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