Scott Hayes | [email protected]
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Loni Klettl鈥檚 slideshow presentation on the heyday of the Tonquin Valley served well to stoke the fond memories for the capacity crowd at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum on Monday evening.
There were many smiles and laughs over the 2.5-hour talk, even though it ended on a bittersweet note similar to the circumstances that ended human access to the Tonquin Valley last year.
There were many who could have done the job but perhaps Klettl was the perfect choice for the task. As a child of a former park warden who has also been the spokesperson for the Jasper Trails Alliance, she practically knows all of the area like the back of her hand.
Combine that with her prodigious memory of people, places and who lost their ski (and where) made the amateur historian into an incredible raconteur for the task of recapping multiple decades of the fabled backcountry that so many came to love and cherish.
That doesn鈥檛 mean that it was an easy task.
鈥淚t was a tough one to do,鈥� she admitted at the end of her talk.聽
鈥淗onestly, guys. They asked me a month ago to do this. I said, 鈥極h, god, help me,鈥� because it was just too painful.鈥�
Soon, however, she realized how important it was and that she had to do it. She started by assembling a vast collection of photographs going back to the early 1900s, which took her more than three weeks just to go through and put in order.
Once that was done, the task was much more manageable to her. All that she needed was a methodology. She said that her work as a server helped her to program the presentation in different courses, just like a meal.
鈥淚 had to come up with a strategy because it was so freaking overwhelming,鈥� she said.
The first course started with the early history of skiing in Jasper National Park, before she moved onto telling her tales that featured a cast of colourful characters. She made the bygone eras come alive with her lively and rapid recanting of the many wonders and few mishaps of tracksetting and skiing through the ages.聽
She spilled some secrets and even offered a few no-so-well-kept secrets. The unforgettable and sold-out evening went by fast; you really had to be there to experience it. The same could easily be said for skiing in the Tonquin Valley, now closed off to further Parks Canada鈥檚 efforts to protect the dwindling mountain caribou herds from complete extirpation.
For Klettl, who probably spent as much time in that area as anyone, she knew the evening would be emotional. She did well to hold off the tears though she didn鈥檛 hold back many of her thoughts and feelings.
鈥淚t was just really important to me because of just the collective memories that we all have and that we wish more people would have been able to have.鈥澛�
The talk was the fourth in the Stories from the Mountains series hosted by the Association of Jasper Climbers.
