The Steeples: Change Written in Stone

W & P: Dan Mills They rise up regally from the valley floor, reaching skyward like castle ramparts, with the Kootenay River acting as their magnificent moat. There is a beautiful arrogance to them, standing there on their own, seeming to say, “Foothills? We don’ need no stinkin’ foothills!” Only Fisher Peak, rising up ten kilometers to the north, can come close to rivaling the iconic stature of the glorious Steeples.

Though they exude a timelessness and seem to be the very model of permanence, the Steeples mountain range came from very humble beginnings. Once, some hundreds of millions of years ago, our world was covered by a warm, soupy sea. Thriving in that broth was a plethora of cyanobacteria, aka blue-green al- gae. As the cyanobacteria died and floated to the bottom, it was compressed into rock, mostly limestone, but if magnesium were present, dolomite would be formed. The Steeples and much of the Hughes Range — of which they are a part — are built of dolomite.

The rock formed in that shallow sea began to be pushed, pulled, and folded by colliding tectonic plates. Mountains were made. The Purcells, across the Rocky Mountain Trench to the west of the Steeples, are much older, having formed some 85-million years before the youngish Hughes Range. Then the Johnny-come-lately Rockies found themselves being carved and shaped by the ice ages, transformed into the tooth- and horn-like formations we see today.

Much further along the timeline, some ten- to twelve-thousand years ago, the first humans laid eyes on the peaks we now call the Steeples. They were and are the Ktunaxa. According to their creation story, the Rocky Mountains were formed when a giant, Naⱡmuqȼin, accidently hit his head on the sky and fell over dead. According to a respected Ktunaxa elder that I reached out to, the Steeples themselves were known as ‘Aºka anqu. (approximate pronunciation Ahh-ka-than-qu).

Fast forward to the middle 1800s and a group of Europeans lead by Captain John Palliser, began exploring the traditional homeland of the Ktunaxa. With them was an Englishman named Thomas Blakiston, who may have had some issues with authority. At one point he left Palliser a letter saying, “I’m throwing off your command!” or in today’s parlance, “You’re not the boss of me!” and then went off to explore on his own.

Part of those explorations brought him to the foot of a glorious mountain range some five kilometers in length and soaring over 2,845 meters above sea level. On some early Palliser maps the names associated with these mountains were either Mount Deception or Mount Sabine, but Blakiston was having none of it. In 1858 he wrote, “I also obtained a sketch of Mount Deception, or as I call it the Steeples, standing quite distinct from the rest of the valley floor.” No doubt motivated to rename these mountains partly to spite his old expedition commander, and partly because Blakiston’s English tongue couldn’t possibly wrap itself around ‘Aºka anqu, the Steeples they became.

These stone ramparts are much more than stunning eye candy however. Though their rugged summits are inhospitable to most creatures — other than surefooted mountain goats and soaring eagles — their subalpine environs are home to big horn sheep, elk, deer, wolves, cougars, grizzly bears, black bears, and more species of birds than you can shake a tail feather at. Some of the high mountain lakes on the east side of the range are even rumoured to have cutthroat trout thriving in their crystalline waters. Just like a castle wall, the Steeples offers protection to the flora and fauna of the area simply by standing tall to would-be interlopers.

One of the hidden gems of the range can be discovered hanging from the backside of the most northern peak. Dibble Glacier is the southernmost remaining glacier in Canada, clinging to the dolomite across from Hungry Peak. It feeds several small sapphire-blue tarns, which in turn drain down into the Bull River.

Another geological feature worth noting are the black stripes of rock that run horizontally across the face of the peaks. These are diorite sills, molten rock that was forced between the bands of the sedimentary dolomite when the mountains were forming. Their vividness seems to depend greatly on the light and time of day.

None of the peaks of this picturesque range have names of their own with the exception of the promontory on the southern end of the Steeples which is called Bull Mountain. Named thus, no doubt, due to the fact that the Bull River flows past its feet. In my youth I attempted to climb this beast, but too little water and stamina, and too much steep and common sense, left me short of the top.

Other, more experienced climbers have even succeeded in traversing the entire range! A feat I personally find almost incomprehensible. The first to do it was infamous climber, the late Guy Edwards. Starting from the north and working his way south, Mr. Edwards took two days to complete the traverse. He is also famous for many other noted climbing accomplishments, not the least of which was soloing Pigeon Spire in the Bugaboos, naked, in eighteen minutes up and down.

In my research, the most recent traverse of the Steeples I could find was by local climber Noah Beek, south to north and amazingly, in a single day. As far as I could ascertain, Noah completed the climb in fifteen hours, fully clothed.

Fisher Peak, like the Steeples, is part of the Hughes Range, so you might say they are related. However, as majestic as the Steeples is, Fisher is definitely the more popular sister in the family. Appearing on everything from brewery store fronts to the local Masonic lodge, her name is everywhere, as is her reputation for being the tallest mountain in the Hughes Range, which ironically she is not. At 2,847 meters, Mount Morro towers a full meter over Fisher, and the Steeples, at 2,845 meters, is only one meter shorter than their big sister. Well, you may brag, Fisher Peak has had the Stanley Cup on her summit! Which is true. Scott Niedermayer held the cup aloft there in 2003. What isn’t as well-known is that both Scott and Rob Niedermayer brought Lord Stanley’s mug to the precarious summit ridge of the Steeples after winning it together in 2007. So there!

Not that those glorious ramparts have an inferiority complex, far from it. As previously mentioned, they are gorgeous in their arrogance, as they should be. For starting out as slabs of petrified blue-green algae, they have done well for themselves — monuments to possibility — proof if you will, of that old maxim, “The only constant is change.” Sometimes over millennia, and sometimes, when the sun shifts its angle just so on the dolomite, right before our very eyes.