Exploring expeditions were no novelty in the Upper Peace region before the early 1930’s. There were two extraordinary ones in quick succession. The most spectacular was the comic-opera Bedeaux effort in 1934 which set off with much fanfare, headed for Telegraph Creek. But, bedeviled by bad luck and bad management, it abandoned its expensive vehicles and floundered back on horses, a dismal failure. Laughing at this fiasco, most people had already forgotten the remarkable 1931 "hunting" expedition through the mountains between the Halfway River's confluence with the Peace to the fabled Liard Hot Springs.

The 'Women’s Lib' movement was not around then to publicize the fact that the leader of this huge party was a woman! A tiny, gray-haired lady, she was the mother of five adolescent children, but old enough to be a grandmother. She was gentle Quaker lady, of great charm but absolutely indomitable will. She was also a crack shot with a rifle or revolver and a superb horsewoman. She climbed mountains when she was resting, and o brought back hundreds of trophies, living and dead, for American and British Museums. What was she hunting? Perhaps the answer comes as an anticlimax -- FLOWERS. Mary Gibson Henry was a dedicated amateur botanist.

In 1935 the Bedeaux expedition had come and gone and the stories of the hardships of the country had been publicized all over the world. Mary Henry was back to lead a third expedition. This time she went all the way from railhead at Dawson Creek to the coast of Alaska. She did not follow the old Mounted Police trail because it was set up to lay out a cart road, going around the difficulties. Her choice was deliberately trail-blazing by pack horse with speed in mind, taking the hazards as they came -- through muskegs and valleys and as far as possible up mountains which she could then climb on foot. "We were advised", she writes "not to take such a perilous journey, but the more difficulties that arose, the more we wanted to go." Why? Because (1) in places untouched by man she might find never-before discovered plant species. And (2) She was Mary Gibson Henry!

Her contribution to history was not the rare and "record" plants she did find but in a totally unexpected spin-off -- her contribution was in the choice of route seven years later for the world’s greatest military road, the Alaska Highway.

by Dorthea Calverley

In the third decade of the twentieth century, when the world had not yet heard of Womens’ Liberation Movement, three unusual, very wealthy, very gentle, but very determined ladies quietly set out to make history in our Canadian Rockies. One of them was Mrs. Mary Gibson Henry, and Pouce Coupe and Dawson Creek were jumping off places for several adventures which, less than seven years later, showed the Alaska Highway where to go. In Canada, even here at Mile "O" of that great road, very few people remember her, and nobody gives her credit for her great achievement. In USA she was recognized. In her autobiography she records, "World War II came to pass . . . The United States Army used the men I took north, and according to the topographer, my 1935 expedition formed the basis for the planning of the Alcan^* Highway. As well, although she was not a University graduate, she became a lecturer at Harvard University. In 1947 at the invitation of Sir William Write Smith (she) gave two lectures at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, one of them being "Beyond the Frontier in Northern British Columbia." In 1948 a series of four lectures on her trips to Northern British Columbia were delivered before the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, at the last of which she received their "Mungo Park Model" for Explorations in Northern British Columbia. This medal was one of four even more prestigious awards. A mountain was named in her honour not far from Summit Lake on the Alaska Highway near the headwaters of the Tetsa River. The list of her affiliations with important botanical societies is impressive, and her contributions to botanical knowledge which earned her the rank of Research Associate of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

The noted botanist Prof. Hugh Raup of Harvard University wrote of her "Technically, I suppose, she would have had to be labeled an "amateur" . . . She was indeed, a remarkable woman."

It is fitting that the Peace River Country and points north on the Alaska Highway recognize her as a friend and benefactor.^*

Mary Henry was not the first woman to leave a dainty footprint in the as yet unexplored parts of the Rockies, nor was she the first to make a contribution to the botany of the region. Coincidentally two other Mary’s had "become the first white women to see the many outstanding attractions in today’s Banff and Jasper Parks," including Mount Robson.

The botanist Mary Schaffer nee Sharples was no "feminist" but she was certainly a "liberated" lady. Before the 1880’s many fortunes were being made in the United States. Among the wealthy class, every correct young daughter after attending a select "finishing school "completed her education by being taken on the Grand Tour of Europe including the Swiss Alps, always chaperoned by "mam", of course, or some other mature responsible woman, and always attended by a "companion", for no respectable young woman ever went out alone. In the voluminous and all concealing costumes of the day, mountain climbing was simply not on the program.

