Labelled “Great Shale Hill” on BC-Alberta boundary sheets. The summit ridge extends over four miles westward from Shale Pass along the Continental Divide, forming the interprovincial boundary.

Sarah Bevier [1861–1927] is buried in the McBride cemetery. Ether Bevier [1882–1959] married George Clarence Monroe [1885 –1974] and settled on Mountainview Road in 1914. George and Ethel were market gardeners, farmers, and preachers. They initiated the McBride Farmer’s Institute and the McBride Fall Fair. They were Mountainview School trustees establishing the school in its permanent location while promoting Mountainview as a place to settle and raise families. They provided housing for settlers answering Ethel’s promotions in The Free Press.

“To think that I helped skid logs for that little shack brought back many memories of the the people I knew around there,” recalled Alex Cadieux de Courville in 1976. “Like the people of the West End: Bevier, Monroe, Emery Olden, and a good many others.”

This “splendid snow mountain” was christened Mount Bess by guide John Yates [1880– ] of Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta, during the 1910 expedition of John Norman Collie [1859–1942] and Arnold Louis Mumm [1859–1927] to the Mount Robson region, during which they made the first ascent of Mount Bess.

Elizabeth “Bessie” Ann Gunn [1892–1960] was a member of the expedition. She was the daughter of Peter Gunn [1864–1927] and Mary (Ritch) Gunn. Peter Gunn had come to Canada from Scotland in 1883 to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company. His wife-to-be Mary, from the Orkney Islands, followed a few years later. Bess was born while the family lived in Fort St. John, where Peter was factor for the HBC. In 1900, after postings in Grouard and Dunvegan, Peter became factor at Lac Ste. Anne, his last posting. Lac Ste. Anne was was a stop for packers, mountaineers, and trappers heading from Edmonton to Jasper and points north. Yates was a local packer and mail-carrier, and Bess worked at the post office. Old-timers say Yates had a crush on her.

In 1911 Bess married Charles Milton McKeen [1885–1972], a local homesteader and teamster who was later bookkeeper, magistrate, judge, and from 1921 to 1935, member of the Alberta Legislative Assembly for Lac Ste. Anne, representing the United Farmers of Alberta (Peter Gunn had earlier been Liberal MLA for the same riding). Bess spoke fluent Cree and was often called upon as interpreter. She died in the Mayerthorpe, Alberta, hospital.

“Bess Pass, 5,330 feet in altitude and Jackpine Pass, 6,694 feet, are on the route north [of Mount Robson] to Mt. Sir Alexander. The former is situated in very spectacular surroundings between Mt. Bess and Mt. Whiteshield: the latter is much frequented by grizzlies…” — Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945]

Origin of the name unknown.

I had said good-bye to my companions and alone started off in the storm to make my high camp. I crossed the gravel bed of the Robson Divide, then scrambled for another mile over the great rocks that strewed the shores of Berg Lake. The short day was nearly done by the time I had passed over the rock-strewn floor of the valley below the lake and bridged its turbulent river; then, for more than two thousand feet, I packed my load of blankets and instruments to a shelf on the cliffs, in mid air.

Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] explored the Mount Robson area with a large party in 1911:

From the elevated ice-field, fed by avalanching snows from the sides of Robson, a gigantic ice cascade tumbles down rock precipices and buries its nose in the waters of Berg Lake. At frequent intervals great chunks of ice break off with a report like cannon, and, bonding and rattling down the steep incline, plunge into the clear water of the lake. I have seen one of these enormous ice-blocks send a spout of water fully twenty feet into the air, while the waves caused by the upheaval wash to the farther shore. The incessant ice-falls soon fill the lake with floating blocks which drift hither and thither as the wind directs. Imagine a lake a mile-and-a-half long, three-quarters of a mile wide, of prefect turquoise-blue, filling the whole width of the valley floor, its surface dotted thickly with miniature icebergs, showing snow white against it.