Samuel E.S. Allen

Samuel E.S. Allen was the intellectual heart of early exploration in the Lake Louise region; a brilliant cartographer and nomenclator whose legacy was cut short by tragedy. The son of a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker family, he first visited the Rockies in 1891; his most significant work came during the summers of 1894 and 1895 as a central figure in the Yale Lake Louise Club; Yale students and associates including Walter Wilcox, L.F. Frissell, and others.

Surveyor and nomenclator. Unlike Wilcox, who focused on photography and later fame (Camping in the Canadian Rockies), Allen became the group’s surveyor and namer of peaks. He approached the mountains with a moody, solitary intensity, often spending days alone or with a single guide, obsessed with understanding the “architecture” of the ranges. A falling rock struck Frissell on Mount Lefroy in 1894, shifting the group from pure alpinism to exploration and surveying.

Yule Carryer and Abbot Pass. Allen’s relationship with Indigenous peoples was exceptional for his era. In September 1894, after his companions had departed, he hired Yule Carryer; a highly educated Indigenous man (likely Stoney Nakoda or Cree-Métis) who had attended the University of Toronto and worked for the CPR. Together they made the first ascent of the “Death Trap” (the technical approach to what is now Abbot Pass) from the Lake O’Hara side; a climbing partnership Allen explicitly credited in his writings.

The 1894 map. Using a prismatic compass and aneroid barometer, Allen triangulated peak positions and altitudes with accuracy rivaling later government surveys. His privately printed 1894 map of the Lake Louise and Lake O’Hara region was the first to accurately place and name Mount Temple, Paradise Valley, and Lake O’Hara (after Colonel Robert O’Hara). It became the foundation for all subsequent maps of the area.

Valley of the Ten Peaks. Allen’s most enduring legacy is the Valley of the Ten Peaks. Rather than naming peaks for patrons or politicians, he honoured the Stoney Nakoda language, numbering them east to west: Heejee, Nom, Yamnee, Tonsa, Sapta, Shappee, Sagowa, Saknowa, Neptuak, Wenkchemna. Most were later renamed (Mount Fay, Mount Little, Mount Bowlen, etc.); Peak #6 (Shappee) was renamed Mount Allen in his honour by the Geographic Board of Canada in 1924; a distinction he never knew.

First ascents. With Wilcox and Frissell, Allen made the first ascent of Mount Temple in 1894 via the SW ridge. He named Mount St. Piran (1894) for the patron saint of Cornwall.

Tragedy. Upon returning to the United States after 1895, Allen suffered severe mental illness, diagnosed as dementia praecox (likely schizophrenia). He was institutionalized in the late 1890s and spent the remaining 40+ years of his life in confinement, never returning to the Rockies. He died in 1945.