GDT 1: Mountaineering for Dummies

Waterton Lakes to Coleman

“We don't have that many miles today, so I let you sleep in.”

We weren't expecting the first day to be challenging. A simple 5 mile run to the border monument, then back again through town and out of the park. Waterton NP was the only national park we needed to go through in the two weeks before camping reservations opened again, so we'd be fine as long as we got to Crown Land to camp. After a leisurely breakfast, we hefted our overloaded packs and made for trail. It was 9am, and the air held a lingering chill.

“We're gonna be cold on this hike, Magpie.”

“I prefer the cold, actually. I hate being too hot, you know that. Glad we packed the extra layers though.”

“Yeah, you got that internal furnace. I'll be shivering.”

A huge wildfire in 2017 had damaged the park's infrastructure, and repairs were still ongoing. With much of the standard GDT route closed for construction, we hopped on the touristy Boundary Bay trail and headed south. It was surprisingly difficult. Constantine was two weeks removed from the epic roadwalk that is the Natchez Trace Trail, and was still in relatively good shape, but I was coming from three months of sedentary lockdown, and my body complained.

The first to speak was my cardiovascular system. Boundary Bay trail is not a challenging route on the map, but the lakeshore was punctuated by short, steep climbs that left me panting for breath. My heart hammered desperately with every uphill, and I berated myself for letting my inactivity go so far. Surely, this should be easy! How would I fare on the real peaks if I couldn't even manage this baby climb?

The sun, already high in the sky, began to gather some real strength, and soon I removed my top layer in a sweat. “It's hot!” I shouted this at Constantine's retreating back as I bent over my pack to stuff the thermal away.

“I knew you were going to say that!” He replied over his shoulder. “It's getting warm out!”

My new pack bounced awkwardly against my hips, and I fiddled and fussed with the adjustments. Another quarntine-brain oversight: I had ordered my pack without a hipbelt, because I already owned a removable one I liked. Unfortunately, this specific model was the only pack in the lineup that did not have an interchangeable hipbelt loop, and instead required the belt to be sewn in. Our last day in Pemberton had required some DIY emergency pack surgery - I had meticulously picked apart the seams, slid my favourite hipbelt through and stitched it up with dental floss. It wasn't a perfect fit, but I'd thought it close enough. Now, the bunched fabric at the hip pushed the weight deeply into my lower back, and I struggled to find a comfortable arrangement of buckles and straps. My shoulders ached with the improper load, and I felt every contact with the pack as a deep, tender bruise.

“Why is my pack so heavy?!” I shouted at Constantine.

“Five days of food!”

It was really starting to get hot. Constantine's back was soaked with sweat at our first five-minute break. I wolfed down a granola bar and we filled our bottles from a spring, then continued.

“We should have gotten up earlier,” I observed, sweating.

“We've only got twenty-two miles today, and ten of it’s roadwalk. You'll crush it.”

“Yeah. Twenty-two trail miles anyway. Plus five we're doing now.” We were close to the monument, and we were not concerned.

It was nearing eleven o'clock when we reached the border marker, and our excitement was not subdued. Neither Constantine nor I had been able to see this official terminus on our respective CDTs - my southbound hike had been diverted by snow closures, and his northbound disrupted by fires. We posed for pictures and sat languidly by the lakeshore, chatting over our skimpy pre-trail lunches with some kayakers who pulled up from the American side.

“Yeah, we've only got eighteen miles left today, so we're not in a rush,” we bragged, setting off around noon. My thru-hiker’s ego savoured their astonishment at our mileage, and I rebuked myself for being so cocky. The terrain and the town evoked in me a sense-memory of my first thru, when I knew nothing and grew blisters beneath a similarly heavy pack. I knew, somewhere at the back of my mind, that the mountains punish hubris, but that information did not get all the way through. We lazed and loafed our way back to town, stopping to skip stones and bemoan the sudden influx of day-trippers clogging the trail. My shoulders ached, and my hips did too. I panted and puffed just the same over the quick, fierce inclines and sweated through my shirt as we once again reached the road. It was 2pm. I bought a popsicle, and checked the route out of town.

