Mount Burgess

---

title: "Mount Burgess" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["president-range", "two-thousanders-of-british-columbia", "mountains-of-yoho-national-park", "kootenay-land-district"] description: "Mountain in Yoho NP, BC, Canada" topic_path: "geography/united-kingdom" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Burgess" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Mountain in Yoho NP, BC, Canada ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox mountain"]

Field	Value
name	Mount Burgess
photo	EmeraldLake_TimonOrawski.jpg
photo_size	250px
photo_caption	Mount Burgess background and Emerald Lake foreground
elevation_m	2599
elevation_ref
prominence_m	418
prominence_ref
range	President Range
parent_peak	Mount Field (2642 m)
listing	Mountains of British Columbia
location	British Columbia, Canada
district	Kootenay Land District
map	Canada British Columbia
map_caption	Location in British Columbia
mapframe	yes
mapframe-zoom	8
mapframe-caption	Interactive map of Mount Burgess
coordinates
coordinates_ref
topo	NTS
first_ascent	1892 by James J. McArthur and H. Tuzo
easiest_route	Scramble
::

| name = Mount Burgess | photo = EmeraldLake_TimonOrawski.jpg | photo_size = 250px | photo_caption = Mount Burgess background and Emerald Lake foreground | elevation_m = 2599 | elevation_ref = | prominence_m = 418 | prominence_ref= | range = President Range | parent_peak = Mount Field (2642 m) | listing = Mountains of British Columbia | location = British Columbia, Canada | district = Kootenay Land District | map = Canada British Columbia | map_caption = Location in British Columbia | mapframe = yes | mapframe-zoom = 8 | mapframe-caption = Interactive map of Mount Burgess | coordinates = | coordinates_ref = | topo = NTS | first_ascent = 1892 by James J. McArthur and H. Tuzo | easiest_route = Scramble Mount Burgess, 2599 m, is a mountain in Yoho National Park and is part of the President Range in the Canadian Rockies. It is located in the southwest buttress of Burgess Pass in the Emerald River and Kicking Horse River Valleys.

History

It was named in 1886 by astronomer Otto Klotz after Alexander MacKinnon Burgess, the Deputy Minister of the Interior at the time when Klotz worked for a railway construction.

In 1892, James J. McArthur was the first to ascend this mountain. He was completing a survey of the lands adjacent to the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In 1909, geologist Charles D. Walcott discovered the Burgess Shale deposit of fossils with fine details on Mount Burgess. The Burgess Shale is a black shale fossil bed (Lagerstätte) named after nearby Burgess Pass, in which are found new and unique species, many in fact constituting entire new phyla of life, and even today some of these unique species have proven impossible to classify. The fossils are especially valuable because they include appendages and soft parts that are rarely preserved. At 508 million years (middle Cambrian) old, it is one of the earliest fossil beds containing soft-part imprints.

The mountain has two summits. The lower north summit was named Walcott Peak in his honour.

Between 1954 and 1971, Mount Burgess was featured on the back of the Canadian ten-dollar bill.

In 1984, UNESCO declared the area a World Heritage Site.

References

| title = 1954: The Canadian Landscape Series | publisher = Bank of Canada Museum | access-date = 2019-10-09 }} | publisher=Rocky Mountain Books|location = Calgary | year=1999|isbn=0-921102-67-4|pages=260–261}} | last = Thorington | first = J. Monroe | publisher = American Alpine Club | isbn = 978-1376169003 | others = With the collaboration of Putnam, William Lowell | year = 1966 | orig-year = 1921 | page = 139 | chapter = Kicking Horse Pass to Howse Pass | edition = 6th}}

References

1. "Mount Burgess".
2. {{cite bivouac
3. "Mount Burgess".
4. (2001). "Lake Louise & Yoho". Gem Trek Publishing.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::