Mount Vaux is a mountain summit located in the

Kicking Horse River The Kicking Horse River is in the Canadian Rockies of southeastern British Columbia, Canada. The river was named in 1858, when James Hector, a member of the Palliser Expedition, reported being kicked by his packhorse while exploring the river. Hec ...

valley of

Yoho National Park Yoho National Park ( ) is a national park of Canada. It is located within the Rocky Mountains along the western slope of the Continental Divide of the Americas in southeastern British Columbia, bordered by Kootenay National Park to the south and ...

, in the Ottertail Range of the

Canadian Rockies The Canadian Rockies (french: Rocheuses canadiennes) or Canadian Rocky Mountains, comprising both the Alberta Rockies and the British Columbian Rockies, is the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains. It is the easternmost par ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. Its nearest higher peak is

Mount Goodsir Mount Goodsir (or the Goodsir Towers) is the highest mountain in the Ottertail Range, a subrange of the Park Ranges in British Columbia. It is located in Yoho National Park, near its border with Kootenay National Park. The mountain has two majo ...

, to the southeast. Mount Vaux can be seen from Highway 1, the

Trans-Canada Highway The Trans-Canada Highway (French: ; abbreviated as the TCH or T-Can) is a transcontinental federal–provincial highway system that travels through all ten provinces of Canada, from the Pacific Ocean on the west coast to the Atlantic Ocean on ...

, which traverses the western foot of the mountain, as well as from Emerald Lake. Vaux is pronounced ''Vox'', rhymes with box.

History

The mountain was named in 1858 by

James Hector Sir James Hector (16 March 1834 – 6 November 1907) was a Scottish-New Zealand geologist, naturalist, and surgeon who accompanied the Palliser Expedition as a surgeon and geologist. He went on to have a lengthy career as a government employe ...

for his friend

William Sandys Wright Vaux William Sandys Wright Vaux FRS (28 February 1818 – 21 June 1885), was a celebrated English antiquary and numismatist of the 19th century. Biography Vaux was born in 1818 in Oxford. He was the only son of William Vaux (d. 1844), prebendary ...

(1818–1885), a resident antiquarian at the British Museum who helped secure funds to support Hector's Palliser Expedition report. Mount Vaux from Emerald Lake

The mountain's name was officially adopted in 1924 when approved by the

Geographical Names Board of Canada The Geographical Names Board of Canada (GNBC) is a national committee with a secretariat in Natural Resources Canada, part of the Government of Canada, which authorizes the names used and name changes on official federal government maps of Can ...

. The

first ascent In mountaineering, a first ascent (abbreviated to FA in guide books) is the first successful, documented attainment of the top of a mountain or the first to follow a particular climbing route. First mountain ascents are notable because they e ...

of the mountain was made in 1901 by Charles E. Fay, James Outram, and J. Henry Scattergood, with Christian Hasler Sr. as guide. Outram described the view of the peak from Emerald Lake in his book, ''"In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies"'' as follows, ''"The drive is a lovely one, particularly where the "long-drawn aisles" of stately firs open out a vista piercing the tall, tapering trees, that form a grand enshadowed avenue nearly a mile in length, beyond which the white sunlit crest of glacier-crowned Mt. Vaux leaps high into the heavens."''In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies, James Outram, Rocky Mountain Books, 2007

Geology

Mount Vaux is composed of

sedimentary rock Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth's surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particle ...

laid down during the

Precambrian The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of th ...

Cambrian The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million years ag ...

periods. Formed in shallow seas, this sedimentary rock was pushed east and over the top of younger rock during the

Laramide orogeny The Laramide orogeny was a time period of mountain building in western North America, which started in the Late Cretaceous, 70 to 80 million years ago, and ended 35 to 55 million years ago. The exact duration and ages of beginning and end of the o ...

Climate

Based on the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, nota ...

, Mount Vaux is located in a subarctic climate zone with cold, snowy winters, and mild summers. Winter temperatures can drop below −20 °C with wind chill factors below −30 °C. Precipitation

runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock market ...

from Mount Vaux drains into tributaries of the

which is a tributary of the Columbia River.

References

External links

* Weather forecast
Mount Vaux
* Parks Canada web site
Yoho National Park
* Sonny Bou website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaux Three-thousanders of British Columbia Canadian Rockies Mountains of Yoho National Park Kootenay Land District

History

Geology

Climate

See also

References

External links