'How Steep is Steep?' The Struggle for Mountaineering in the Canadian Rockies, 1948-65.

This essay explores the complex struggles over the reinvention of mountaineering practices and ethics during the postwar period in the Rocky Mountains of Canada between competing interest groups of disparate climbers. Specifically, we focus on the increased challenges to the hegemony of the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) by a wave of young, working-class emigrants, who contentiously broadened the limits and operative goals/meanings of the sport in the range. In doing so, this paper examines the controversy that erupted within the climbing community over first ascent of Brussels Peak in 1948, followed by a discussion of the arrival of renowned climber Hans Gmoser (1932-2006), whose early activities in the Rockies' eastern front irrevocably challenged local tradition and the hegemony of the ACC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]