In the 1880’s when the Canadian Pacific Railway was finished and the company began advertising the luxury and exclusivness of their ambitious Banff Springs Hotel, some adventurous females had adventurously departed from the stereotyped itinerary. Three years after the railway was finished a Mrs. Sharples from Philadelphia had brought her eighteen-year-old daughter Mary on an "extended tour of the Rockies." There they met an "eminent American botanist, Dr. Charles S. Schaffer," whom Mary married the next year. When he died in 1903, she compiled his work into a book, for which she did all of the water color and photographic illustrations. In the meantime, with her companion Mary (Adams) Vaux, she had never done anything more venturesome than accompany the famous mountain guides and explorers of their day to the railway station at Laggan (Lake Louise Station) to bid them "Sod Speed." In 1906, then three years a widow, Mary Schaffer took a giant leap forward (in a long, full skirted black gown, over which she wore, as a concession to the rugged country, a buckskin jacket.) In the preceding three years she and the other Mary had been taking lessons in riding astride, jumping over logs, swimming their horses over icy flood-swollen rivers, and climbing mountains.

Apparently they had not capitulated to the unladylike example of the dainty little Englishwoman, Mrs. Evelyn Berens who, in 1901, had adopted the revolutionary fashion of wearing her husband’s best "knickerbockers" for a climb of Mount Sir Donald. It is recorded that "during the climb she found herself unconsciously grasping them delicately between thumb and forefinger as though they were a gown."^*

Being modest Quaker ladies, two Mary’s started off an a four-month packtrain expeditions, in their discreet costumes, on June 20, 1907, on the first of several more annual trips to become, again and again "the first white women I’ve seen around these parts."

In 1915 Mary Schaffer married "Billy" Warren, noted Banff outfitter and her long-time mentor and guide.

It is possible that in Mrs. (Schaffer) Warren’s home, furnished with beautiful 18th century heirlooms from her gracious Philadelphia mansion that Mrs. Mary Henry (nee Gibson) first heard of the legendary Liard Hotsprings. The mysterious Northern "Tropical Valley" story had been brought back from the Yukon and Alaska goldrush, and had a strong, romantic pull. It is equally possible that Miss Mary Henry had heard of the adventures of the two inseparable mountain-climbing Mary’s in the drawing rooms of fashionable Philadelphia. Mary Gibson’s mother, like the two Mary’s, was a Quaker. All were wealthy, and undoubtedly traveled in the same social "set."

It is no surprise that ladies of the Quaker sect were in advance of their times, for the Quaker religion "liberated" women long before anyone else gave that bold step even a passing consideration. A Quaker lady preacher’s sermons were as valid as any man’s and as well respected for among them the sexes were equal. True, modesty, simplicity and self-control and piety were rules of life, but the use, not the abuse, of wealth was not discouraged. Such a culture was fertile ground for women to cultivate personal ambitions. Even though there were protest from the horrified relatives and friends in the drawing rooms of Philadelphia", they were on account of the dangers, not the department or conduct.

By the 1930’s even the shock of women wearing men’s pants had died down, and from the pictures in her autobiography we see that Mary Gibson Henry posed inconsumedly in "breeks."

Nothing said here is intended in anyway to detract from the bravery of Mary Henry’s leading a packtrain expedition into the unknown Canadian North where so many had perished in the goldrush days, and where large areas on such maps as there were, showed huge white areas, labeled "unexplored" or "unsurveyed" territory.

The Northern Alberta Railway’s twice-a-week passenger train must have been on time for once at 6 p.m. at Pouce Coupe on June 30, 1931. (Or else it was a day late!) It must have been a very tired party that alighted, for they had been five days on the way from Philadelphia, of which the last twenty-four hours were the most grueling. The Northern Alberta railway in the Peace River area was only six months old; and still known by its old name of ED and BC---Extremely Dangerous and Badly Constructed. For some reason the last seven miles from Pouce Coupe to the end of steel at Dawson Creek was closed.

