How did the world discover the Rockies? To find out, Guy Clarkson follows in the footsteps of the earliest European visitors. They arrived by canoe and by horse and dogteam to expand their fur trading empires as far as the Pacific Ocean. The Rockies were at first nothing more than a barrier to be conquered. Game trails that had become footpaths became roads and a railway that not only consolidated business but unified a country. On those first CPR trains came esaterners armed with easels and cameras and climbing gear. Wilderness became like a religion for the affluent, and their evangelizing informed the world of an all-too-accessible Shangri-La. Clarkson joins modern-day adventurers and historians to relive how the earliest visitors reveled in a Land of Riches. It's a journey by dogteam, locomotive, canoe and climbing party to the roof of the Canadian Rockies. From there, Clarkson can almost see forever, and that's the problem. The future is cause for concern.