Barrel-chested with a rolling mountain guide’s gait, Tyrolean felt hat, red wool knicker socks with specially knitted rows to cover his muscular calves and a hooked Peterson pipe always at his lips, when Brad White first met Willi Pfisterer in 1982 he was already a legend in the national park mountain rescue service. 

Born in Austria in 1926 to a family of climbers and mountain guides, Pfisterer had earned his assistant mountain guide’s license and was ranked fourth in Nordic combined (cross-country and ski jumping) when he took a ski instructors’ job in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains. Moving west soon afterward, Pfisterer worked in a garage and again as a ski instructor. While guiding on a two-week horse trip with legendary Columbia Valley outfitter Bill Harrison in 1955, Pfisterer climbed his first Canadian peak—the landmark northeast ridge of Sir Donald solo, without a rope.

By the time of his death last Wednesday (July 21) at 83, Pfisterer, who made his first 11,000-foot (3,353-metre) ascent when he was 11, had climbed some 1,600 peaks, including seven ascents of the Canadian Rockies’ highest, Mount Robson, and as a member of Hans Gmoser’s team that made the first Canadian ascent of the east ridge of Canada’s highest, 5,959-metre Mount Logan, in 1959. 

After opening up Jasper’s first ski shop in the late 1950s and coaching several young local skiers to become Canadian champions, Pfisterer moved briefly to Kelowna where he helped establish a ski school at Big White. He operated a trucking business in Penticton for a year until he moved his family to Revelstoke to work in Glacier National Park with North America’s biggest avalanche control program, protecting traffic through Rogers Pass on the new Trans Canada Highway in 1961.

When Walter Perren, Parks’ first alpine specialist died of leukemia, Pfisterer was hired as alpine specialist responsible for Jasper, Waterton, Revelstoke/Glacier and Kluane parks in 1968, at the same time Peter Fuhrman took the same job in Banff, Kootenay, Yoho and Pacific Rim. 

Throughout his career as a mountain rescue skills pioneer, Pfisterer exhibited an unfailing recognition of mountain sense in keen, young members—and yet to be members—of the warden service. 

“Willi had a very good eye for sizing up people, especially with younger people,” said retired Banff park rescue specialist Gord Irwin. “He saw something in me when I was still working as a park naturalist, something that I didn’t even see at the time.”

Known and loved by many for his patented, sometimes gruff sense of humour, Pfisterer will be forever remembered for his original sayings and natural story-telling talents. 

“He wasn’t ever disingenuous at all,” Irwin said. “What you saw was what you got. If you were willing to put in the time and energy and showed you had some skill, he’d put in the effort to teach you.”

Once during a Nordic skiing clinic, Irwin, 25 years Pfisterer’s junior, struggled to keep up.

“I thought I was in pretty good shape, but I could not keep up with him,” Irwin recalled. “Finally, with my tongue hanging out, I managed to keep up stride for stride. Then Willi turned and started talking. ‘I finally tired you out enough to use technique to keep up.’ That cagy old mountain fox taught me another thing right there; technique is more important than strength.”

Living by the example that a mountain rescue team must nurture its members to function at its best, Pfisterer was always thinking ahead. When the very first helicopter rescue systems were being developed, Pfisterer established the training program for the pilots who would be flying wardens to steep mountainsides on rescue missions. He established numerous skills exams for aspiring public safety wardens, even climbing Mount Robson with his warden charges. Pfisterer was also instrumental in setting up regular snow study plots in Banff and Jasper, implementing avalanche control techniques for the Icefields Parkway, establishing high altitude rescue protocols in Kluane, leading skills courses in the Columbia Icefield area, in creating North America’s first professional dog handling position and establishing Canada’s involvement in the international rescue commission. 

Later in life, Pfisterer embraced long wilderness canoe trips, panned for gold in Canada’s far north and encouraged young rock climbers to develop the sport in Thailand.

Sadly, one of Pfisterer’s last rescues before retiring in 1987 involved retrieving the body of his son Freddie, who was killed in an avalanche while guiding heli-skiers in Blue River. 

A founding member of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides and the Canadian Avalanche Association, one of Pfisterer’s best-loved lines was delivered to then Prime Minster Pierre Trudeau, whom he guided up several peaks, including Jasper’s Mount Edith Cavell, by its formidable east ridge.

When Trudeau told Pfisterer he trusted him, but wondered about the rope, Pfisterer famously replied, “Well, like every government rope, we bought it on the lowest bid. But don’t worry; if it breaks, I got a better one at home.”

Pfisterer enjoyed a close friendship with Trudeau, even attending the opening of parliament. 

“He had an incredible sense of humour, he was always telling jokes and could always see the humour in anything,” said Brad White, BNP mountain safety program specialist who trained under Pfisterer. “He was a real mentor to me. He wasn’t afraid to let me make mistakes but he was there in the background supporting my development through my guide’s courses. There’s a whole generation of wardens who trained with Willi; that is part of a legacy that has gone. We’re definitely going to miss the old guy.”

A service will take place today at Jasper’s Catholic Church at 1 p.m., followed by a gathering at Maligne Range, which is open to all.