The difficulty of access to the core of the massif delayed actual sighting, measurement and climbing of
Mount Waddington until 1936; it had only been espied from
Vancouver Island by climbers in the 1930s and was at first referred to as Mystery Mountain - because its existence until then had been unknown. Apparently even in
First Nations lore its existence was spoken of only vaguely, as a possibility, and it seems unlikely the core of the massif was penetrated by any First Nations adventurer given the tremendous difficulty posed even for mountaineers equipped with modern outdoor gear. At its eastern edge, deep in the Grand Canyon of the
Homathko River, occurred the first gruesome event in the guerilla war known to history as the
Chilcotin War of 1864. This resulted from the attempt by
Alfred Waddington to build a road from
Bute Inlet to
Barkerville.
Port Waddington, a land-survey left over from those days, remains on the map on the south bank of the
Homathko where it empties into
Bute Inlet.
Waddington's Road was never completed because of the war, but was examined in later years as one of the main possible routings for the mainline of the
Canadian Pacific Railway. Choice of the route would see the terminus of the railway at
Victoria but despite strong favour from that city and the province the railway chose
Burrard Inlet, which as a result became today's
Vancouver. == Neighbouring ranges and icefields ==