Kootenays town honours mountaineering legend with park

A tiny hamlet in southeastern B.C. is celebrating the life of a mountaineering icon Saturday with a park named in his honour.

Conrad Kain Park in Wilmer named after the man credited with making the first ascents of some of the toughest peaks in Western Canada was officially opened Saturday morning.

Kain settled in Wilmer after moving to Canada from Austria in 1909, and his adopted hometown is hosting a boisterous anniversary bash in his honour, complete with live music and a play tracing his journey.

The under-appreciated climbing legend is remembered primarily for three first ascents in western Canada Mount Robson in 1913, Mount Louis in 1916 and Bugaboo Spire in 1916 and he did it all with little more thansomehemp rope and his trademark pipe.

Leo Grillmair, a climber who also moved to B.C. from Austria, still manages to scramble up the remote Bugaboo Spire in the Rocky Mountains at the age of 79. He described Kain as an icon who stood just five feet five inches tall.

"For that time in our history, it was incredible what he has done. He was a small man, you know, but tough as wire," Grillmair said.

Kain paved the way for generations of climbers and guides, going with nails in his boots for grip where no person had dared.

Pat Morrow, the first climber to ascend the highest summits of each of the world's seven continents, said Kain has always been his inspiration.

"All he had was an old hemp rope and a packsack full of courage, and he left a legacy that, when modern-day climbers repeat some of his climbs, it leaves them in awe," Morrow said.

Kain died in Cranbrook, B.C, in 1934, at the age of 50. He was buried in the general section of the Cranbrook Cemetery.