Athabasca Pass (el. 1,753 m or 5,751 ft) is a high mountain pass in the Canadian Rockies. It is the headwaters of the Whirlpool River, a tributary of the Athabasca River. In fur-trade days it connected Jasper House on the Athabasca River with Boat Encampment on the Columbia River.
The pass lies between Mount Brown and McGillivray Ridge. It is south of Yellowhead Pass and north of Howse Pass.
Since the first documented crossing by David Thompson and his Native American guide in 1811, the pass became a major point on the fur trade route between Rupert's Land and the Columbia District, used by the York Factory Express. The pass was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1971.
Famous quotes containing the word pass:
“Jesus would recommend you to pass the first day of the week rather otherwise than you pass it now, and to seek some other mode of bettering the morals of the community than by constraining each other to look grave on a Sunday, and to consider yourselves more virtuous in proportion to the idleness in which you pass one day in seven.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)