“I think it's longer than we thought. I'm getting… hmm, that trail's closed too. I really should have read the guidebook before we got here, I think it's actually twenty-four.”

We had rounded down the decimal miles and thrown off our total, and another road was closed for construction now too. The sun was beating down. There was nothing for it. “Wanna go get this roadwalk?” “Yeah, might as well. Sun's not going down til ten, we've got time.”

Time was not the problem. The first four miles went quickly enough, and we pounded up the hot asphalt to yet another closed road, though this one was at least open for bicycles and walking. Pushing to Red Rock Canyon, I felt every stationary hour of lockdown leave my body through my feet. My chest and lungs were finally co-operative, having gotten the message that we were thru-hiking, and they dutifully did their job. It didn't help much. My back was a huge, terrible bruise and as the miles wore on, my feet shrieked in agony. I willed my legs to move faster, to click into that easy hiker's lope, but my road-walk pace eluded me and I slogged painfully down the road. I could smell the effort coming off me in sweat. I was soaking and thirsty and too exhausted to eat as I should. Closer and closer to our exit on trail, and I stopped to rest more and more. We were leapfrogging with a slow-moving road crew, men in trucks laying down paint and installing reflective guards, and I began to worry that they would think we were planning to camp illegally and report us to the rangers in town. I could see Constantine ahead down the road, at least a mile away, and I despaired of ever making it to the border of the park. Why was this so hard?

Pavement is a terrible surface for breaking in feet. I began to feel the tell-tale burn of firefoot, a nerve pain reaction to hard ground and heavy loads. Each footfall burned as I slapped the pavement, and I forced myself not to hyperventilate and cry. Just six miles. Just five and a half. Just four miles to a nice soft trail. It's just a roadwalk, come on, you can do it. I sat down on a rock and ate some candy. I allowed a few tears, then heaved to my feet and continued. We had to get out of the park tonight. We had to.

Finally we reached the canyon trail and I collapsed back onto a rock, sobbing tearlessly with short, whimpering moans. “We shouldn't eat dinner in camp, there's tons of grizzly sign around here.” I was correct, and I was also stalling. Constantine was dubious of my concerns, but I insisted. I needed a break, right now, and we may as well eat dinner if we were stopping for a while. He went and retrieved water for us both while I peeled my sodden socks from my feet. Sure enough, the bottoms of both feet were deathly white, all the blood forced out of them by the pressure of weight and bad ground. A blister - a blister - was fully formed on one heel, and the other foot had a hot spot brewing between the toes. I was offended and betrayed. Thru-hikers don't get blisters! With all my experience and miles, I should not be getting blisters like some AT newb. I was so angry with my body that I almost didn't want to eat. It must be my socks, I thought. I had carelessly packed a dupe from another brand, nearly identical to my faithful Darn Toughs, and something about the texture must not be right. I bandaged up the spot on my heel and furiously devoured my mac n cheese, slipping on a pair of real Darn Toughs with my shoes. The feel of soft pine duff beneath my feet was divine, and I limped a little faster down the trail.

Then the mosquitoes attacked. The air took on a stuttering haze like a low-resolution video, and we cursed and slapped at the vampire clouds. “We need to get to camp before nine-thirty next time, these mosquitoes are insane!” Constantine yelled over his shoulder. “I can't wait til we get some snowpack.”

I silently agreed and we hurried on, as quickly as my sore legs could go. My muscles didn't want to move anymore, and my chest took on a familiar pinch of exertion. At last, we found a likely spot near water and thrashed our way through the swampy undergrowth to a clearing off the trail. I was wiped.

“That was brutal. Big climb tomorrow too. At least it'll be cold"

Constantine let me sleep in the next morning, and we broke camp at the ridiculous hour of 8am. The mosquitoes were still ferocious but relatively reduced, and my feet were feeling happy on forgiving wet ground. We ate breakfast in the sun at the base of Sage Pass, and took our first steps on the official GDT. Sage wasn't too bad. The incline, though steep, was moderated by switchbacks, and the trail was well-maintained and easy to follow through snow. My body was behaving well enough. It remembered how to hike, and was doing its best to find the pace I was accustomed to. The hitch in my chest came and went, but we had low mileage planned and I took short breaks whenever I wanted to. Dropping down the backside of Sage Pass to an unnamed gap I christened Boulder Pass, we made steady but slow-ish progress through a burn field filled with snow. In the absence of clear trail, we picked our own route, staying high on the shoulder and topping out Boulder easily.

