One of three routes through Miette Pass.

Origin of the name unknown.

When the Allen-Thrasher Lumber Company set up a sawmill four miles west of Loos in 1920, they named it Snowshoe, after the nearby Snowshoe Creek, a name appearing in the 1915 Provincial Pre-emptor’s map. The company had trouble with the payroll in 1928, and when the mill burned down the next year it was the end of the line. Another small mill operated there for a while in the early 1940s. The Snowshoe post office was open from 1924 to 1944.

“On the opposite side of Robson Glacier is a rock mass of similar construction to Rearguard,” noted Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] during the Alpine Club of Canada’s 1911 expedition to the Mount Robson area. “It has been named Ptarmigan Mountain by Coleman, from the numbers of this species of grouse —Snowbirds, they are called by the hunters, prospectors and packers, from the fact that in winter they are pure white and their habitat is at snow line — seen on the alplands below them. Unfortunately, there is already a Ptarmigan Peak, Pass and Lake near Laggan on the C.P.R., and this name will require a change. Snowbird Mountain and Pass might be substituted.” Arthur Philemon Coleman [1852–1939] explored in the area in 1907 and 1908.

“Ptarmigan Mountain” is now called “Titkana Peak.”

At the headwaters of Smoky River and Robson River.

This local name for the Morkill River was in use before the surveyor Dalby Brooks Morkill [1880–1955] visited the area in 1913. Stanley Washburn [1878–1950] camped on the “Big Smoky” in 1909. It appears on the 1915 Provincial Pre-Emptors map as “Morkill (Little Smoky).”

In 1909 Stanley Washburn [1878–1950] said that Small River was one of the names “given by the trappers.”

Edward Willet Dorland Holway [1853–1923], an American banker and mycologist, approached the creek from its headwaters in 1915:

At the head of Horse Creek is a great glacier with several peaks about 10,500 feet, and between Horse Creek and Small River, on a branch of which we now were, is a very fine glacier-covered mountain around 10,500 feet.…
We followed Small River to a cabin on the Fraser, where we found flour and potatoes, crossed in the morning to an old construction camp, where there were just spikes enough to build a small raft, upon which we piled our things and floated down to Croydon, where we had left our trunks.

Origin of the name unknown.

“[A] name already in local use, referring to a sleeper fire which burned part of the area some years ago…” (memo from BC Parks, file C.1.62)