Mollie Adams Diary of her Journey in the Canadian Rockies, August, 1908

Swift Current Camp.

Saturday, Aug. 22.

               We started off gaily after breakfast with just saddle horses to up the Grand Fork to the lake at the base of Robson Pk.  Saw be the tracks that the Indian berry pickers from the Cache had been up there recently.  Came to a camp where we recognized the style of fireplace as Dr. Coleman’s.  He tried to get to Robson this way first last year, so Mr. Reading said, found it could not be climbed from this side, then tried to go up behind the Rainbow Mts. from farther up the river, but the snow came and stopped him.  The Grand Fork valley grows narrow and steep sided a few miles up, but we found a very bad trail blazed leading up along the side which we followed, doing some great log jumping, until it stopped short in a windfall.  I stopped short too, and reposed myself in a berry patch near the horses, while the others crawled away somewhat further, but did not see anything much worth while, and the thermometer was 86°, the sun blazing and the bugs were all there – all kinds of them.  So we thought we would leave that problematical lake for someone else.  Mr Reading said he had been at the head of Swift Current River where he could get a look down into the Grand Fork Valley and he had not seen anything resembling a lake there.  He also told us that the Grand Fork surveyors had measured Robson Pk. from a base line a mile long and say it is only 12,760 ft. high instead of 13,700 as McEvoy gives it – or 14,700 as it is on my little geol. map.  The air was smokier than ever today, and clouds gathering around Robson as well, so we did not get any photos of it from there.  The smoke had been getting worse every day since we came in here, when we first noticed it down the Fraser valley toward the Cache.  They told us there that they though the fire had probably been started by two fellows who had been there recently, and who had said in disgust that the only thing that country was fit for was to be burned up.  They went on down the river – and the smoke came drifting back up the river.  We got home to camp about 2 P. M. and were just sitting down to a snack, when W. announced that an outfit was coming from the direction of the Cache.  We knew it must be Mr. Kaeke and Mr. Sommer as they were about leaving to go up the Grand Fork for a few days prospecting, or hunting, or both.  W. went out and spoke to them and they said they were going to go camp at the Grand Fork.  After about an hour we heard their horses coming up near us and wondered if they had crossed the river on them or if they were camped on this side.