SE of Berg Lake, E of Mount Waffl
53.1167 N 119.0875 W — Map 83E/3 — Google — GeoHack
Earliest known reference to this name is 1908 (Coleman)
Name officially adopted in 1956
Official in BC – Canada
Wheeler’s map Mount Robson 1912
Boundary Commission Sheet 32 A (surveyed in 1924) [as “Extinguisher”]

Near the “Extinguisher,” Main Glacier. Arthur Coleman, 1908
The Canadian Rockies: new and old trails
The name appears on the 1912 topographical map of the Mount Robson region that Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] prepared for his report on the 1911 Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition.
Smithsonian Institution director Charles Doolittle Walcott [1850–1927] called it the most valuable spot in the Rockies to geologists. “One of the names proposed by Dr. Coleman for a prominent monadnock that is surrounded by ice, east of Mount Robson, is ‘The Extinguisher’ and Mr. Wheeler has adopted the name on his map. I presume Dr. Coleman had in mind the conical extinguisher used in putting out candles in the olden times. It so happens that that particular mass of rock carries a very important bed of Cambro-Ordovician fossils, and will be referred to many times in the future in literature. It may be that I shall suggest a shorter and more euphonious name for it,” Walcott wrote to the Surveyor-General in 1912. His suggestion, “Billings Butte”, was not adopted.
“On the cirque immediately below Mount Resplendent stands a quaint tower of rock some 500 feet above the ice, named the Extinguisher from its likeness to the conical cap once used to put out the candle,” wrote Elizabeth Parker [1856–1944], a member of the Alpine Club of Canada’s 1913 camp at Robson Pass.
- Coleman, Arthur Philomen [1852–1939]. The Canadian Rockies: New and Old Trails. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1911. Internet Archive
- Walcott, Charles Doolittle [1850–1927]. “The monarch of the Canadian Rockies.” National Geographic Magazine, (1913):626. Internet Archive
- Parker, Elizabeth [1856–1944]. “A new field for mountaineering.” Scribner’s Magazine, 55 (1914)
- British Columbia Geographical Names. Extinguisher Tower