Although they must have been badly - and literally - "shaken up", they at once took off by car for Fort St. John on what passed for a "road", mostly horse-drawn vehicles. No local resident would be surprised that they "found it necessary to get out and push our cars through some mudholes." It was 1 a.m. when they reached Fort St. John, for "a night’s rest" in their camp tent. At 4 a.m. At 5 a.m. they were awakened by "breakfast call" and in a couple of hours they were packed and in the saddle, setting our on a trip of over one thousand miles into the unsurveyed, unmapped wilderness of the Peace River Block and beyond to the legendary Liard Hotsprings.

It was an impressive "outfit" - nine men, and fifty-eight pack horses, carrying the regular camping gear and food and as well a large number of oddlooking wooded cases, movie cameras, fishing and hunting gear etc. The leaders of the party were obviously not only wealthy but cultivated professional people, and three of them were female. Two of the men were doctors of medicine. One, Dr. Chandler was a photographer. The eldest was the scholarly Dr. Norman Henry, Sr. wearing lightly the unconscious dignity f a professor and military major, former Chief of a Medical Division of the American overseas army, Director of Public Health of Philadelphia, and the President of the Alumni of the University of Pennsylvania. But he was not the "boss" of the party!--All he officially had to do was take good care of his hunting gear, for he was simply on holiday with his two sons, Norman Jr. and Howard, and daughters Mary and Josephine, ranging in age from twenty-one to fourteen.

The head of the expedition was tiny, gray-haired, middle-aged Mary Gibson Henry, wife of the professor and mother of the young people. Without making any fuss about it, she was a very liberated lady whose husband had said. "go to it and go to all the places and do all the things you want to do, and I believe you are will fitted to do. You have earned it all, and I will help in any way I can."

Mary Gibson Henry’s formal education had not fitted her to undertake a wilderness "safari" in a part of Canada’s North which had swallowed up so many hardy Trail of - 98 - ers. Never having been to University, she had graduated from a fashionable school for young ladies. which taught how to hold a teacup properly, and other accomplishments like water-colour painting, piano playing and the harp. Horse-back riding was "a must", of course but side-saddle was also obligatory for "ladies." Mary Gibson had had other rachers[sic]. Her Scottish Gibson forebearers had been botanists and horticulturists. Her father was an ardent outdoors man, and especially keen on guns. Dainty little pinafored Mary, under nine years of age, was allowed to "stand beside him when he was target shooting...and often take a few shots. Many years later the little miss wrote "Helping to clean his rifle afterwards was a cherished chore. so much so that even today I like no perfume better than the aroma of a humble tube of gun grease."

At eighteen instead of taking the grand tour of Europe, she "accompanied" an Adventurous Gibson Aunt to the Colorado Rockies and Grand Canyon, Arizona and fell in love with mountains and climbing. In her next six years her passion for flower collecting must have allowed much climbing practice in the Eastern Appalachians for 1908 found her on the summit of Swiss Mount Blace, altitude 15.781 feet, roped together with three guides and her brother and "tremendously excited."

Then she married. For the next twenty-two years she traveled, chauffeur driven, in an early "Recreational Vehicle," with "an attic, an electrically lit desk and bookcase", and a "rear compartment, insulated and ventilated so that newly collected plants travel comfortable!" Star [sic] first botanizing trip by car was 2500 miles in Eastern and Southern USA, and her adventures "usually alone" ran the gamut of wading bare legged in snake infested southern swamps" to being "held up by three men with three rifles, who threatened us roughly. "I had often wondered" she wrote how it would feel to be held up, and really it wasn’t bad at all. Obviously she was psychologically well prepared to take on a pack-train junket of only a thousand miles.

"Rested by four hours sleep, she didn’t even chronicle the adhesive gumbo mud, the sounds and smells of fifty-eight horses, or the uncultivated accents of the local guides, outfitters and wranglers.

They were off the minute that breakfast was over and the gear packed. In charge of the whole cavalcade was Knox F. McCusker ex-D.L.S., who knew the southern part of the area, an experienced and competent surveyor and topographer now turned rancher and guide and recommended by the Dominion Government to accompany and guide the party while exploring and mapping the great white spaces on the map." Billy Hill, well known rancher, trader and outfitter had supplied the horses. The rates were forty dollars per horse on which a partial refund was to be made on any brought back alive. He was accompanying the party.

