 years of it’s existence the BCMC and
many of its members have often been involved in the struggles for
the preservation of mountain wilderness and the creation of provincial
parks. One of the earliest expressions of environmental concerns
I found in the 1924 speech of Club member Prof. J.L. Davidson,
Provincial Botanist, chairman of the BCMC Botanical section and
president of the newly formed Vancouver Natural History Society
(an offspring of the BCMC ), wherein he decried the “havoc
created by logging” in the Capilano and Mosquito creek valleys
and the potential demise of rare BC trees, such as the Dogwood.
Some examples of the more successful campaigns are:
- the Club’s exploration of, and publicity on the wonders
of the Garibaldi area and it’s petitions to the provincial
government led directly to the creation of Garibaldi Provincial
Park in the 1920's;
- the active participation of many BCMC members in the wild and
woolly days of the ROSS (Run Out the Skagit Spoilers) society,
which contributed substantially to the dedication of the BC portion
of the Skagit valley as a park;
- the 1973 submission to the Provincial Government of a detailed
and impassioned brief by BCMC past President and Honorary Member
Roy Mason for setting aside the Stein Valley as a Park;
- and a well reasoned and extensive proposal for the preservation
of the “Glendenning/Elaho/Upper Lillooet wilderness”,
an area now partially reserved for a park, by a youthful BCMC
member Randy Stoltman (who sadly got killed in
an avalanche on a ski-touring expedition in 1994) .
There are many more examples of the BCMC and its members working
collectively or individually, in concert with affiliated groups,
such as the Federation of Mountain Clubs (FMCBC), the Climbers Access
Society (and others too numerous to mention here) in the preservation
and protection of BC‘s significant mountain landscapes. One
of the best known is our Honorary Member, the late John
Clarke, who, after achieving legendary status as a mountain
explorer with many hundreds of first and other ascents, devoted
the last eight years of his life to environmental education of BC
school children and native youth.
ASSOCIATED GROUPS
As early as 1949 the BCMC was asked to supply volunteers to help
out the First Aid Ski Patrol on Mt. Seymour during
winter weekends and by1952 the RCMP and the Forest Service were
assisted by a Mountain Emergency Squad, which later
evolved into the Mountain Rescue Group (MRG), a
registered society with local climbers, including many BCMC members,
trained in rescue operations. It was prominent in search efforts
for lost hikers on the north shore and during the high profile hunt
for the vanished TCA North Star airplane, which was later found
on Mt. Slesse by a climbing party. The MRG carried out many rescue
operations on the local mountains and some members even assisted
prominently in the avalanche disaster at the Granduc mine. The search
and rescue role was later taken over by various local groups, who
could respond more quickly and would be, it was hoped, better trained,
such as the North Shore Rescue.
TRAINING
Rock, snow and ice climbing instruction has been a regular part
of BCMC activities for many years, in the sixties the BCMC even
teamed up with the Vancouver School Board in offering spring evening
classes combined with one or two weekend practices in mountain craft.
Later the MRG was assigned the role of climbing instruction, many
times with experienced BCMC members as instructors. With the demise
of the MRG and the formation of its successor body, the FMCBC took
over climbing training with good results in most cases. In recent
years the training of members, both beginners and advanced, has
reverted back to the BCMC and a successful summer and winter training
program is again an important feature of the Club’s schedule.
M. Kafer, corr. Dec. 10/2005
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