TRAVERSE OF THE OKANAGAN RANGE

By Dave Quinn, Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine

We lean against the airplane windows, flying between the Kootenays and British Columbia’s coast, trying in vain to comprehend the scale of forest removal we see in the landscape below. The ski tour we’re about to embark on seems like a vital way to truly experience the state of the province’s forests, to understand if it’s as bad as it looks from the sky. Unbelievable, we find out it’s worse.

In 2021, I set out with pro skier and Patagonia Ambassador Leah Evans and photographer Kari Medig to ski what we dubbed “The Worst Traverse”, a 115-kilometre (70-mile) grind through the Okanagan Range, which I wrote about for Patagonia’s “The Cleanest Line”, a storytelling series focused on social activism and environmental awareness.

We plan to ski the watersheds between Falkland and Peachland in five days – and it’s not what we expected. The older forest plantations are thick, unskiable walls of young pine and alder, and the thin strips of forest left between immense cutblocks are impassable head-high blowdown hell, forcing us on long detours in dangerous terrain where we can follow roads and link up newer cutblocks to cover any ground. In over 100 kilometres of slog, we ski through just over one kilometre of gorgeous spruce and ancient old-growth forest, where we recall the wonder and beauty of what we consider a “normal” ski traverse. But the area is also laid out with flagging tape and likely now another clear-cut ridge in the Okanagan Range. Sometimes, the truth is not what you hope for.

After five days, we are only two-thirds of the way, so we bail because we are low on food and morale. But despite rotten feet, sketchy crashes in cruddy snow with big packs, not-quite-solid snowpacks, and heart-breaking logged valleys, we have a sense of accomplishment and camaraderie from covering challenging ground together. Still, it’s one of the shittiest traverses I’ve ever attempted.