Last summer we introduced you to Cliff Fenner, Mountain Man. Quick recap: Cliff was an Englishman who moved to Vancouver after World War 2 and soon after became Supervisor of Garibaldi Provincial Park. Naturally, Cliff was already an avid outdoorsman and spent much of his professional and personal time exploring the southern Coast Mountains.
He was also a very capable photographer, and after retiring from BC Parks he actually made his living as a writer and photographer, mainly working for travel publications.
Well, we recently digitized 2 full albums of his personal photographs and there’s some real gems. Most photos depict summer hiking and climbing excursions, but to be seasonally appropriate, we figured we’d share some shots from a ski trip up to Black Tusk. Unfortunately we don’t have much background info for these images, beyond a probable year of 1955. Snow levels seem typical of May.
On the way down we get to see how it was done on the rudimentary gear of the day.
After descending from Black Tusk, the party put their skis back on and headed towards Mount Garibaldi.
Unfortunately, without a written account we don’t know if they summited, or even attempted to climb the great volcano.
Thus we encounter some of the limitations of incomplete archival records. All we know about this trip is what we can gather from the raw, uncaptioned images. Still, they are more than enough to set the mind wandering and the heart racing as we dream of the many mountain adventures that await us this upcoming winter. Have fun and play safe!