S. Clark, one of the Montenay family, famous freighters and traders between fort St. John and Fort Nelson, acted as "trail boss" on the first leg of the journey. As fifty-eight horses were too many for one man to handle alone, he had sent word to Harold (Hobby) Hobden homesteader and guide at Neilson’s Crossing in the Kiskatenaw to meet the party on the trail not later than a specified date, but "pony express was so slow that the message did not get there in time. He still regrets it. He said the party took far too many horses, and lost many en route. Hobden had spent many years as a cowboy in Western USA and Canada, and had proved his expertise in many rodeos. He would have been a competent and humorous help to the group.

As it happened he had met the group. Neilsons ran a "stopping place" at the crossing of the Kiskatenaw. En route to Fort St. John that first night the party dropped in for a meal, before tackling the terrible road to the Peace River crossing. The Neilson’s were away that day and Hobby was "minding the store." He was used to taking sandseekers and other parties out on long bush trips, but feeding a "dude party" was a little out of his line. He says he could make good "trail coffee" but he can’t think what else he gave them at that time of night. Resourceful as Mr. Hobden is, it was doubtless good enough fare." She was a nice little lady," he added smiling." I remember that there was a doctor in the party also."

Other members of the party were the cook, simply known as cliff, a wrangler named Bill Beckman, and Indian named Ben, two others known as Smoky and Fabe. Whoever they were, they were the best that McCusker could hire.

The men and girls of the Henry party would help supply the grub box with meat and fish.

Moving here and there and all over looking for plants, on a tall strong black horse named Chum, was the diminutive but indomitable Mary herself. Draped about with saddlebags containing jam tins for her living plant specimens, and flats for her pressed ones, spade, cameras, binoculars, rifle, notebooks, fishing rod, trowel, slicker and coat etc. etc. she found "scarcely room for me." As often as not she walked all day, galloping to catch up from time to time. She "wanted to be near the flowers. This habit, and her diminutive size gave rise to a story. "One day, Joe called to Smokey, "Do you see Mother?" "No" was the reply. "but her horse is coming with a lot of shrubbery, and I suppose she is behind it." Where going was easy Chum carried her through muskegs, but where going was hard she dismounted to help him along by floundering beside him in the coffee-colored noisome water and muck. On one occasion the bag-hole was so deep that only a part of the saddle and the horse’s head and neck were visible. Mary confessed to being alarmed that time - about Chum’s danger, but he wallowed to solid ground, she clinging to him.

She may have told story around one of the night campfires where the crew "joined us for a game of poker." Shades of her Quaker ancestors!

Mary Gibson Henry’s packtrain expedition to Liard Hot springs actually began in Jasper, Alberta, in September, 1930. The family were camping in the Canadian Mountain Parler, but undoubtedly they were in touch with Mrs. Schaffer Warren or Mrs. Vaux from the same church, social and botanical interest-groups in Philadelphia. They would talk of the mountaineering exploits of those pioneer lady members of the Sierra Club. When Mary Gibson Henry heard from a trapper that there were the legendary but unexplored Hot Springs still further North in the Canadian Rockies, how could she not resolve to get there? Here was virgin territory for plant studies, not to speak of superb hunting and fishing.

After nine months of meticulous planning, here they were setting off from frontier Fort St. John in the Peace River Country, with eighty days to go and return. - overland and in summer, the most difficult time to cope with the terrain.

For the first week they followed Halfway River Valley, guided by indistinct Indian or game trails. About every week or ten days, they stopped to give the horses a rest. Much of the way Mrs. Henry walked, leading her pack-horse, so that she "might be as close as possible to the glorious carpet that covered the earth." At the end of the day, when the others could rest, Mrs. Henry watered and tended her jampailed living plant specimens, pressed others, and made notes. Those ten-day "rests" she welcomed, because then she could go mountain climbing.

One stop was at the Phillip Tompskins Ranch near the Half-way confluence where the remarkable "dude" outfit is still remembered.

From Halfway they followed the old Mounted Police trail-cutting parties of 1899 and 1905 had preceded them. but those trails were mostly grown over and of no help. In any case the 1905 MP Trail was being surveyed for a cart or wagon road. Even a big pack train was more flexible. Here McCusker’s intimate knowledge of the country guided them as far as the Caribou Ridge, above timberline. The nights were cold, and snow lay in the hollows. their bathing suits and shoes were frozen in the mornings. Then they descended to the Prophet River beyond which even McCusker had no knowledge, for this was as far as any surveys ran

They swam the horses and gear across the River. "58 horses in the water, swimming together created quite a confusion."

