"Where the clouds can go men can go; but they must be hardy men."
- Andreas Maurer, a legendary Swiss guide who climbed in the Alps in the 1800s.The day he turned 28, Conrad Kain, perhaps Canada's greatest mountaineer and yet one of its least-known historical figures, did his most dangerous and perhaps foolhardy climb.
After being kept in camp for days by bad weather, the young mountain guide, whose 100th anniversary is being celebrated this summer by a small community of climbers in the Rockies, left his colleagues behind and set out to make a solo dash up British Columbia's Mount Whitehorn, which no one had ever climbed before.
"I could stand it no longer, being among beautiful mountains without climbing one," he says in his diary, which was written on scraps of paper, collected by friends and published posthumously as an autobiography, in 1935, under the title Where the Clouds Can Go.
The book, reprinted this year to mark the centennial of his arrival in Canada in June, 1909, gives a glimpse into the soul of a remarkably gentle and humble man who is memorialized by a small brass plate in the Colorado offices of the American Alpine Club (which supplied many of his clients) with the simple words: "Guide. Philosopher. Friend."
He was all those things to the climbers he guided, but Mr. Kain's accomplishments - in making more than 60 first ascents in the Rocky Mountains and the Purcell Range in B.C. - show that he also had what his friend and climbing companion, J. Monroe Thorington, called "the splendid fire" that spurs some climbers to greatness.
Describing his ascent of Mount Whitehorn, Mr. Kain wrote: "I went so fast that it would not have been possible to take anyone with me. I crossed the glacier to a moraine and followed the rocks. ... Rain and thunder! I thought of turning back, but decided to go on, for I knew that it was my only opportunity to climb the mountain."
Late on Aug. 10, 1911, he scrambled to the summit of the 3,399-metre-high mountain over slick rocks, most probably wearing bulky woollen clothes and heavy boots and with his trademark pipe clenched between his teeth. There, he built a small cairn of stones and signed his name to a piece of paper that he tucked inside a match holder. He left small "stone men" like that all over the mountains of the West as signs of his first ascents, including Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Rockies, and even today climbers marvel at them and what he accomplished.
On his descent, darkness caught him on the glacier, but he pressed on.
"My one bit of good fortune was the lightning, which showed me the way. Step by step, I had to feel with the axe to find whether I were on the edge of a crevasse," he wrote.
He got back to camp at dawn and a few days later he saw the tracks he had left, skirting one crevasse after another, and described the climb as "one of the craziest and most foolhardy undertakings that I ever made in the mountains."
David Dornian, who climbed Mount Whitehorn with Helen Sovdat last summer, says they thought of Mr. Kain's remarkable achievement as they stood on the summit.
"We were kind of marvelling at it," says Mr. Dornian, who is an Alpine Club of Canada mountain guide and a consultant in the Alberta oil patch. "Looking at that glacier, his crossing of it seemed to be totally impossible."
Mr. Dornian says he has done solo ascents, but never without detailed knowledge of what lay ahead. Mr. Kain was first - and that meant he had to climb up into the unknown.
"It takes a huge amount of confidence to tackle something like that alone, especially with that glacier to cross," he says. "It's either a matter of great skill, or hubris - but of course the testament to Conrad Kain is that he did it again and again."
At the summit of Mount Whitehorn, Mr. Dornian and Ms. Sovdat picked up a rock, which they carried down. It will soon be added to a memorial cairn in the small town of Wilmer, B.C., where Mr. Kain lived.
Filmmaker and mountaineer Patrick Morrow, who is vice-chair of the Conrad Kain Centennial Society, which has been formed to celebrate his 100th anniversary, says that for the past year climbers in the Rockies have been bringing back rocks to build the cairn.
In the process, they have also been celebrating Mr. Kain's life by reclimbing many of the peaks he claimed as first ascents.
Despite his daring ascent of Mount Whitehorn, Mr. Kain was not known as a thrill seeker but as a careful, technically expert climber who put the safety of his clients first.
Mr. Morrow says he was among a small group of professional guides brought to Canada from Europe to help promote mountain tourism, which Canadian Pacific Railway hoped would help to fill the grand resorts in the Rockies, such as Chateau Lake Louise.
"He was the lone Austrian among a group of seven Swiss guides who were brought over," Mr. Morrow says.
