200 million years ago, the Rocky Mountains and all of Canada’s western mountain ranges did not exist. In fact, the mountains that we now roam across were once buried deep beneath the ocean’s surface. But about 180 million years ago, a series of tectonic plates began to push across the Pacific Ocean and collide with North America. As each plate hit, the tremendous pressure forced the mountains up into the air – first the Rockies, then the Purcells and Interior Ranges, and finally the Coast Range.

About 2 million years ago, the climate cooled and the winter snow began to accumulate faster than the summers could melt it. As the snow built up year after year, it became pressed into ice, and the Age of Glaciers began. Vast ice sheets advanced and retreated over periods of thousands of years, with the latest retreat from the region occurring just 10,000 years ago. These glaciers scoured the land, taking rock and earth from one place and depositing it somewhere else, and they are what gave the Purcell Mountains their current shape.

Evidence of the vast ice sheets can be seen throughout the Purcells, and many glaciers still exist in both the Purcell Mountains and the neighbouring Selkirks. In fact, from the Lodge it’s possible to see glaciers clinging to the mountain sides of the imposing Sir Donald Range across the valley.