A sunny day where I live. In the dead of winter up on the Columbia River in Canada, west of the Columbia Icefields that are near Jasper, construction crews in the early 1900a could not find cranes and huge trucks that had been parked there. It had snowed so hard they were covered up and could only be located by a low-flying helicopter. This was not far from where David Thompson came over the Rocky Mountains in January, 1811, through Athabasca Pass (5,735 alt.) fleeing hostile First Nations Piegan people. The icy trail was near the foot of a 2,000' high glacier and all too often a team of dogs pulling sleds would slide around both sides of a tree and get stopped, of course. Two of Thompson's men fled back east, but the others reached the Columbia where it makes a hairpin turn from northwest to south -- roughly the same place where the incredible snowfalls later covered construction equipment.
David Thompson was honored in 2011 by Canada and, to a lesser extent, the United States history for his discovery there of the Columbia River. Thompson actually was honored for his whole career as a surveyor in Canada. He was a valued employee of Hudson's Bay Company, then switched his allegiance to the North West Company, for whom he worked at the time of the Athabasca crossing. Eventually, his men built a small cedar cabin near the river, which became the base for fur company (and other) travelers coming north on the Columbia from way down at Fort Vancouver, Washington State,. They switched to the overland trails there on their route to Hudson's Bay itself or the later HBC posts built near today's Winnipeg, Manitoba. Imagine the hardships on such a trail, first on the none-too-peaceful Columbia River and then over land through the prairies.
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