Eight AN EARLY SKI ATTEMPT ON MT. PTARMIGAN
This article about the first ski attempt in the Canadian Rockies was written for The Canadian Alpine Journal, the official journal of the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) since 1907. For many years, The Canadian Alpine Journal was the principal place where important landmarks in mountaineering in Canada or by Canadians who were members of the ACC were described and recorded. The purpose of these articles was to provide documentation about new routes, as well as provide evidence (sometimes contested by other Club members) of important and difficult ascents. At this time, the ACC was a scientific organization as well as a serious mountaineering club, and so Tex did not write this article in his Tex persona, but as the educated (even slightly Romantic) Nello Vernon-Wood who rhapsodizes about the beauty of the peaks even as he tells us their precise heights. It is worth contrasting this story with “Us Winter Sports,” where Tex pokes fun at his poor skiing (presumably he was a better skier than this if he was in the climbing party) and is suspicious about the building of a ski lodge. There is no evidence of that comedy here about similar events, and so this article demonstrates how completely Tex/Nello could adopt a convincing writing persona and see the world through those eyes.
-JR