Cathedral Mountain

 mountain  Add category

3,189 m (10,463 ft)

Located in the upper Kicking Horse Valley opposite the Yoho Valley in Yoho National Park above major headwaters of the Columbia River. Can be seen from Highways 1 and 93N.

Named by James Outram in 1886. The mountain features imposing steep cliffs are reminiscent of the walls of a cathedral. First ascended in 1901.

Arthur Lismer, an artist who was one of Canada's "Group of Seven," was most impressed with Cathedral Mountain when he painted it in 1928 from the Opabin Plateau above Lake O'Hara. In a a letter to J. Russell Harper he wrote, "...This Cathedral Mountain to me was like a great gothic structure. It was an amazing thing. We were up to about 6 to 7000 feet, I suppose, and from every angle and in a vast territory like this you had to talk to your prey, as it were, to find a way of getting at it... There were buttresses and the pillars, towers and supporting weights like a vast piece of architecture..."

The mountain features Teacup Lake which in the past has periodically emptied itself causing major disruptions to the operation of the CPR in the valley below. The lake is situated on a glacier and is now regularly monitored and the flow is controlled.