ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)
Roche Miette (2,316m - 7,600 ft)
Canada
The mountain
Roche Miette mountain (2,316m - 7,600 ft) is part Miette Range (in the Canadian Rockies) located in the Athabasca River Valley southwest of Mountain Creek and northeast of Rocky River. Roche Miette dominates the entrance to the Canadian Rockies. Ben Gadd, author of “Handbook of the Canadian Rockies” feels that the name "Miette" is derived from the Cree word "Myat," which means "bighorn sheep." He thinks that this makes a lot of sense, considering that sheep frequented the lower slopes of the mountain. According to Don Beers, author of “Jasper-Robson –A Taste of Heaven” the name was first recorded as Roche Miette in a journal written by Gabriel Franchere. However Don feels that the mountain was likely named after a voyageur named Baptiste Millette, who worked in the fur trade in the Athabasca River area during 1812 and 1813. "Roche" is the French word for "rock" and "Miette" means "crumb". Roche Miette is the official name but an other name is often given : Millet's Rock.
In their book, "The Northwest Passage by Land" (1865) William Fitzwilliam (Viscount Milton) and Walter Cheadle describe the northern cliffs of the mountain as they approached from the east as, "a cleft in the range, cut clean as with a knife" and that showed, "what we supposed to be the opening of the gorge through which we were to pass."
When James Hector visited the area in 1859 he wrote that, "Miette's Rock is a bold object, bounding the valley of the Athabasca to the south, and resembling the "Devil's Head which lies to the north of the Bow River". He tried to climb the mountain with Moberly, reaching a sharp peak high above any vegetation but the great cubical block still towered above them and they could go no higher.
In his book, "The Glittering Mountains of Canada" J. Monroe Thorington mentions that Dr. Hector (James Hector of the Palliser Expedition who travelled up the Athabasca Valley during the winter in early 1859) always enjoyed a mountain-scramble and wrote, "I started with Moberly to ascend the Roche Miette... After a long and steep climb, we reached a sharp peak far above any vegetation, and which, as measured by the aneroid, is 3500 feet above the valley. The great cubical block which forms the top of this mountain, still towered above us for 2000 feet, and is quite inaccessible from this side, and is said to have been only once ascended from the south side by a hunter named Miette, after whom it was named."
Legend has it that Bonhomme Miette was a French-Canadian voyageur who made the first ascent, climbing it from its south side. He became a well-known figure in French Canadian folklore and was said to have been a gifted fiddler and storyteller. When he reached the top, the story goes, he sat down, dangling his feet over the precipice, smoked his pipe, and as Miette himself put it "I been have de nice smoke up dere wit St. Peter on de gate." During the 1830's it is known that a man named Miette did live in the Athabasca Valley where he was a "company servant" who hauled coal from the area of Roche Miette to Jasper House as well as to Henry House at the mouth of the Miette River. Ben Gadd believes that Bonhomme Miette was a “legendary” voyageur as no one by that name worked for either the Hudson Bay Company or the Northwest Company during the years prior to 1814.
Many early travelers wrote of Roche Miette with admiration but their enthusiasm was tempered by the barrier it presented. Roche Miette slopes steeply into the Athabasca and posed a serious obstacle to those travelling up the south bank of the river. Steep, downward sloping slabs of slippery rock often sent horses sliding down into the river at what became known as "Disaster Point." Early travelers attempted to negotiate a dangerous trail that climbed some 395 metres above the river. One referred to, "a very narrow pathway, with a perpendicular wall of rock on one side, and a steep declivity down to the edge of a precipice several hundred feel high on the other." The dangerous "nose" of Roche Miette remained an obstacle until it was blasted away by the railway builders in the early 1900's.
Arthur Coleman (painting above) exited the Canadian Rockies via the Athabasca Valley in 1907, describing Roche Miette as, "The most impressive bit of architecture along the Athabasca, pushing its bold front out into the valley like a commanding fort with unscalable walls three thousand feet high, and a flat top somewhat parapeted and loop-holed."
Climbing
North Face IV 5.8 A3
This climb takes on the impressive N face. An alpine rock route that starts off at a moderate standard (5.6-5.8) and ends up with some A3 thrown in near the end for a complete Rockies rock experience. The rock is excellent throughout, belays are good and the pitches are generally full 50 m affairs. Originally climbed with a bivi but this no doubt was a result of a 4 pm alpine start! It could be climbed in a day, though you will have to be slick to complete a round trip road to road in this time.
The painter
Arthur Philemon Coleman was a Canadian a geologist, professor, minerals prospector, artist, Rockies explorer, backwoods canoeist, world traveller, scientist, popular lecturer, museum administrator, memoirist and... one of Canada’s most beloved scientist.
Arthur Coleman is a fine example of that rare bird, a polished amateur artist whose drawings and paintings stand comfortably beside those of many professionals. He was active during the time when sketching and painting was ceding to photography the task of recording the visible world. Although he was also a photographer, painting was, for him, both a poetic and a descriptive pursuit, a way of wrapping an artistic expression around a phenomenon he was interested in or moved by. Thus motivated, Coleman's paintings give much joy and command a good deal of respect. The more surprising, perhaps given that he used to introduced himself more as a geologist than a painter.
Coleman travelled throughout the United States for professional conferences as well as geological field work. He visited many of the major American mountain ranges including: the American Cordillera Mountains (Washington, Oregon and California); the Sierra Nevada Mountains (California and Nevada); Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming, Montana and Idaho); and the Appalachian Mountains (eastern United States). Pleistocene glaciation had extended in Northern Europe as far south as Berlin and London and covered an area of two million square miles. Coleman also visited such countries as India, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Scandinavia, Bolivia, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay. In his final years he made two expeditions to the Andes in Colombia, to mountains in Southern Mexico and to two mountains in Central America. He achieved the first ascent of Castle Mountain in 1884, and in 1907, he was the first white man to attempt to climb Mount Robson. He made a total of eight exploratory trips to the Canadian Rockies, wholly four of them looking for the mythical giants of Hooker and Brown.
From 1901 to 1922, he was a Professor of Geology at the University of Toronto and was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1919 to 1922. From 1931 to 1934, he was a geologist with the Department of Mines of the Government of Ontario. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1900 and was its President in 1921. In 1929, he was appointed Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
"Mount Coleman" and "Coleman Glacier" in Banff National Park is named in his honor. He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1936.
He planned to climb "hi" mountain, "Mount Coleman"'in the Albertan Rockies, and had also prepared a trip to British Guiana, but death intervened.
He was author of:
- Reports on the Economic Geology of Ontario (1903)
- Lake Ojibway; Last of the Great Glacial Lakes (1909)
- The Canadian Rockies: New and Old Trails (1911)
- Ice Ages, Recent and Ancient (1926), and was co-author of Elementary Geology (1922).
- The Last Million Years (1941) edited by George F. Kay
