Go forth, sons and daughters of the mountains, and seek to fill three cups. One shall be the Cup of Wilderness, and it can only be filled by immersion in the world the way it was meant to be — natural and unchanged by humans. The second shall be the Cup of Camaraderie, which is filled with the closeness of companions for long periods in high-stakes, inspiring terrain. The third, and most important, is the Cup of Self. Only by drawing your well near to dry, digging down to the bedrock of your physical being and exposing your frayed edges to the mountains, can you fill this cup.
Seven Ant-Like Specks crawl up the steep, open avalanche slopes at the headwaters of Rossland Creek, in the Central Selkirks, on our seven-day traverse of the Goat Range. We are torn between spacing out for safety and staying close to one another for safety.
Most die-hard traversers are seeking to fill up their personal buckets; they’re forming more accurate versions of themselves. Like the Buddhist pilgrimage to Mount Kailash or the Muslim mission to Mecca, ski tours are essentially a vehicle towards enlightenment through a conscious choice to challenge yourself among fellow believers. On our pilgrimage, we’ve even got the loving company of our dogs, which proves helpful on the final ascent from Rossland Creek to the McKean Col. Our canine companions, Maya and Chewy, key into something above us on the ridge. Our eyes strain upwards, hoping for a glimpse of the range’s namesake mountain goats or maybe a rare wolverine sighting. But instead, two of the brown boulders melting into the sun on the steep, snowy ridge begin to move; it’s a mother grizzly and her cub, right on our intended route. A low, rolling groan from the mother griz reaches our ears, and we pull out the maps to look for an alternate route to the col.
Our feet groan, blistered and corpse-like, after days of sweat-saturated imprisonment in plastic ski boots. The ache in our shoulders wrestles for dominance with the searing burn where our heavy pack straps rub. Lips and noses are doing their best bacon impressions after a few days on snowfields in the hot spring sun, and every muscle seems to protest each inch we travel, whether it is balancing on skins up a frozen slope or breaking trail in a shady, north-aspect valley. Avalanches, cornices, creeks and crevasses wait for a single misstep. With the weight on our backs, even a simple caught edge can pop a knee or send you sliding down an icy slope of doom.
Multi-day ski traverses entail setting out for days or weeks into wild mountains in full winter conditions. The snow and the cold, while they add their layers of risk, also make travel much easier in many ways, by covering alder, devil’s club, small creeks, glacial crevasses and other obstacles that make off-trail travel an impossibility, or at least unpleasant, during the summer months. Your shelter, a warm sleeping bag and sleeping mat, extra warm clothes, and a stove and fuel, plus mountaineering equipment, all must be carried on your back.
Unlike our daily lives, every single decision you make out there has an impact. That reality creates a clear line between black and white, almost like a hyper-real binary system.” -Kari Medig.
On a traverse, each morning boils down to a daily ritual whose only comfort is its familiarity. Awake to the beep of a watch alarm, the ache of dehydration countered only by the ironic throb of a dangerously full bladder. Peel yourself from a toasty sleeping bag, careful not to knock the ice from the inner tent walls onto your tent mates. Pull on a down jacket, ski pants, and slip into down booties. A familiar pump and spark lights the camp stove to melt snow for the day’s water, and more importantly, coffee. Ski-boot liners frozen solid are stuffed inside still-warm sleeping bags in the hopes they will at least partially thaw before feet are wedged into them. Use frozen fingers to pack up camp and stuff a rehydrated breakfast into a protesting stomach that needs the calories.
But hours later, lying on the trail and trading turns with your closest friends as far from the rest of the world as you can get, nothing feels more divine.
The epic, ski-carrying slog out — in plastic telemark boots—down the washed-out Poplar Creek forest road is, oddly, as satisfying as the daily, 1,000-metre powder descents we’ve just left behind.
Story by Dave Quinn. Photos by Kari Medig
November 24, 2015 KOOTENAY MOUNTAIN CULTURE
Dave Quinn
Born in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Dave is a wildlife biologist, educator, wilderness guide, writer and photographer whose work is driven by his passion for wilderness and wild spaces. His work with endangered mountain caribou and badgers, threatened fisher and grizzly, as well as lynx and other species, has helped shape his understanding of the Kootenay backcountry and its wildlife, and helped shape his efforts to protect what remains. His writing and photography have helped fill the pages of publications such as British Columbia Magazine, Westworld, the Financial Post, Backcountry, Adventure Kayak, as well as the Patagonia and MEC catalogues.