Exploring the abandoned trails and waters of Howse Pass.
Words & photos :: Cameron Fenton
It’s hard to call what I was doing “bikepacking.” Sure, I had ridden my bike up the long, gravel Blaeberry Road, but once I hit the trail, the bike spent more time slung over my shoulder than touching dirt. For hours, I bushwhacked through downed timber, willows and alder, pushing and muscling my steel-framed hardtail along the faint remnants of an overgrown trail.
It reminded me of what Roman Dial, the Alaskan adventurer and author of The Adventurer’s Son, called “hell-biking”—a mix of mountain biking, bushwhacking and packrafting built on long stretches of misery that left you questioning why you brought a bike into the backcountry at all.
A few years earlier, I had stumbled across the web page for Howse Pass National Historic Site. I’d long been curious about the random historical markers dotted along the highways and byways of North America—the plaques in gravel pullouts that, in all my hours on the road, I’d never seen anyone stop to read. Howse Pass wasn’t like any of these. When I pulled it up on a map, it was miles from any road.
Deep in the Rocky Mountain wilderness, the tiny historical marker sat nestled on a low divide straddling the Alberta/BC border. It pulled me in like a magnet.
It reminded me of what Roman Dial called “hell-biking”—a mix of mountain biking, bushwhacking and packrafting built on long stretches of misery that left you questioning why you brought a bike into the backcountry at all.
A Plaque in the Wilderness
The problem, I quickly learned, was that the trail connecting Howse Pass to the Icefields Parkway had been abandoned by Parks Canada more than a decade earlier. Trail reports described hellish bushwacks, with many abandoning their efforts after only a few kilometres. Although the stretch of trail is technically part of the Great Divide Trail, most thru-hikers skip it and pick back up at Saskatchewan River Crossing.
Then I came across an event posting: A group of volunteers from Golden were heading up to do some maintenance on the BC side of the trail. I looked at a calendar and figured I could squeeze in a trip a few days later. I decided to turn the trip into a loop. I would bike from Golden, up the Blaeberry Road, then ride and hike to Howse Pass. From there, I would inflate a packraft and float down the Howse River to the Icefields Parkway, then ride the pavement back to my car. On paper, it looked straightforward.
Nearly ten hours after I set out, soaked in sweat and covered in tiny scratches and mosquito bites, I finally emerged from the bushwhack jungle and set my rubber tires onto a long stretch of trail. Pedaling past black spruce trees, my wheels brushed their branches, filling the late-summer air with the sweet, almost citric smell of summer evergreens.
A yellow flash marked a tree ahead. I slowed, then stopped, reading the sign: I was about to cross into Banff National Park. I sighed and hopped off my bike, returning it to the groove that the top bar of my bike had been wearing into my shoulder for the past day. There wasn’t anyone around to enforce it, but I knew bikes were banned on this trail.
It was a short hike to the perfectly manicured clearing in the woods. On one side stood a small stone marker denoting the border between Alberta and British Columbia. On the other side, a faded wooden sign and a newer red plaque confirmed I had reached my destination.
“First Major Expedition West Of The Rockies Led By Mapmaker David Thompson Descended This Pass On June 25, 1807 En Route To The Columbia and Kootenay Rivers,” read the wooden sign.
The plaque provided more information, noting that this remote spot in the Rocky Mountains was a formal historical site managed and maintained by Parks Canada. Trees swayed in the wind. A squirrel chittered away, annoyed that I had disturbed his home. Arriving at the clearing felt disorienting. Compared to the overgrown trail, this felt like some kind of secret garden hidden in the middle of the wilderness. I spent the better part of an hour in the clearing, reading and re-reading the plaques and eating my lunch of crackers, cheese and dark chocolate.
Fur Traders, Blockades and Mysterious Beasts
Born in London, England, David Thompson arrived at what is now Churchill, MB, in 1784. He spent six years keeping records in Hudson’s Bay Company outposts across what is now Saskatchewan and Manitoba before heading out west as a company surveyor. In 1792, he completed his first field assignment, mapping a route from Manchester House, a fur trading outpost on the North Saskatchewan River, to Lake Athabasca.
Thompson was officially made a surveyor in 1794, but three years later he grew frustrated. The Hudson’s Bay Company ordered him to cease his mapping efforts and return to commerce. In 1797 he left, hiking more than 100 kilometres through the snow to join the Northwest Company, the rival of his former employer.
With the Northwest Company, Thompson pushed farther west, helping found Rocky Mountain House in 1799. From there he launched his expedition to cross the Rockies in 1806, reaching Howse Pass and the Columbia River the following year.