Now as McCusker took his reading and drew his maps, he was free to name any physical features not before noted. "Henry", "Howard", "Chandler" and "Norman" Rivers were designated.

On August 1 they had to cut a trail. Mary went on walking, and as the mists rose she saw "the most beautiful snow-covered mountain I had ever seen in my life." McCusker said "He did not even know it was there." The 9,000 foot peak was officially named Mt. Mary Henry for all time.

The party were now thoroughly acclimatized. From July 18, the nights were so cold that, in the morning, icicles hung from the eaves of the tent, and "our bathing suits were frozen solid." Often she pried her precise ham tins off the ground, for they wee crossing high mountain passes. If a really rare flower appeared when her saddle bags were full, she untied her raincoat from the saddle, to carry the plant, and endured the cold rain herself. Sometimes they were eight hours in the saddle, and camped with bruised arms and legs from threading between close-growing trees. While mentioning these difficulties in passing, she dismissed them lightly. "We just laid our sleeping bags on a piece of canvas in the stones. It may not sound very comfortable but we found it so. By this time we had learned to sleep almost anywhere. Of course, if the ground was very rough we sometimes arise with our bodies slightly bruised which really mattered not at all. The day, (July 18) was clear and cold, and our boots and clothing, wet from many fords the day before, were frozen hard beside us. This happened frequently and we never stopped to dry them; it did not seem worth while because in a short time they were usually just the same again."

McDonnell creek, Toad and Racing Rivers were crossed - the latter being "the fastest water we ever saw." Here there was a trail of sorts that lost itself in the remains of a burned, but formerly magnificent spruce forest where Mrs. Henry walked over (and sometimes fell off from)---crisscrossed tangled windfall six feet off the ground and six or more logs deep.

At last Mary henry reached her goal but the area had been burned over nine years previously. Any "tropical" vegetation was replaced by common brule growth. They had a wonderful swim in the various temperatured pools, but it was a big disappointment.

August 11 they started back. Weather conditions were worse, which, added to the let down at the Springs, contributed to "the most uncomfortable day eve we had ever had in our lives." Charlie,. the Indian, having no other camp duties, built a huge fire "and in a little while we forgot how cold we had been."

Mary liked Charlie, "son of the old chief" who had courteously welcomed the party near Tetsa River. here is where the tribe of Indians who had killed Guy Hughes at Fort St. John had retreated to trap after the so-called "massacre." Charlie had been the guide to the Hot Springs, for he knew the way well. Here Charlie lift the party, having fulfilled our ideas of the highest type of Indian aborigine, and by this time we considered one of our best friends." He had contributed much to their enjoyment, with comments such as this when four large wolves were trailing them too close for comfort. "Indian meet wolf, scared wolf. Indian meet two wolves, scared Indian. Indian meet three wolves, dead Indian." --A tactful way to deal with a scared white woman.

On the journey back, more time was allowed for McCusker to climb mountains to obtain compass bearings and examine the terrain. Mary climbed with him. Here they ran into rain-swollen muskegs. "We really did not go over it. We literally went through it." Chum bogged down and Mary swam. Six of the horses were almost buried in a hole at one time.

On August 19 Mary and Josephine and McCusker took a side trip to explore "Lake Mary," "Lake Josephine", and the Upper Henry River.

It must have been an unusually cloudy summer for she recorded that here they saw the first star that we had seen all summer." Incredible. They celebrated, the men joining the family, "in a game of poker that lasted long." A seven day stay here recuperated their pack train and themselves. They would need it. They were expecting a plane to fly then out but the air transportation company, with the approach of stormy fall weather, declared it too hazardous. Instead of two week’s hunting and mountain climbing they took two days - dangerous but thrilling ones.

On September 6 they were faced with the terribly difficult Caribou Pass again but now it was already winter in the high country. Darkness of shorter days, blizzards were blowing, both in the Caribou and Laurier Oasses - but not too much to prevent Mary indulging the pure joy of climbing - "romping up and down the mountains." she called it - observing the northern lights, and the birds and the animals - "I was not tires, I never did seem to be tired." Mary’s last day in the mountains gave her thrills and adventures a’plenty - and then it was downhill all the way to a last camp at the head of the Peace River Canyon, there to the village of Hudson’s Hope - and by river boat, back to Fort St. John.