Then we went up, up, up, climbing a knife-edge on the faintest of trails, skittering and sliding on scree fields and shale. “This would be impossible to follow if you'd never thru-hiked before. The trail is barely anything, it'd just look like nothing if you didn't know what to look for.” And indeed, it was barely a trail at all. We navigated by intuition and by the near imperceptible flattening of gravel where other feet had trod. We laughed at the cairns, which seemingly were placed only in the most obvious spots, where the the scree gave way to clear packed dirt that could only be the trail. We were riding the Divide itself, and observed with fascination the cleaving of weather patterns to either side. Big bold storm clouds ravaged the mountains to the west, while the eastern valley held a beautiful sunny day. A thunderhead was racing up behind us too. “We better hurry. That's weather, and it's moving fast.” “Maybe it'll blow over. It looks like it's splitting off into the valley.” It did look that way, but we hurried nonetheless.

We were on target for our mileage, despite the late start. Less than ten miles remained between us and our camp at Font Creek, and while there was some incline ahead, we felt assured that we would get there before the storm. We picked up our paces as the rain began to spit down, and the wind cut our thermals with wet chill. The ridge was challenging, true, but nothing we couldn't handle. We could not quite go at our regular 3mph on the knife-edge with snow, and there were small cornices on the edges to carefully avoid. They would give out at the slightest weight, and plunge us off the cliffs to our death below. Still, we made good time, and even took a moment to take pictures and enjoy a particularly good view. We dropped slightly through a peculiar ridgetop canyon, and marvelled at the sculptural forms of melting snow. The rain began to fall in earnest, and we pulled on our rain jackets in rising wind. “It's not going around us! Hurry! And be careful!” We had about four miles left to go, and only one more incline to deal with before we'd descend to the valley. The storm cloud was a mile behind us, and closing. Lighting flashed, and I timed the thunder. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three - BOOM! The rain lashed down, and we were suddenly pelted with hail.

“FUCK!” I yelled.

“YEAH!” came the reply.

We hurried. The storm made us careless, adrenaline-surged. By definition, the Divide is the highest thing around, and you do not want to be above treeline in a lightning storm. We pounded down the steep scree and up again into snow, crashing to our knees in postholes and bounding up again to sink once more. The top of the incline was before us, we just had to side-hill the peak and then… there was no trail. We were less than two miles from safety, racing to outrun the belly of the storm, and the peak was absolutely covered in snow. “The trail goes this way!” I had to raise my voice over the furious wind, though Constantine was mere feet away. I was hunched over my phone's map, squinting to make out the red line through the droplets. “Really? That looks steep. I don't see a line through it.” “I dunno, it says we're right on it. Maybe it flattens out past the trees?”

