The bridge connecting Kootenay and Assiniboine
The bridge across the Simpson River leading to Surprise Creek is an intriguing structure. It’s a bridge that has long linked Kootenay National Park to Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park in British Columbia.
I highlighted this bridge around 5 years ago when I published the blog post Reopening the Back Door to Mt Assiniboine. Richie Mann, age 92, stumbled across my blog on the internet recently. That triggered a memory of rebuilding the bridge back in 1952, when he was 19-years-old.
He posted a brief comment on my original blog remembering that work. That inspired me to write him in hopes that he could elaborate on the event and maybe send some photos, which he did. Following is his account of that long-ago autumn adventure.
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Richie Mann, 92 years old, remembering a long-ago autumn bridge-building on the Simpson River.
Three of us were taken in by Frank Johnson and his packhorses in the fall of 1952 after cutting trail up 5 mile cr. east of Nelson. BC. We were working for BC. Forest Service. I was crew boss and had Gavin Mcleod from Cranbrook and Lars ______(can’t remember his last Scandinavian name) from Clearwater with me. I would have been 19 at the time.
My home at the time was Rossland BC.. After that I was wrangler for Cecil Smith’s Outfit at Whitetail Lake with territory up Dutch Cr. west of Canal Flats. In 1955 I was patrolman for Forestry in the White Swan Lake, White and Pallister River area that summer with 2 paid for horses and 1 young one I was starting. There was 2 of us packing. Andy Porterfield from Atlin BC. and myself with Norman Scherf from Vancouver as cook. 3 saddle horses and 15 packhorses all owned by the Federal Gov..
When we went in to build the bridge across the Simpson it had snowed as we were going in so we had wet snow conditions to work with. We fell 2 trees across the river for our stringers. After building our log peers we filled them with rocks out of the river. (One cold job as I remember) Then got the stringers onto the peers. We then split jackpine logs to make a flat deck and made our pole trusses. I can’t remember how we attached the large turnbuckles to finish the trusses and I can’t make them out in the photo.
We only had axes and Swede saws back then. No chainsaws yet. (I got my first use of a chainsaw the following year with a Forestry slash crew. They were IEL saws that you had to keep the motor vertical and switched the blade sideways for falling by pushing a little leaver on the saw to turn the blade). It was only a one day trip,
I think, from the Kootenay River to the old cabin you see in the picture so I think it must have been at Surprise Cr.. The Cabin I see now in your pictures says it was built in the 1960s and I am wondering if the one we stayed in had been removed to build the new one. I also wonder how long our truss bridge lasted.
The next year I was hired on by Dr. John Wheeler a Geologist with the Dept. of mines in Ottawa as a packer all summer for his crew of geologists in the Big Salmon River country in the Yukon. of geologists in the Big Salmon River country in the Yukon.
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Two of several photos that Richie provided. Judging by the photo of the bridge, it went through at least two incarnations in the ensuing years. And the Surprise Creek cabin is certainly not the one that occupies the site today. But the photos provide a glimpse of a much simpler time in the backcountry. And one of our favourite approaches to Mount Assiniboine.
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