Moving right along...to our next cruise!: This and that and Yellowstone and Tetons

We have made it to Park City via Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. We’ve watched the special about Lewis and Clark witch has inspired me to tell you a little bit about a couple of the Canadian explorers of the mountains around the Columbian Icefields back in the late 1800s.

Our little electronic guide (www.gypsyguide.com) used two explorers, Norman Collie and Hermann Woolley, to measure our progress up the Icefields Parkway in 2013 against theirs (they hiked the approximate same area and distance) in the late 19^th century. What took them 19 days took us a half a day. When I did some research on them I was very, very surprised to learn that although Collie was an accomplished climber, a lot of his biographies online barely mention that part of his life. Even though Collie (and Woolley, of course) basically discovered the icefields and climbed and named most of the mountains in the area, his biography barely mentions it. In fact, I wasn’t even certain I had found the right Norman Collie at first!

If you look on http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2830900952.html you get a lot of this: “Collie culminated his work on dehydracetic acid, 2,6-dimethylpyrone, and diacetylacetone in his generalization of the multiple ketene group. What Collie called the ketene group (—CH₂CO—) and its enol tautomer(—CH=COH—) can, in one comprehensive scheme, relate pyrone, coumarin, benzopyrone, pyridine, isoquinoline, and naphthalene to the polyacetic acids. He also speculated on the formation of sugars and fats, with the multiple ketene group as the fundamental building block for these biological materials. Pentose sugars would be formed from pyrones and fats or acetogenins from acetic acid, depending on the hydrolysis of the multiple ketene group. The breadth of this early suggestion is just now being appreciated in biochemistry. . .”

It is only at the end of the article, almost as a footnote, that you read this tiny blurb: “He also wrote two books, Climbing on the Himalaya and other Mountain Ranges (Edinburgh, 1902) and Climbs and Explorations in the Canadian Rockies (London, 1903).”

One of the online resources (translation: I can’t remember where I found this) says, “On August 18, 1898, Norman Collie and Hermann Woolley became the first to grasp the extent and significance of the Columbia Icefield when they completed the first ascent of Mount Athabasca, the spectacular peak to the east of the Icefield and just south of Athabasca Glacier. Collie's description of the view from the summit is classic Canadian Rockies literature and it is a testament to his intelligence that he understood the geographical significance of what he saw. ‘The view that lay before us in the evening light was one that does not often fall to the lot of modern mountaineers. A new world was spread at our feet; to the westward stretched a vast ice-field probably never before seen by human eye, and surrounded by entirely unknown, un-named, and unclimbed peaks. From its vast expanse of snows, the Saskatchewan Glacier takes its rise, and it also supplies the headwaters of the Athabasca; while far away to the west, bending over in those unknown valleys glowing with evening light, the level snows stretched, to finally melt and flow down more than one channel into the Columbia River, and thence to the Pacific Ocean.’"

I have so much admiration for those early explorers, whether they be the Americans—Lewis and Clark—or the Canadians—Collie and Woolley. Driving this area in our air-conditioned, leather seated, automatic cars, can we even begin to comprehend the difficulties that these men (and women! don’t forget Sacagawea!) had to put up with to map the areas that we so facilely traverse these days?

We are now in Park City, UT, with its arcane liquor laws. There are afternoon thunderstorms, art galleries, food, and mountain drives. We will take part in all of that, assuming we can understand the vagaries of the liquor laws. As an example, yesterday we stopped partway through our gallery walking tour to have a beer. No problem, sat outside, drank a couple of great beers. Today, after a grueling day of driving through the mountains (wonderful names like Guardsman Pass, Sundance) we walked to a pub near our timeshare, sat down outside (just like yesterday), and ordered a beer. The waitress brought out our beers and THEN informed us that we could not just drink beer, we HAD to order food. We did, but I wonder what she would have done if we said, “Oh, sorry, we just wanted a beer, we’re leaving.”

Why was it ok yesterday in downtown Park City and not ok today? As far as I know, the bar and our timeshare is still in the city limits of Park City. Yet another mystery of life!

Two more days in Park City, then on to Lost Wages, Nevada.

We feel that, if we don't see a Pilot Car on out trip, something is missing! This is just one of MANY that we had to endure, both in Canada and the US. In this part of the US, there are only two seasons: Winter and Construction.