We were rushing. We shouldn't have been rushing. Realistically, we were already soaking and battered by hail, and taking a moment to think through our options was the smartest thing to do. We followed the red line blindly, though it led us into steep, slippery avalanche chutes. Halfway through the first traverse, I looked up into the dark clouds and saw - ohfuckfuckfuck - a gigantic cracking cornice perched above our heads. The thunder boomed. Constantine was pushing through trees in a relatively safe spot beneath the rocky peak, and I kick-stepped my way across as quickly as I dared. The drop below me was a straight cliff edge into nothing, and if I slipped I would have no time to catch my fall. Don't rush, move quickly. Don't rush, move quickly. I chanted this mantra over and over in my head, timing my breath with the rhythm to stave off panic. Go baby, go baby, go! I stood precariously in the trees as Constantine kick-stepped across the second traverse, convinced I was about to watch him die and consciously willing the image away. Constantine hates heights, hates traverses and cliff edges, and even gets nervous on fidgety but stable scree. I decided not to tell him about the cold death looming over our heads. We were going as fast as we could anyway, and I didn't want him to freeze. I held that fear for both of us as we crossed a third and then a fourth snowy death-trap, finally coming to the last terrible obstacle between us and safety. The half-mile of sidehill had taken us nearly half an hour, and we were sodden and shaking as the storm waned. “Holy fuck!” He was cursing to himself as he gingerly stepped off the last and steepest traverse. “Fuck that. Fuck! That! We should have gone over the peak.” The last chute was a doozy, the longest yet and the most intimidating slope. I edged carefully along it, totally focused on the snow in front of me. Don't look up, don't look down. Don't rush, move quickly. I made a last careful step onto solid ground, onto real dirt trail marked with another stupid obvious cairn. “That was so incredibly stupid. We should not have done that. Holy shit that was dangerous, we are so, so, so dumb.” I was hopping mad. I cursed a blue streak, at the storm, at the map, and most of all at us, for being so harried by the storm that we stopped thinking about our decisions. There was no chance in hell that was the trail. The trace was wrong! The trace was obviously, clearly, one hundred percent wrong. Had we taken even a moment to look, we would have seen that there was no safe or possible route across the sidehill, that the trail by necessity must have gone over the peak. We had even been talking earlier about how “CDT rules" applied to the GPS trace on this trail - namely, that the red line was just a suggestion, and we'd have to make our own choices about exactly where to go. “We have to make our own decisions. Oh my god, that was dangerous. We got so lucky. We absolutely could have died.” “Yes. And we need to get off this ridge.”

I explained about the cornices as we hustled down to treeline, lighting still flashing through the slackened rain. My adrenaline was giving out and I found that I was shaking. The muscles in my legs and shoulders had obliged during the terror of the storm, and now were doubly exhausted by the demand. Just a mile, just a bit farther, that's a good body. Soon we can rest. I hadn’t eaten on the ridge, and I hadn't had the time to drink water. I was hypothermic, and probably hungry and dehydrated, though I couldn't feel it though the cold. We came to Font Creek and found that it was entirely socked in with snow, but found the narrowest of clear spots beneath a tree and laboriously set up the tent. It was all I could do to crawl out of my wet clothes. I couldn't even summon the energy to cook. I ate a random handful of snacks and fell asleep in an instant, not bothering to cram my food in the bear bag. A grizzly, I thought sleepily, would just be overkill.

We were up at daybreak the next morning. Glancing ahead in the guidebook, I saw that the author had described this next series of peaks as “arguably the hardest section of the entire GDT.” Fantastic. We had planned to hike a conservative 22 miles today, across several unnamed passes and over La Coulotte Peak. A disused OHV track led us down into the low valley from there, and then we'd have an easy twelve-mile roadwalk to town the next day. It had seemed doable on paper, but I did not feel certain about it at all. Jutland Creek Camp, just four miles away, was reccommended as a staging camp for northbound hikers in the event of serious weather, but our last bailout point was here. I went about the camp chores I had neglected the previous night and assessed the weather. Overcast, cold, snowing a little, but nothing seemed to be building up overhead, and the forecast from two days ago called for calm skies.

It seemed to take me forever to pack up. Constantine, shivering and dancing in place to keep warm, was a perfect gentleman as I mumbled and groaned my way into readiness, but I still felt badly for keeping him standing so long in the cold. I was still angry with myself, and a little ashamed that I couldn't seem to keep up with him in the mornings, so I skipped breakfast to save time and took only a few sips of water. He set off at a fast clip over the snow, and I gamely followed with my aching, bruised muscles. Three paces in, I was already feeling terrible. My chest felt constricted, as if I was climbing a high-altitude peak, and I tripped uncharacteristically over nothing. I couldn't seem to find my feet. My chest got tighter and tighter, and a headache slammed my forehead in a vise grip. I folded to my knees. “Stop. Stop!” I cried out, panting. “I can't breathe. I don't know. I don't know why this is happening, I can't breathe.” Alarmed, he turned and hurried back to me as I stumbled up. “I need to - I think I'm dehydrated. I need to sit down and eat, I'm so sorry, it hurts just to move, I just can't seem to breathe.” By supreme effort of will, I forced myself up the gentle hill to a dry log, where I knelt hyperventilating with my head between my knees. I felt a kind of eye-rolling animal panic as every alarm in my body went off at the same time. Stop! Stop! Stop! Red Alert! I needed something, desperately, but what? The noise was so loud, I couldn't see it. “I didn't filter water last night, so I only had a few sips. And hypothermia is dehydrating. And I didn't drink or eat anything on the ridge,” I reasoned. “I'm dehydrated and I need calories. And it's so cold. I need ten minutes. I'm sorry, I know you're cold. I need to eat.” He reassured me that it was fine, that he was worried about me, that I should do whatever I needed until I could move again. I chugged down half a litre of water, ate my protein-bar breakfast and then after checking for water access, drank some more. I drank nearly my entire litre of water and we sat for a few more minutes until I began to feel some energy. “Okay, I think I'm all right. I was just really, really dehydrated. I'm freezing too, let's go.”

