Howse Pass (elev. 1,525 metres), occasionally touted in recent times as a practical highway route to shorten travel time between Edmonton and Vancouver, was crossed in 1810 by Joseph Howse, a Hudson's Bay Company trader. The pass had been crossed earlier in 1807 by David Thompson, who gave it the name Howse Pass on his 1814 map. Howse had been in charge of Carlton House, near present-day Prince Albert, Sask., from 1799 to 1809. He retired to England in 1815.Another view of Howse Pass.

* David Thompson, accompanied by his wife and three children, spent time in the upper reaches of the North Saskatchewan River Valley in June, 1807, before crossing through the "Shining Mountains" into what now is British Columbia. His sextant reading indicates they were in the general area of Two O'Clock Creek Flats on Kootenay Plains. Thompson's eldest child, Fanny, celebrated her sixth birthday on June 10 of that year, while they still were camped on Kootenay Plains.Fanny was born at Rocky Mountain House.It was not unusual for Charlotte Small and the children in the early years to accompany Thompson  on many of his travels.
*Source Nordegg Historical society

Athabasca Pass (elev. 1,748 metres) was crossed by David Thompson in 1811, and became thereafter an important route to the Columbia River system. The pass takes its name from the Athabasca River, which rises southeast of the pass; the name in Cree means "where the reeds are," a description of the marshy delta where the river enters Lake Athabasca some 1,000 kilometres away in northeastern Alberta .

At the summit of the pass is a small round lake called Committee Punch Bowl, where Sir George Simpson treated his companions to a bottle of wine in 1825. The name is a tribute to the governing committee of the Hudson's Bay Company.

When crossing Athabaska Pass in January of 1811, David Thompson discovered that a bag of musket balls was missing. He suspected that a wolverine had carried the bag off. Search for the bag proved  unavailing. Indeed, the bag was not found for 110 years when in August of 1921, one of a party of the Interprovincial Boundary Commission found 114 deeply eroded musket balls just north of the summit of the Pass.