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By 1810, Thompson was headed back to company headquarters, ready for a quiet life in Montreal, when word came down that his skills were needed once again. A few years earlier, the American Corps of Discovery, the expedition led by Lewis and Clark and their Shoshone guide Sacagawea, had navigated the Lower Columbia River to the Pacific. News of this navigable waterway spread, launching a race between British and American interests to claim this lucrative trade route. Thompson had been drafted to lead the Northwest Company’s effort.
Though Thompson had crossed Howse Pass without resistance before, when he arrived in 1810 he ran into a blockade of armed Indigenous Piikani warriors. Thompson knew many of the gathered men, having traded and lived with them and their neighbours, the Ktunaxa, during his explorations. He pleaded with them to let him pass, but the Piikani were unmoved. They were worried that allowing white men to cross would displace their role as trade intermediaries between the fur trade to the east and the Indigenous nations to the west.
Thompson chose not to press the issue. That winter he instead crossed Athabasca Pass, near what is now Jasper. It was there that, on January 7, 1811, he wrote about seeing the tracks of a large animal with four toes, a print so enormous and unusual that it left him and his guides baffled.
Thompson thought the tracks were of some “large old grizzled bear,” though his Indigenous guides called it a “young mammoth.” Modern readers of Thompson’s journal have speculated that Sasquatch made the prints. Decades later, Thompson reflected, “the sight of the track of that large beast staggered me, and I often thought of it, yet never could bring myself to believe such an animal existed, but thought it might be the track of some monster Bear.”
Thompson descended the Canoe River into the Columbia. But the rerouting delay caught up with him. As his canoes reached the brackish water where the river meets the Pacific, he saw wooden palisades already rising from the shore. The Americans had arrived two months before him and started construction on Fort Astoria, the first American settlement on the Pacific Coast.
“The sight of the track of that large beast staggered me, and I often thought of it, yet never could bring myself to believe such an animal existed, but thought it might be the track of some monster Bear.”
A “Ridiculous National Park Highway Proposal that Refuses to Die”
After lunch I hiked a few hundred metres further, to the shores of Conway Creek. I stripped the bags from my bike and began removing the wheels, pedals and seat. Like an old Transformers toy, I turned my bike into the tightest package I could, stacking the wheels onto the frame and strapping it all together. I unrolled the bright red packraft that had hung from my handlebars and inflated it, attaching the bike to the bow.
Conway Creek was cold, fast and narrow. The water pushed against a crumbling limestone wall. I dipped my paddle, careful to avoid the bike stacked on my bow, and navigated past a few downed trees. It wasn’t long before the creek spat me out onto the gentle, Kool-Aid-blue waters of the Howse River.
A few wispy clouds blew past jagged peaks. Glaciers poured down alpine bowls, glimmering in the late afternoon sun. A warm breeze blew upriver, carrying the familiar smell of sunbaked conifers up the river valley.
The Howse River valley was broad, rising on a gentle, almost imperceptible grade. Floating downstream, there was just enough current to carry me forward, but not enough to form any serious rapids or hydraulics. From the water, it was easy to understand why Thompson had gravitated towards this pass and why, years later, it almost became a highway.
Proposals to build a highway over Howse Pass have been around for as long as people have tried to push railways and pavement across the Rockies. Early on, the lack of a major road or rail link near the pass turned attention north and south of the pass. But after Highway 11 (the David Thompson Highway) was completed in 1968, proposals for a road over the pass resurfaced every few years.
The most recent was in 2020, from a group called the Central Alberta Economic Partnership. They asked the BC government to review a 2005 study that, they explained, demonstrated that a new highway over Howse Pass would shave about an hour off the time it takes to get from Central Alberta to BC.
The proposal fell on deaf ears, but the persistent efforts to pave Howse Pass led the Alberta Wilderness Association to coin it “the ridiculous national park highway proposal that refuses to die.”
That night, I camped on a grassy bench above the river. Dark clouds gathered as the sun set, painting the sky in pastel shades of orange, pink and purple. A storm was building somewhere to the west, and by morning I would be rushing to pull on my drysuit in the blowing wind and sheeting rain. For that moment, though, I sat and watched, thinking of the countless storms, travelers, fur traders, animals and mystery beasts that had passed through this low-slung, forgotten divide.
To curb the threat of invasive species, national park restrictions regarding the use of personal watercraft have recently been updated. Check current regulations before planning your own hell-biking adventure.
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