Hans Gmoser, the eminence grise of Canadian mountaineering, died July 5th from injuries sustained in a fall while cycling the 1A highway near Lake Louise. In recent years Gmoser had shunned the limelight, content to enjoy his two favourite activities – cross-country skiing in winter and cycling in summer. But during the 1950s, 60s and 70s he laid the foundation of modern mountaineering in Canada. He pioneered rock, alpine and expedition climbing, he popularized ski mountaineering and was largely responsible for creating our professional mountain guides association. Through his films and later through helicopter skiing he made the Canadian mountains world famous.
Born in Brunau, Austria, July 7, 1932, Hans grew up during the troubled war years. As a teenager he discovered the mountains and a lifelong passion was kindled. With his friend Franz Dopf he climbed and skied and developed his mountaineering skills. Then, in 1951, Hans and Leo Grillmair immigrated to Canada. Life was pretty spartan for the pair and their first job was logging near Whitecourt, Alberta.
Soon they made their way to Calgary, where they were joined by Dopf. Linking up with the Alpine Club of Canada they began to discover our incredible mountain wilderness. During the summer months their passion was rock climbing, pioneering new routes on Mount Yamnuska in the front ranges of the Rockies. In the winter it was ski touring near the Stanley Mitchell Hut in the Little Yoho Valley near Field, BC. Here they celebrated their first Canadian Christmas and learned to love their adopted country. Hans played the zither and Leo loved to sing so the wilderness cabin was full of music.
Hans’ mountaineering achievements during the fifties and sixties are numerous and a brief list would include early ascents of Mount Alberta and Brussels Peak two of the hardest challenges in the Rockies, a remarkable ascent of the east ridge of Mount Logan, Canada’s highest peak, and a new route on the north face of Denali (Mount McKinley), North America’s highest summit. As a skier he pioneered new high-level ski traverses in the Purcell Mountains and along the crest of the Rockies from Kicking Horse Pass to the Columbia Icefield. For young Canadian climbers and ski mountaineers he was an icon and inspired several generations of fledgling mountaineers. The idealistic articles he wrote in the Canadian Alpine Journal were music to young ears looking for an alternative lifestyle: “What were we trying to do? Were we trying to show off? Were we trying to kill ourselves? – No! We wanted to inhale and breathe life again. We were rebelling against an existence which human kind has forced upon itself. We were rebelling against an existence full of distorted values, against an existence where a man is judged by the size of his living-room, by the amount of chromium on his car. But here we were ourselves again: simple and pure. Friends in the mountains.”
But it was as a mountain guide that he really made his mark. He began leading ski tours for Erling Strom and Lizzie Rummel near Mount Assiniboine in 1953. Lizzie became a close friend and confidant, as did Fred Pessl one of Hans’s first clients. Hans never forgot the early friends he made in the mountains. They supported him when he needed help and he repaid their trust many times over. In later years Hans would host ‘Nostalgia Week’ at his lodge in the Bugaboos and invite his early clients and supporters to join him for a week of heli-skiing.
In 1957 Hans founded Rocky Mountain Guides Ltd. He led mountain climbers during the summer but the real bread and butter programs were the ski weeks in the winter, at Mount Assiniboine, Rogers Pass and of course at his beloved Stanley Mitchell cabin in the Little Yoho Valley. From 1957 to 1967 Hans made 10 ski and climbing films that he toured all over North America, from Alaska to California and east to Montreal and New York. One year he had 53 lecture dates on his schedule and attracted a crowd of 2500 people in Detroit. Hans accompanied these films with a romantic narration that thrilled and inspired audiences. A critic in a Milwaukee newspaper wrote, “In narrating the film Mr. Gmoser offered more than entertainment… there was a simple lesson in philosophy.” Hans was a gifted communicator and wrote in the Canadian Alpine Journal, “In the end, to ski is to travel fast and free – free over the untouched snow covered country. To be bound to one slope, even to one mountain, by a lift may be convenient but it robs us of the greatest pleasure that skiing can give, that is, to travel through the wide wintry country; to follow the lure of the peaks which tempt on the horizon and to be alone for a few days or even a few hours in, clear, mysterious surroundings.”

Although Hans loved traditional ski touring from small cabins in the wilderness, he is today known as the father of helicopter skiing. In 1965 he ran the first two commercial heli-ski weeks from an old logging camp in the Bugaboo Mountains, near Radium, BC. Heli-skiing took off, for the timing was perfect: the requisite jet helicopter technology was just being developed. By 1968 the luxurious Bugaboo Lodge was open, welcoming blue ribbon clientele from around North America and Europe. Hans’ Rocky Mountain Guides Ltd. grew to become Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH), with 500 employees and a dozen lodges scattered throughout the interior of BC. Hans was of course in the right place at the right time, but he was also the right man for the job. He developed a heli-ski industry with strong ties to the traditional mountain guiding and mountain climbing communities and he always felt that heli-skiing was a wilderness experience. He wrote: “Our primary aim is to offer our guests a safe and educational mountain outdoor experience. We want our guests to be comfortable and to feel at home in our lodges. We want to keep our lodges free of the electronic noises and images that invade our lives everywhere else. We consider ourselves to be intruders into one of the few large, contiguous natural areas left in the world. Therefore, we ask our guests that they, along with us, respect the sanctity, silence and the spirit of these natural wonders we are privileged to share.”

