| Rumrunner's Run Phillipps Pass is named after Michael Phillipps, a Hudson's Bay Company trader who first recorded this pass in 1873 and later constructed the first trail across it in 1879. This 1550 m-high pass over the Continental Divide offers the hiker a chance to re-live the days of Prohibition when the sale of alcohol was banned in Alberta.
Duration half-day Access
Today, the first wagon road built through Crowsnest Pass offers an uneventful walk. But not during the first decades of this century when Phillipps Pass witnessed numerous rumrunners carrying illicit liquor from British Columbia into Coleman, Blairmore, Hillcrest and Bellevue. "Blind pigs" selling bootleg whiskey were both popular and numerous. This was especially true after 1916 when Alberta voted to restrict the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages. Prohibition was popular among supporters of the temperance movement but not among many of the general populace and illegal stills churning out moonshine and "blind pigs" or "speakeasies" carried out their business, often openly defying the law. The difficulties of regulating the law eventually brought about the lifting of Prohibition in 1923. The days of Prohibition offer some of the more exciting dramas in Alberta history. One of the most successful rumrunners was Emilio Picariello, or as he was affectionately named, Emperor Pick. He owned the Alberta Hotel in Blairmore which fronted for a "blind pig". Using a Model T Ford with concrete-filled pipe bumpers, the Emperor ran liquor across Phillipps Pass for several years. To the constant chagrin of the newly formed Alberta Provincial Police, the Emperor and his son slipped through every roadblock and trap they set - except the last one. Tipped off one night that the Emperor's son was running a carload of booze into the Pass, the Police gave chase. It ended in downtown Coleman where the son was injured during a shoot-out. The Emperor, hearing that his son had been killed, tore into town with a companion, Florence Lassandro. In a confrontation with Constable Lawson, the officer was killed and Picariello and Lassandro were both charged with murder. Now, to that date no woman had been hanged in Alberta. At the trial Lassandro was identified as having pulled the trigger in the hope that both would be acquitted. Nevertheless, both of the accused ended their days on the gallows. To this day Lassandro remains the only woman to be hanged in the province. From the trailhead the road, now a pleasant old track bordered by lodgepole pine stands, makes a long steady climb to the top of the pass. Take a break occasionally to pause and look back towards British Columbia and the mountain ranges on the western horizon. Somewhere along this part of the tramp is reputedly a graveyard dating back to 1898 when the Canadian Pacific Railway, pushing to complete its line to Kootenay Lake, hired some four thousand men. A large percentage of the labourers were Chinese who had worked on the construction of the main line in the late 1870's and early 1880's. Apparently a number of them succumbed to a cholera epidemic and were buried at an unknown site near the western end of Phillipps Pass. Near the top of the pass the old road joins a new, roughly-gravelled road leading to a microwave tower. For a spectacular view of the entire length of the Pass on the Alberta side, it is worth hiking the extra 3.5 km up the switchbacks to the microwave transmitter tower on the top of Crowsnest Ridge. Transmitters of long distance telephone and television intercommunication, microwave towers are built approximately 50 km apart, the limit that wavelengths can travel due to the curvature of the earth. The construction of this tower was both costly and time consuming. The rocky slope had to be blasted so that the road you are walking on could be built. Also, high winds often prevented crews from working much past mid-morning. Immediately below the ridge are Island, Crowsnest and Emerald Lakes, the Island Lake campground and the quarry of the Summit Lime works. The economy of the Crowsnest Pass depended heavily on the fortunes of the coal industry. Fluctuations in the world and Canadian markets, strikes and shortages of rail cars resulted in a volatile local economy. To offset the dependency on coal, a number of enterprises sprang up before World War I. Logging and quarrying are two secondary industries which have survived and given the Pass some economic stability, especially needed since 1983 when the last coal mine closed. Used primarily in the mortar of brick and as a constituent of cement, the limestone deposits in the Pass make quarrying a profitable business. It all started at the turn of the century when E. G. Hazell, on hearing that this limestone deposit could produce a plastic lime that spread easily with a trowel, purchased the business from two men who had first exploited these deposits. For nearly a century, the Hazell family and its Summit Lime Works Ltd. have supplied western Canada and north-west United States with calcium lime. In contrast to the quarry of the Summit Lime Works are the limestone deposits across Highway 3. An old quarry which had been closed for a number of years was reactivated recently for rip-rap for the Oldman Dam. Return to the Phillipps Pass road and continue eastwards. Above and out of sight on your left is Mount Phillipps which is actually the west peak of Mount Tecumseh. Shortly beyond the intersection is a sink hole to the right named Phillipps Lake. In 1914 the Boundary Commission theorized the water drained underground, surfacing again at the cave entry along Crowsnest Lake (see "Crowsnest Lake" hike on page 79). But the British Columbia Commissioners disagreed with their Alberta and Federal contemporaries with the result that the question was allowed to rest. Just past the lake is a concrete block marking the provincial boundary. There are a couple of forks in the road but they all soon rejoin. The hike ends at the Canadian Pacific Railway crossing in Sentinel where you have parked your first vehicle. Nearby, at the edge of Crowsnest Lake, archaeologists have discovered a major prehistoric campsite that spans some 4,000 years of occupation. Peoples of the Mummy Cave culture first camped at the lake some 8,000 years ago, over the millennia returning each summer to hunt and fish. Distances
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