"The CPR brought the Swiss and the Alpine Club Of Canada brought the Austrian. . . [but]he climbed more serious peaks than the seven Swiss guides put together. He climbed the hardest and the highest - and it is amazing to think that he did almost all of those ascents with clients in tow."
Mr. Morrow, who has climbed the highest peaks on the world's seven continents and who in 1982 reached the summit of Mount Everest, says that when he is on one of the Kain mountains today, he often contemplates Mr. Kain's incredible successes.
Bugaboo Spire, a great shark's tooth of granite that towers above a glacier in the Purcells, is a case in point.
"You look at the Spire today and even the best climbers feel some trepidation about tackling it," says Mr. Morrow, who failed on his first attempt to climb it, as a 16-year-old, about 40 years ago.
Mr. Kain led a group up the 3,200-metre Spire for the first time in 1916, climbing without pitons, the steel spikes that climbers now routinely drive into rock faces as anchors.
At one daunting rock face, Mr. Kain made his way up free-hand through a crack, then lowered a rope for others to follow.
In a foreword to Where the Clouds Can Go, Mr. Morrow wrote that when he reached that point in his own climb, he couldn't recreate Mr. Kain's feat.
"But even with the security of a piton at my waist, and with at least six inches more reach than Kain's compact five-foot-five frame allowed, I didn't have the guts to launch across the glacier-polished slab to grope for the jug hold that Kain eventually found," he says.
He returned years later, as a veteran climber, to make that ascent.
But even now, with all his years of experience, Mr. Morrow is still amazed at what Mr. Kain accomplished. "His record of first ascents is just remarkable," he says, "and all the more so when you think that he did it in a time when they had to travel a long way through the wilderness to get to those mountains, carrying all their provisions on pack horses."
When Mr. Kain died of encephalitis in 1934, he was just 50 years old - and he had made his last climb the day before.
Details about Mr. Kain's life and this summer's anniversary celebrations - including a
July 11 ceremony in his hometown of Wilmer, southwest of Banff, near Invermere - can be found on the Internet at http://www.conradkain.com.
Mark Hume is a Globe and Mail reporter based in Vancouver.
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VIEW FROM THE TOP
In 1913, Conrad Kain led a pair of clients on the first ascent of Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Rockies. This is how he describes it in his autobiography, Where the Clouds Can Go:
Never before on all my climbs have I seen such snow formations. The snow walls were terraced. The ledges between the walls were of different widths, and all were covered with loose snow. I often sank in to my hips.
There were forms on the walls like ostrich feathers, a truly strange and beautiful winter scene. Unfortunately we had no camera with us. Some of the walls were 15 to 20 metres high. It was difficult to find a way up from one terrace to another. At one place I worked for over half an hour without effect. We had to go back. A very narrow and steep couloir offered the only possibility. ... The wind was so bad here that I often had to stop.
The steepness alone, apart from wind, made step cutting very hard work.
For a number of steps I had first to make a handhold in the ice, and swing the axe with one hand. I do not think I need to describe this method any more fully, for everyone who has ever been on the ice knows that cutting steps with one hand is a frightfully slow process. I know that in such places it is not pleasant either for those behind. As soon as I was convinced that I could make it, I called to my Herren [gentlemen] "Just be patient, the bad place will soon be conquered, and the peak is ours." ...
The last stretch to the summit was a snow ridge. I turned to my Herren with the words: "Gentlemen, that's as far as I can take you." ...
On the crest of the king of the Rockies, there was not much room to stand. We descended a few metres and stamped down a good space. It was half past 5 o'clock. Our barometer showed exactly 13,000 feet.
The view was glorious in all directions. One could compare the sea of glaciers and mountains with a stormy ocean. Mount Robson is about 2,000 feet higher than all the other mountains in the neighbourhood.
Indescribably beautiful was the vertical view toward Berg Lake and the camp below. Unfortunately only 15 minutes were allowed us on the summit, 10 of pure pleasure and five of teeth chattering. The rope and our damp clothes were frozen as hard as bone. And so we had to think of the long descent.
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DON'T BE AFRAID TO LIE
Conrad Kain's four rules for being a good mountain guide, as listed in his autobiography, Where the Clouds Can Go:
First, he should never show fear.
Second, he should be courteous to all, and always give special attention to the weakest member in the party.
Third, he should be witty, and able to make up a white lie on short notice and tell it in a convincing manner.
Fourth, he should know when and how to show authority; and, when the situation demands it, should be able to give a good scolding to whomsoever deserves it.
Mark Hume