In the manuscript “Reminiscence of Arctic Travel” Coleman recalled the extremely difficult descent down Mount Robson, he also recalled his epiphany on the mountain.

… It was slow and doleful work, but everywhere among the mountains my eyes wandered toward snowfields and ice tongues north or south, and my thoughts dwelt on the work of ice, that brittle solid which supports every load rolled upon it and yet is plastic enough to flow like a sluggish river.

But still my thoughts hovered over the question of ice and its contradictory modes of work. Ice became almost an obsession, its marvelous work now and its more marvellous work in the past. I began to collect ice ages, as other persons collect stamps, or engravings or old furniture; and the quest of things glacial led me into strange corners of the earth where traces of ancient glaciation had been described and might be studied.

Manuscript. A.P. Coleman. “On a Mountain Glacier; Chapter II Spitzbergen” in Reminiscence of Arctic Travels, ca 1930, 43