Hans was also a founding member of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides and its first technical chairman. Throughout his career he took a keen interest in guides affairs and for a number of years was the association’s honourary president. Hans’s pioneering efforts in ski touring and heli-skiing created an industry that today employs hundreds of guides and thousands of support staff.

Beyond all these notable achievements Hans was simply a remarkable man who inspired loyalty and in return would be your lifelong friend. He was a man who, in the words of the poet Rudyard Kipling, could “walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch.” Gmoser numbered among his friends and clients Prime Minister Trudeau (who he guided up Bugaboo Spire), the King of Spain and the King and Queen of Norway, but during his tenure at the helm of CMH he probably knew the name of every guest who skied at his lodges and every staff member who took care of them.

Hans met his wife, Margaret MacGougan, skiing at the Stanley Mitchell Hut and they married in 1966. They have lived all these years in the same modest house in Harvie Heights (near Canmore) and have two sons, Conrad (Lesley) and Robson (who is a ski guide like his father) and two grandchildren.

Hans has been greatly honoured over the years, receiving honourary memberships in the Alpine Club of Canada and the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations and an honourary doctorate from Thompson Rivers University. He was elected to the Honour Roll of Canadian Skiing and to the U.S National Ski Hall of Fame. He is a recipient of the Banff Mountain Film Festival Summit of Excellence Award and, in 1987, was awarded the Order of Canada. Just a few weeks ago he was a founding inductee into the Canadian Tourism Hall of Fame.

It was September 1965 and outside the window there was only rain and gloom. Water dripped from the eves. But inside Lizzie Rummel’s little cabin the cook stove radiated warmth and the coal oil lamp cast a golden glow. Lizzie Rummel (actually Baroness Elizabet von Rummel) was teaching me to play crib. My climbing companion, Don Gardner, read quietly in the corner.

A few days earlier, Don and I had walked to Mount Assiniboine from Banff in a marathon 60 km hike over Allenby Pass. We had planned to climb the great peak but the rain, and snow at higher elevations, kept us valley bound. Lizzie and Don were close friends, his father Smitty Gardner was her doctor, and Don had spent summer holidays here at Lizzie’s camp below Mount Assiniboine.
Lizzie gave us the key to Ken Jones’s Ranger Cabin and said, “If you boys will chop a little wood for me, I will feed you.” I had little appreciation for the great honour that was being offered. For the rest of the week we hiked (in the rain), fished a little, chopped some wood and enjoyed Lizzie’s company and great food.
Lizzie was born February 19, 1897 in Munich Germany, the daughter of Baron Gustav von Rummel, an officer in the German army. She grew up, a privileged child, in the upper strata of European society, was well educated by governesses and could speak several languages. In later years she fondly remembered to me her days living near the Piazza del Popolo in Rome.
In 1914 she and her mother and two sisters were vacationing at their ranch south west of Calgary, near Priddis. Her mother by some accounts had won the property in a poker game, something that was not uncommon for folk of her station. When war broke out on August 6^th, they were marooned here in Canada and all they had left was the ranch. But they adapted. They learned to work the ranch and Lizzie loved the life in the west. With the exception of brief visits to Germany after the war the four women stayed in Canada.

In 1938 Lizzie changed course: she was 41 years old and unmarried. She went west to the mountains to begin a new life. She first worked for Erling Strom at Mount Assiniboine Lodge. Then in 1942 she took over managing Skoki Lodge, high in the mountains east of Lake Louise. It was the start of a remarkable career as the hostess of the Canadian Rockies. She came to personify all that is special about mountain culture: modesty, generosity, hard work and a passionate love for the outdoors.

Lizzie was not the first of the nobility to experience Skoki Lodge. In March of 1932 Lady Jean Rankin, Lady in Waiting to the Queen of England and her husband Niall had spent a month skiing at Skoki Lodge. Niall telegrammed to a friend, “Skiing far better than any Alps. You must come Skoki. Have stayed an extra month.” Almost eighty years later Prince William and his wife Catherine would visit Skoki Lodge and later write that it was the highlight of their trip to Canada.

Assiniboine Sunburst Lake

Lizzie finally achieved her dream in 1951 when she bought Sunburst Lake Lodge, below Mount Assiniboine, from Pat Brewster. She had always wanted her own lodge. It was a simple affair — a central cabin, a storage shed and several wall tents. But it suited Lizzie who, despite her background, was modest, humble and down-to-earth.

For twenty years Lizzie welcomed guests from around the world at Sunburst Lake. She led them on hikes, told them of the flowers and the wildlife, fed them and sat round the fire philosophizing with them. She was the perfect hostess for this rugged country — a cheerful companion around the wood stove on a rainy night but the next day could work alongside the toughest cowboys and outfitters.

In 1953 she gave Hans Gmoser, a young immigrant from Austria, his first job as a mountain guide in Canada. The two of them spent the winter in her little cabin. Hans carried water, chopped wood and guided the guests while Lizzie cooked and kept the fires burning. Lizzie was a mentor and friend — a surrogate mother to this young mountaineer so far from home.