"Not one us was sick a minute, nor did we have one unpleasant incident."

The party left the country in one of the river steamers to Peace River Town.

Her specimen went to Dr. Raup of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, and a splendidly illustrated four-installment account appeared on the National (U.S.) Horticultural Magazine. A slim volume, full of personal experiences and minutes, yet readable descriptions of the plants, was printed in 1934, but is long since out of print. The Provincial Archives of British Columbia, and the Provincial Museum Botany Department made it available to us in photostat copy.

For reference only.

Mary Gibson Henry had indeed drunk deeply of the waters of the Peace and she had to come back again!

In June, 1932 she "felt a longing to revisit the wonderful unmapped wilderness." Telegrams to McCusker resulted in a small party of three men and only twenty-one horses being assembled for a short trip to "a vast jumble of rugged uncharted mountains west of Redfern Lake."

Only Josephine could accompany her this time. Josephine was now collecting insects for the Academy of Natural Sciences.

The faithful big horse Chum was her mount, and the wrangler Smoky of her former visit was on hand as before.

They covered four hundred and sixty miles on horseback, and climbed seven mountains on foot - another hundred miles, - in five weeks.

Mary Henry and Josephine were again at Fort St. John on June 28, 1933, but their pack train was at Hudson’s Hope where McCusker, four other men and twenty-four horses were assembled. The women went upstream in a little open boat.

1933 was a very wet summer, making rivers higher and muskegs deeper. A few days after starting, while rafting "a raging torrential river" on logs lashed together with ropes, they lost four hundred and fifty pounds of food, and lived on slim rations through four snowstorms, one at nightfall, and one on a high mountain pass. But although she conceded that this trip had some "rough spots", she found many reasons to pronounce it "successful and a perfectly wonderful time." That season McCusker mapped country west of Akie Pass.

The collection of Mrs. Mary G. Henry in the season of 1933 were not available until the text of the original catalogue had been set up in type; but it was examined hurriedly, and most of the species which made additions to the flora were included. Subsequently this collection was examined more carefully, and was found to contain a few more new records which began the list of additions given to this paper. A brief itinerary of Mrs. Henry’s journey of 1933 is as follows: June 28, reached Peace River from Edmonton; July 5, forded Graham River; July 11, camped in Laurier Pass for a few days; July 14, reached Caribou Pass; July 18, Axie Pass; July 19, camped on Akie River for several days; July 22, started return journey; July 25, Caribou Pass; July 31, Laurier Pass; August 2, Cypress Pass; August 7, Hudson Hope. One hundred eighty-nine numbers of flowering plants and ferns were collected on this trip.

In the summer of 1934 the famous or notorious Bedeaux expedition took off with much fan-feraw to cross much of the country that Mary Henry had already covered. Bedeviled by bad luck and bad management, they returned, and the terrible "dangers" and impossible condition of the Peace River area got worldwide notoriety.

Mary Henry’s friends were dismayed to find that she was quietly planning her fourth trip into those same regions, - and farther, much farther. She intended to go on to Alaska and the sea. McCusker was interested and the Indians she had questioned in 1933 had said it could be done. Besides she and her husband had planned it in 1931, and although he could not come, she was determined "to do it alone." Just possible the Bedeaux fiasco made her more determined. The devoted Josephine, a veteran mountaineer again accompanied her mother.

The Northern Alberta Railway was still having difficulties, but no track could have held up to the incredibly wet spring of 1935. In the fall of 1934 it had rained and then snowed to record heights. The country was already saturated when heavy and continuous rain swamped everything in May and June of 1935. For miles along Lesser Slave Lake the tracks were under water. Men walked ahead with poles to see if the rails were still there. Late June and July are normal times for high run-off, but this heavy downpour of June 29th and 30th was the drop that broke the bridges’ backs.

The bi-weekly train left Edmonton on Monday nights. One went to bed in the sleeping cars expecting (if one could sleep in spite of the rough roadbed) to awaken well on the way to McLennan. The car was miraculously stable when the ladies awoke. The bridges had washed out! "Would they go back?" They would not - and got off.