“Are you sure you're okay?”

“Yeah, I feel better the more I drink. Let's move and get warm.”

I really was starting to feel better. We passed a stream of snowmelt and I drank another half-litre, then filled my bottle again. The climb out of the Font Creek Valley grew steeper, and waves of extreme sleepiness washed over me. It was by now rather late in the morning, and we had lost any advantage of our early start that day. Privately, I began scouting the map for campsites between Jutland and La Coulotte Peak. We were now committed to the difficult route, another significant decision that we hadn't consciously made, but it was looking very likely that we wouldn't make it to the OHV road today and I wanted to think through our remaining options.

I had plenty of time to scan the map. The trail northeast of Font Creek was entirely obliterated by snow, and it must have been one of those faint trails beneath, for there was no obvious cut-path in the trees. The snow was deep and slushy, and we postholed constantly. We gained the first anonymous pass and contoured around to the location of Jutland Creek. There was nothing. The creek itself was running strong through the snow, but save for a few boulders, there was no dry ground to be seen. It had taken us over three hours to hike those four miles, and we still had to do eighteen. The steepest climbs were ahead, and the northern shoulder of La Coulotte Ridge was an exposed cliff.

We perched on a rock next to the creek to eat lunch, and considered our next move. “I think if we have to, we can camp right at the base of the peak. There's a bit of a saddle, see?” It was just three miles away, but it was our only possibility unless we could reach the OHV road today. “Let's see what the weather's like when we get there and decide. I don't want to get caught in another storm near the peak.”

It was noon when we got going. I was really, truly fine again. I had gulped down several more litres of water and still had not peed, but the calories and the hydration seemed to revive me, and I wasn't feeling any further tightness or fatigue. I actually felt pretty great, despite the miserable terrain. We complained joyfully to one another, shaking our heads that we had wished for snowpack to banish the mosquitoes. If only we had known! It was slow, terrible hiking, and we eventually decided that the GDT this early in the season wasn't hiking at all. “It’s just fucking alpinism at this point! And by that standard, we're setting a fast pace.”

We waded our way up the second unnamed pass, which was sometimes so steep that we clambered hand over hand in the snow. I used the blade of my whippet to anchor and haul myself up, chopping through the rotten slush into the good firm hardpack below. Kick-test-step, kick-test-step, up and up, breathing hard and heavy, but athletically. I enjoyed the sensation of my body straining hard, of feeling my chest expand and my heart pushing against the work. My shoulders still ached, my pack was still too heavy, my legs still not quite so quick as I was used to, but I was nearly there. I was gaining back my fitness for trail. Very occasionally, we would spot a metre or two of bare dirt in a sheltered spot, and yell out “Trail! We miss you!” We bounced from dirt spot to dirt spot, luxuriating in the speed we attained on dry ground. We hardly followed the red line at all, and not once did we check our pace against the time.

We hauled up Scarpe Pass to La Coulotte Ridge. It was more or less vertical, and I was losing steam by then. We had been climbing hard for hours, and I knew that I did not have the stamina to get up and over the peak that night. Well, not precisely. I could get to the top, I was pretty sure. But would have enough daylight to get back down? Our last fraction of a mile on the ridge was another precipitous knife-edge, made even more hazardous by a blanket of snow. We watched the map closely, knowing there were cliff bands we couldn't see, and once again dodged our way through the western-most trees to avoid hidden cornices. The wind was blowing hard from the west, and the grey cloud cover had a slightly ominous tone. It was snowing lightly and intermittently showering hail, and I was nervous despite the absence of thunderheads. Our near-death adventure in the avalanche chutes had tempered my confidence, and I applied my most cautious decision-making to every move.

