The bold first ascents. Sweeping mountaintop vistas. New mountain names. Behind the Ranges upends these time-worn mountaineering narratives of white male conquest to tell a different, postcolonial story.

From 1827, when botanical collector David Douglas claimed to have climbed the highest mountain in North America, to 1925, when a Japanese team ascended Mount Alberta, imperial fantasy ran rampant in the Canadian West. This period of exploration, map-making, park-making, and amateur sport saw the development of a mountaineering literature and club culture. It has been called "a golden age."

But the story behind the heroics lies with the men and women whose knowledge and work made mountaineering possible: the park labourers, the packers, the guides. This history brings those who have gone unrecognized into the picture and illuminates Indigenous agency. Behind the Ranges explains why some mountain stories get told, and others overlooked.