Mount Assiniboine
Interesting facts
- On their first attempt in 1901, Outram and his guides lost their way in cloud and summited a neighbouring 3,400-metre peak by mistake, now called Lunette Peak.
- After the mistaken summit, the party tried again the very next day and this time reached the true top of Assiniboine.
- James Outram, who led the first ascent, was a British clergyman who made a string of first ascents in the Canadian Rockies in the early 1900s.
- With a topographic prominence of about 2,086 metres, Assiniboine ranks among the 35 most prominent peaks in Canada.
- The first recorded non-Indigenous expedition to reach the foot of the mountain came in 1893, when outfitter Tom Wilson guided a client named Robert Barrett there.
- Lake Magog and the nearby Og and Gog lakes take their names from figures of the Old Testament, and Mount Magog was named in 1930.
- The surrounding park records 84 bird species, ten carnivores including cougars and lynx, and six hoofed mammals from moose to bighorn sheep.
- The Naiset cabins near Lake Magog date back to 1924, a few years before the lodge, and still offer shelter to hikers.
Why it is worth it
Rising 3,618 metres on the Continental Divide between British Columbia and Alberta, Mount Assiniboine is a steep, sharply cut pyramid whose likeness to the Swiss peak has earned it the name "Matterhorn of the Rockies". It towers about 1,500 metres above Lake Magog, and the classic view takes in the whole composition at once: the pointed summit, the ice and rock walls below it, and the lake and meadows at its foot, with no road or town anywhere in sight.
The mountain was named in 1885 by the geologist George Mercer Dawson, who saw a plume of cloud trailing from the summit and thought it looked like the smoke rising from the tipis of the Assiniboine people. The first ascent came in the summer of 1901, when James Outram climbed it with the guides Christian Bohren and Christian Hasler; in 1925 Lawrence Grassi made the first solo ascent. Even the easiest routes, the North Ridge and North Face, are serious mountaineering, usually approached from the Hind Hut high on the mountain.
The peak gives its name to a provincial park founded in 1922, some 39,000 hectares of backcountry that is part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site. No road enters it. Visitors arrive on foot or horseback along long trails over the passes, or by helicopter, and stay in campgrounds, huts or the Assiniboine Lodge, built in 1928 and considered the first ski lodge in the Canadian Rockies. The park is home to grizzly bears and wolves, and around 160 kilometres of trails fan out from Lake Magog over passes such as Wonder Pass and Citadel Pass, giving ever-changing angles on the mountain.
Getting there
Mount Assiniboine lies about 48 km south-west of Banff; the nearest town listed is Cochrane, about 90 km away. The nearest airport is Cranbrook/Canadian Rockies International (YXC), roughly 140 km away. There are no roads into the park: the quickest approach on foot is from the Sunshine Village area in Banff National Park, the hike in is around 27 km, and helicopter flights also serve the park.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Mount Assiniboine, also known as Assiniboine Mountain, is a pyramidal peak mountain on the Great Divide, on the British Columbia/Alberta border in Canada.
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