A man with an open truck offered to take them North. For two days they sat on the floor in the back of it. Having taken the same route the previous autumn in a car, even we can not imagine their discomfort! After crossing a river in a little open boat that nearly swamped, that mode of transportation gave out. It must have been at the Smoky River Crossing at Watino, for landslides there kept the southeast-bound trains from getting further towards Edmonton. However a freight train from Pouce Coupe " came down and picked (them) up." Pleased to get a lift, they were "not dismayed" when told that they must sit up all night and could get nothing to eat. The boys invited them however to the discomforts and novelty of a ride in the caboose.

We are not told how she managed the twelve carrier pigeons she was taking so that she could send messages to her husband. She had discovered the previous year that radio messages could come in, to her receiving set but not get out through the intervening mountains.

Before a night’s sleep in Pouce Coupe, they ran into another spot of trouble there. Odtimer Ted Bartsch remembers it very well. The party was encamped on the Bissette Creek. With typical hospitality, George and Mrs. Hart invited them in to the hotel for the evening.

A new Police Sergeant had recently been assigned to the area, an officious officer who took his duties very seriously.

In the course of the evening, he learned that the little expedition head always carried a small revolver as protection in the rugged mountainclimbing explorations she was always undertaking alone. She was a crack shot, but obviously this was no big-game hunting safari like her first trip with husband and family. Canadian law must be upheld! He seized the American’s weapon, and no amount of argument or cajoling would pry a permit out of him. In Pouce Coupe the little explorer’s only personal self-defense stayed. However, she records that she and Josephine shot all the bear, sheep, deer, goat and grouse they used for food. In passing she notes that she once faced a pack of wolves while hunting.

Many more crises occurred on this trip. For one thing, she did not have her horse, Chum. "Sunny" was not as sure-footed, and therefore a poor choice for this kind of trip. Besides he was "terrified of mud, muskeg and slippery places." He threw her five times. On this trip McCusker was outfitter, Glen Minader was guide, and there was a new topographer, "Jack". With these two Mrs. Henry took a three-day backpacking trip on foot for thirteen hours a day over high mountain passes to get close to her beloved namesake Mount Mary Henry. They took no tent and "it was fun sleeping under the stars" in a snowstorm. Here the topographer became ill and had to stay behind while she and Glen Minaker, the guide, went on.

From this camp on Tuchodi River, the party pushed on past Munch Lake. Their friends the Indians having joined them, while two men turned back with some horses, and food being low after the accident with the raft, the diary shows that on September 5 they had to hunt over mountains at eight thousand feet for ten hours, near Gundahoo Pass and again on September 14 they hunted all day in the rain.

From September 18 to 21 "Jack" was very ill, and from then until September he had to be carried on a stretcher in a severe blizzard until they reached the womanless mining camp at McDame of Klondyke Trail fame. She recores, "The men looked at us (women) as if we had fallen out of the clouds."

The next eight days they spent in a little open Hudson’s Bay boat, tying up at night, sleeping on snow covered ground, and finding the water kettle in the tent frozen nearly solid in the morning.

They reached Telegraph Creek, BC on September 30, and Wrangell, Alaska on October 2, having covered twelve hundred miles in granity days "in the wildest and most beautiful section of the North American continent.

McCusker was able to take over the topographer’s work; now that a large part of the pack train was gone, he completed an absolutely invaluable record of hitherto unmapped terrain as well as a massing first hand correct information about the physical features of the area.

All the while the party had been sending out passenger pigeons to keep the "folks at home" advised of their progress. She also carried a radio, a receiving set only since they had found on the previous trip that looking power, they could not "send". Arrangements with the Edmonton station had been made to be called at the "most favorable time, 12:55 AM." The man in charge said that her signal, - "Calling Mrs. Henry somewhere in the Northwest Territory" - has beamed to the "most remote party of any on the North American continent" at the time. "The most exciting address I ever had and thrilled me to the core," she wrote.

Her arrival at Vancouver on October 6 was thus heralded, and she was able to record, "Major Aitken chief geographer of British Columbia came from Victoria to see me, and at his request, with pleasure and pride, I drew a map of the vicinity of Mt. Mary Henry, the part the topographer missed when he became ill."

On this trip she collected an additional two hundred and thirty-one numbers, and in a report by DR. K. Raup of the Harvard Arboretum it is said that she reported finding plants that "are not native to this wild region."