1925 Japanese Alpine Club Historic First Ascent of Mount Alberta

Official Expedition Narrative & Archival Record

Mount Alberta (3,619 m), rising like an impregnable black fortress above the Athabasca River headwaters in Jasper National Park, was widely regarded by North American and European mountaineers as the most terrifying and inaccessible unclimbed peak in the Canadian Rockies. Its vertical limestone ramparts, constant rockfall, and shattered overhangs had defeated every reconnaissance party. In the summer of 1925, Aritsune Maki organized an official expedition under the auspices of the Japanese Alpine Club. Maki recruited a brilliant cohort of Keio and Tokyo climbers—including Seishi Hashimoto, Hatano, and Yukio Mita—and hired veteran Swiss guides Heinrich Fuhrer and Hans Kohler. Pack-training deep into the wilderness along Hamber Provincial Park and Sunwapta Pass, the team established a forward camp in the Woolley Creek cirque. On July 21, 1925, after sixteen gruelling hours of sustained, highly technical rock climbing across rotten, friable limestone bands and ice-glazed chimneys, Maki and his team breached the ferocious summit overhangs. Standing atop the narrow summit ridge, they claimed the first ascent of Canada's most notorious peak. In a romantic gesture that became world alpine folklore, the Japanese climbers hammered a specially forged silver ice axe (presented by Prince Chichibu) into the summit rock, where it remained as an enigmatic legend for twenty-three years until American climbers retrieved it in 1948.