Lizzie Rummel’s cabin

Hans later wrote of Lizzie, “At Sunburst Lake Lizzie was completely at home. She was one with the trees, the flowers and the deer that would visit her place. In the winter she loved the snow that almost covered her cabin, and she enjoyed to glide on skis through the larches and over the hills around her. I think that there has seldom been a situation where someone was so much a part of a place. In a way she was like Mount Assiniboine itself. She stood out above all around her — not domineering but like a beautiful spirit.”

Lizzie left Sunburst Lodge in 1970 and lived out the remainder of her life in Canmore. In her little house near Policeman’s Creek she continued to welcome visitors from around the world, who came to share in the peace and beauty that she radiated. Although pained by arthritic hips, she never complained. Lizzie received the Order of Canada in 1980 for her contribution to our mountain community. Not long after, on October 10 of that year, she died. Two beautiful lakes, a creek, an elementary school and a street in Canmore are named in her honour.

In 1966, the year after I first met Lizzie, I went back to Assiniboine, this time with another friend Gerry Walsh. Not wanting to bother Lizzie we stretched a piece of plastic between two trees near the campground. Of course it rained and we were wet and hungry. One day we came back from a sodden walk to find a brown paper bag by our shelter. Inside were bacon, eggs, bread, beans, and butter — all the things that taste so good around the campfire. When we asked the other campers where it had come from, they said that an older white-haired lady had left the bag. It was a gift that I will never forget. Thank you Lizzie.
By Chic Scott

Canada’s history is built upon epic adventures. Even the thought of a transcontinental railway must have seemed like an impossible dream when the idea was first proposed in 1872. The American’s had already completed their transcontinental railway – but Canada’s effort would prove to be much more difficult. Canada was a huge land mass with a tiny population – not to mention that our railroad would also be one and a half times as long (North America has a nasty habit of getting wider near the top).

The surveyors explored many options. There were several routes surveyed but politicians selected a route that took them through the Bow River valley and over the Kicking Horse Pass. This proved one of the most difficult stretches for the fledgling railway. The CPR contract allowed for a maximum gradient of 2.2 percent, an impossible goal on the Kicking Horse Pass. In the end, they settled for a temporary gradient of 4.5 percent.

Granted 4.5 percent may not sound steep, but on a train with just five cars, the front car would be some 5 metres lower than the rear. This was a death drop for locomotives. The first train down the ‘big hill’ as it became known, derailed and killed several workers.

Into this scene came the first transcontinental passenger train. Aboard that train was none other than John A. Macdonald and his wife Lady Agnes. It had been John A’s life work to see the joining of this country from ocean to ocean, however as the train approached Lake Louise, Agnes began to steal the show.

Anyone who has visited the Canadian Rockies knows their power to stir the imagination and embolden the soul. Agnes was transfixed and decided that their private cabin simply didn’t offer a view to match the landscape. As the train approached Lake Louise, she declared that she would have the best seat in the house. She would ride the cowcatcher of the train ‘from summit to sea’.
She asked the engineer about riding the cow catcher and he “seemed to think that a very bad job indeed. To a sensible, level-headed man as he is, such an innovation on all general rules of travelling decorum was no doubt very startling”. In time his opposition began to crumble beneath her unbending will and, upon asking her what she intended to use as a seat, she grabbed an empty candle box nearby and had the brakeman place it on the buffer beam.

She wasn’t alone in her adventure. The train superintendent was elected to sit uncomfortably by her side, as the train left the station and chugged its way towards the summit of the pass. Agnes described her feelings during the descent: “With a firm right hand grasping the iron stanchion, and my feet planted on the buffer beam, there was not a yard of that descent in which I faltered for a moment. If I had, then assuredly in the wild valley of the Kicking Horse River, on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, a life had gone out that day!” The drop down the west side of the divide should have terrified Agnes, yet it exhilarated her. As she later described: “There is glory of brightness and beauty everywhere, and I laugh aloud on the cowcatcher, just because it is all so delightful!”

Her name still lives on today. Nestled high above Lake Louise is a tiny alpine pond called Lake Agnes. The trail to this rugged shoreline and the teahouse on its shore is one of the busiest trails in the Rockies. Experienced hikers can continue beyond the lake, to a second teahouse at the Plain of Six Glaciers.

In 1909, the challenge of the big hill was finally solved with the building of the spiral tunnels. These two tunnels form a massive figure-8 through the mountains and have reduced the gradient back to the 2.2 percent specified in the original contract. The tunnels were a marvel of engineering for their time. 2009 marked the 100th anniversary of these historic tunnels. When you drive your car down the big hill, you are actually following the original route of the rail line.

Why not take a trip into the past and hike the “Walk-in-the-Past” trail. Beginning at the trailer circle of the Kicking Horse Campground, this 4 km return hike takes you to a rusting Baldwin steam engine. The narrow-gauge engine was used during the construction of the tunnels and then abandoned here. You can walk into the past and visit a piece of the equipment used to change the future of the big hill.

~By Ward Cameron