Elysium Pass and memories of Curly Phillips

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We haven’t had time to update our blog in a little while as we’ve been very busy working in Maligne Canyon giving guided Ice walks (this is our winter job with Maligne Adventures) over the holidays. We finally had a couple of days off and made the most of them by tackling Elysium Pass for a nice ski tour and an overnight camping trip.







Elysium Pass is about 15km one-way and can be a bit of a trek. The majority of the way in is uphill and in the trees. Now I love the forest as much as any nature lover, but I was getting pretty tired of seeing nothing but trees by about 3pm. Luckily there was only an hour left before we broke out of the trees to see the pass and to get a spectacular view of Mount Fitzwilliam. We were able to use the last hour of daylight to set up our camp, get a fire started and supper cooking, rehydrated shepherd’s pie, Chris’ favourite! It wasn’t long until we were treated by a spectacular nights sky that was absolutely breath taking. I was lucky enough to see a beautiful meteor streak across the sky that seemed to last for ever.







The campsite we chose was in the shadow or Elysium Mountain, where Jasper legend, Donald “Curly” Phillips and a member of his ski party, Reg Pugh met their end in an avalanche in March of 1938. Donald, Reg and Alan Pugh were on a ten-day ski touring trip when this tragedy took place. Our thoughts turned to these adventurers while we were enjoying the rather tranquil atmosphere of camp and the beauty of our setting.







While Chris was getting ready to stoke our ebbing fire, a log conveniently fell from the pile to land in the perfect place to keep it going, and while lying in our tent trying to sleep I was certain that I could here footsteps outside. I assumed they were belonging to some animal but there were no fresh footprints in the snow when we got up in the morning. Maybe Curly and Reg are keeping watch over people ski touring in the area and are spending their nights watching for meteors and enjoying the fabulous view!

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