PERILOUS CLIMB

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 69, 18 September 1936, Page 3

PERILOUS CLIMB

"MYSTERY MOUNTAIN" An announcement was made at the meeting of the Alpine Club last night that "Mystery Mountain," or Mount Waddington, the highest mountain in Canada, had just been climbed by the Bavarian, Fritz Wiessner, of "Nanga Parbat" fame.

Untila few years ago, Mount Robson, in the Canadian Rockies, had always been believed to be the highest mountain in Canada. About 1928, however, an American who happened to be rambling along the hilltops of Vancouver Island noticed a huge ice-clad peak on a part of the mainland shown on the map.only as a blank.. He promptly labelled it "Mystery Mountain." Two early exploring parties had been massacred by Indians, and although these dangers did not now exist, it was only after three expeditions that he succeeded in reaching the foot of the mountain and examining its huge glaciers. Numerous attempts upon the mountain have been made in the last three years, but none was successful because of the difficulty of climbing the last 500 ft ice-coated rock tower. One climbc- was killed upon it. This season a party of six members of the Sierra Club and .eight of the British Columbia Mountaineers was given 250 dollars by the Vancouver "Daily Province," and was provided by Vancouver merchants with all of its food and most of its equipment, its object being the ascent of the mountain. This party considered as too risky the route by which the ascent was finally made by. the Bavarian climber. Weissner said that the climb was the most dangerous he had ever made, and that he would never lead this climb, or anything like it, again.