Constantine was nervous on the scrambles. Several times, we had to pick our way down through boulders and roots, cross through steep scree fields and scramble back up again to get around a cliff. I didn't mind it so much - I feel secure on a sharp descent, although I still notice the height. I know I'm in control of my body and can go as slowly as I need to, and if there's a decent run-out to stop then I don't fear a sideways slip. The worst we could get was bruises. It was still painstakingly slow, but something had shifted and I didn't feel frustrated at the pace. I was mainly just happy to be alive, and keeping myself that way.

Around five o'clock, we came to the broad saddle before the peak. “Do you have this last big climb in you today? We're just ten miles from the road, I think we could make it.” Constantine was ready to be off the ridge.

“I'm tired, but I could do the climb. It's the descent I'm worried about. If we do this, we are absolutely committed to the road, and we don't know what's on the other side. It's probably more of that,” I said, gesturing to the maze of cornice and cliff bands. “It's probably worse, actually.”

He looked disappointed.

“I mean, we didn't get our three o'clock storm today, but there still might be weather coming in. And this wind. I think we should camp here and do it tomorrow when we know we'll have daylight.”

“We've only done seven miles.”

“And it took us ten hours. We've got three before sunset. We can do a full day into Coleman and zero, it'll be easy once we hit the road. I really don't want to be stuck on those cliffs in the dark.”

He agreed readily after that, although I sensed he was still reluctant. We scouted potential campsites on the windblown ridge and finally found a spot tucked back in the trees. It was a tight squeeze, but it was almost flat, and we only had to roll one log out of the way. There was no water along this stretch, but of course there was plenty of snow. With so little flat ground to work with, Constantine took over the task of melting with both our stoves and I arranged the tent as best I could. It was snowing more heavily and all our things were crammed beneath the rain fly or stuffed at our feet, so wrangling the pad into position was a full-body job.

“At least we don't have to worry about grizzlies!”

“No bear in its right mind would be up here.”

The results of the snow-melt experiment were mixed. Having eaten a cold meal the night before, my pot was fairly clean, and my litre tasted mostly of pine needles. Poor Constantine had most recently cooked mac n cheese, and his water was distinctly… textured.

“Ooooh this water is thiiiick.”

“It's some thick water.

“With two “c”s. It's THICC.”

“How's it taste?”

“…I don't wanna talk about it.”

I filled my 2L water bladder with snow and tucked it into my sleeping bag to melt overnight, then cooked up a giant dinner of bacon, noodles and real cheddar cheese. I offered to take some of Constantine's cheese-water, since I was making something cheesy anyway, but he insisted that I should enjoy the non-thicc water myself.

It was oddly difficult to sleep that night. The shadow of La Coulotte loomed large overhead, and I dozed fitfully between disturbing dreams. The wind outside the tent increased its velocity, and I laid awake listening to the sound of trees and hail. I did sleep, because I woke up to Constantine kissing me awake. “Good morrninngg!” he crooned cheerfully. He was disgustingly alert despite the hour. “Mmmnnn, wh'time izit?” I muttered.

“Five forty.”

“Gross.”

“It was your idea to get up this early to climb the peak.”

“I know, I'm an idiot. Wanna go back to sleep.”

“Do you though?”

“Ten minutes.”

At six-thirty, I finally consented to be awake, and immediately discovered that all my socks were soaking wet.

