A Grand View

In October, 1800 fur trader, explorer, and surveyor David Thompson began a journey south from Rocky Mountain House to the Red Deer River. He then travelled west up toward its headwaters to meet a Kootenai party that had crossed the Divide. Thompson’s recorded distances and bearings place him approximately 50 km west of present-day Sundre, Alberta against the Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Soon after arriving he wrote the following in his journal:

“We then went on up along the [Red Deer] river, mostly on the gravel banks, which formerly in high water were part of the bed of the river… [and then] thro’ a tolerable fine plain … Here we had a grand view of the Rocky Mountains, forming a concave segment of a circle & lying from one point to another. From about SbE & NbW, all its snowy cliffs to the southward were very bright with the beams of the sun, while the most northern were darkened by a tempest & those cliffs in the concave were alternately brightened by the sun & obscured by the storm, which spent its force only in the summits.”

David Thompson, October 6th, 1800