Good Friday. I maintained my approach to a leisurely Easter weekend by completing the Sid Marty book. There were two spots in the book that caught me by surprise. One was when Marty was describing his time at the warden station at Poboktan Creek. I have done some hiking in that area, but the surprise was when he mentioned his supervisor at the station was Abe Loewen. Abe was stationed there when I worked at the Columbia Icefields as a summer job. We often spent some time together as he would come by to check the reports on who was "out" climbing in the area. We also had an "interesting" climb  together on the face of Mt. Wilcox during that summer.

The second surprise was in the chapter that described the events leading to the death of Wilf Etherington in a grizzly attack. One of the other people involved in this situation was a photographer named Bill Schmalz. I have not heard that name since the summer of 1964 when I worked at the Icefields. Bill was a young wildlife photographer who would take day trips into the pass behind Mt. Wilcox to photograph mountain sheep. He spent the entire summer living in a small beaten up trailer in the campground and would be in the back-country almost every day with his camera. I have often wondered what became of him and whether he was ever able to use the footage he shot that summer.

The book simply flowed and I was finished it before I realized it. I have all of Sid Marty's books and have thoroughly enjoyed them all. They are an important contributioin to Canadian history, capturing a part of a life that is already only a memory, and another part that is rapidly disappearing.