The peak beckoned. It had snowed a fair amount overnight, and our feet crunched and slipped on the frozen gravel. The wind was clearly constant in this place. Every rock larger than hand-size had accumulated ice beads pointing into the prevailing wind. It was frigid, and we kept all our layers on despite the strenuous climb, sometimes walking and sometimes scrambling hands and feet up the barren slope. The half-mile to the peak took an eternity, but eventually we gained the summit. There was a large cairn there, and the guidebook had mentioned a register stashed at the peak. Constantine, shivering badly, wanted to immediately head down, but I hunted around for a moment and found a small plastic box. Inside was a lighter and a laminated topo map of the peak with the descent routes highlighted, but no book or pen. “Hold on just a second, I want to find my sharpie.” I fished around in my pack and found the marker and a branded sticker that came with the pack. On it, I wrote “Magpie and Constantine were here. June 15, 2020. 'Damn it's cold!’” and presented it to Constantine for approval. He nodded, and I stashed it in the box and placed it back under a rock in the cairn. “Okay, let's get off this mountain.”

“Um. How?”

It was a valid question. There are three routes leading to La Coulotte Peak. The one we had just ascended, the ridge that led to the OHV road, and a challenging scramble called Barnaby Ridge. We had considered taking Barnaby earlier in the hike, but just now we were not up for any extra challenge. It looked from the peak to be the simplest way down, but I knew that it involved an 8 metre cliff band halfway, and had plenty of exposed scrambling besides. The standard GDT route appeared to drop us directly off a cliff. We opened up our maps and examined the red line. The top of the summit, it seemed, was not actually necessary to the GDT. We'd gone a bit too far up, and now had to pick our way through a boulder pile to reach the trail. It was hazardous and slick with ice, and we slowly trembled down.

As I had predicted, the northern arm of the ridge was even worse than the south. We had a clear view all the way to the next saddle and back up to the next unnamed peak, and across to the ridgecrest where we would join the road. The OHV track was obvious even from this distance, a bold line of beautiful black dirt skirting the flank of a third mountain and down. “The road! The road! I see the road!” I was overjoyed, despite the difficult route.

“There's no way we go up that,” Constantine said, pointing out the next crest on the ridge. “There's no way! It's just cliffs. We must be dropping to the valley sooner.”

I examined the map, but the red line clearly showed us following the crest. The ascent did look formidable, but our descent was just as steep from this angle. “I think we go over. Yeah, how else would we get down? It cliffs out on either side. We have to go over that ridge.” I figured he was just spooked by the height, and I took the lead on the descent, persuading him to don his microspikes for the first time on trail.

“Wow, these make descents easier too? How have I never used micros?” Constantine had exclaimed several times how glad he was that I'd made him buy a whippet, and he was just as excited about the micros. “There's no way you could do this without them!” And it was true. Our descent was fairly straightforward, but steep and icy, and I periodically slowed to check our position against the marked edges of the cliffs. It was so snowbound that the cornices and cliff bands were wholly invisible, and I tracked us as far west as I dared to stay away from the most unstable snow. We finally bottomed out the saddle after an hour, and reached the base the incline that Constantine had thought impossible. “Yep, we definitely go up and over there.” I pointed.

“Doesn't look as bad from down here.”

“Dangerous though. You'll be ahead of me, so watch carefully. See that, and that, and that?” I circled the worst potential avalanches with my trekking pole. “Stay well to the left of the trees over there, you can see where it's cracking from the base. I'll follow.” The slope was another near-vertical, and I noted a few places where convex bulges of snow made an avalanche especially likely. We'd just have to go over it - there was no other route. “Our best option is bad. But I think this is the safest way.”

We climbed and huffed our way up the slope. The snow on the south side was melting and grippy, so our progress wasn't terribly slow. Gaining the crest, we saw ahead of us a long, glorious stretch of bare scree and ground. “It's clear! It's mostly clear! Oh my god, we’re so close to the road!”

We sang the praises of road walking as we tramped up and down the crest. The snow patches were frequent enough that we didn't bother to remove our micros, but for the first time in three days, we stepped more often on ground than snow. It was still not a fast pace, but we rejoiced for the easiness of walking and the relative clarity of a sketchy but perceptible trail. Constantine seemed to gain confidence through the scree, and a short hour and a half later we came around the flank of the ridge to the last fraction of a mile before the road.

“Ohhhhh fuck.”

“What?”

“How the fuck do we get to the road?”

