In his book, "The Glittering Mountains of Canada," J. Monroe Thorington described Mount Ermatinger as, "a mountain of inspiring beauty: a long, knife-edged arete, rising from the Hooker Icefield in a jagged crest of uptilted rock strata, continuing into the north face and merging with a sheer, fluted wall of shining, green ice. The ice-wall is nearly a thousand feet high, broad and unbroken; in our combined experience we could think of but few so glorious. More than anything else it suggested the oncoming mass of a curling sea-wave, about to break and with the sunlight in its crest." It is remarkable that Edward Ermatinger was honoured by the naming of the peak as late as 1920, almost a century after he was involved with the Hudson Bay Company. It is known that he was a very close friend of John Tod, a pioneer fur trader and one of British Columbia's founding citizens. Tod retired from the fur trade in 1850. It is also known that Ermatinger was an accomplished musician and composer.