It was just a quarter-mile away, maybe a little less. We could see where the start of the dead-end road met the trail, and the flat dirt beckoned. That last quarter mile though - it was a death-trap. The entire flank of the ridge was shadowed by an enormous cornice, leaning at a frightening angle over the steepest possible slope. We abandoned the red line, which would have us going right over and then through a mountain of sheer instability. We traversed slightly down to our last safe island of trees, and discussed what to do. “Okay, we have two options.” We had three options actually, the third one being “turn back", but we were nearly out of food and the terrain behind us was dangerous too, so I didn't mention it. “This entire side of the ridge is a single complex of snow. That giant cornice is extremely unstable, and if it goes it'll take the whole slope. Either we traverse across under it as fast as we can, or we follow the dirt ridge crest and try to glissade down over that break in the cornice to the road. Both of our options suck. What do you think?”

“Well…” It was a hard decision. We debated for several minutes and then finally, Constantine asked, “What does your gut say?”

“Traverse. I don't like it, and it's not at all safe, but it's probably safer than trying to stop ourselves on the glissade. If we slide down it, it's more likely to go, but it's quicker. If we traverse, we're exposed for a lot longer but it's less likely to slide. I hate it though. Our best option is also bad.”

I admonished Constantine to be as quiet as possible and move quickly. It was risky. It was so, so risky, but I didn't see anything else we could do. In a low voice, I pointed out our islands of safety and advised him to wait until I was in one of them to go through. Then, shaking, I stepped out of the safe zone and began the nerve-wracking approach to the road. Kick-test-step, kick-test-step. Don't rush, move quickly. I pushed as hard as I could, breathing with the rhythm, focused only on the step in front of me. At the first island of trees, I took a quick glance back, and saw that he was surely and slowly making his way across the slope. I put our impending deaths out of my mind and concentrated on making a clear path that he could follow. Step right in my steps, I willed him silently. We were clearly disrupting part of the avalanche toehold, and small sloughs of snow rolled down from above. A hundred feet away from the road, I looked up and saw a massive, massive crack at the base of the cornice. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Don't panic. Just go. I stopped checking behind me for Constantine and just moved, faster than I would have thought possible on such a slope, until at last I came to a flat patch that indicated the road. I wasn't quite safe yet, but the ridge crest above was much higher and had a smaller snow load. I turned, and Constantine halfway across opened his mouth as if he was going to shout something. I shushed him furiously and silently, then pointed to the crack above his head. He put his head down and kept walking. I stepped back onto the snowy slope that was the road and hustled across until I hit dirt, well out of the way of the avalanche path.

Then I waited. It was an excruciatingly long time before Constantine joined me at the road, and my heart pounded in my throat with sympathetic fear. Please hold. I willed the cornice to stay stable for just a minute more. I don’t want to watch him die. Just hold. Please, please hold. It held. “Holy SHIT!” He didn't quite yell but he was talking loudly. “Holy fuck. Let's never, ever do that again.”

“Shhh. We're not quite out of the danger zone, it could still go. But yes, let's never do that again. Go.”

We pounded down the steep, snowpacked road, and as soon as we were below the trees I let out a whoop. “We're safe! Oh my god, we're safe. I love you, road!”

We paused and ate a snack, drank water. Then it was back to the slushy, slippery road. There was a broad cut-path through the trees, and the route was at long last easy and smooth. We glissaded down on our butts, laughing with relief and joy, and finally got down to where the snow lessened and we could remove our micros.

“Oh my god, look at that!” A huge set of grizzly prints were leading away on a side road. The back paw was as big as my two feet combined, and there was a massive scoring of claw marks where the bear had been digging.

“What are these? Oh my god, there are wolf prints too! These are fresh. This wolf was here today. Like, an hour ago.” The wolf's feet were as big as mine, paws the size of soup plates with deep, indented claws. “We're hanging our food tonight!”

More wolf prints joined the first, one set nearly as big and two sets that were smaller. It was a pack! And they were on the move. Hunting, I guessed. They had probably scavenged the bear kill. We tripped and stumbled through the slush and finally, finally came to the bare ground of the road. It was 3pm. La Coulotte Peak seemed a lifetime ago.

Constantly proclaiming our love for the road, we made blazing fast time down to the highway and onwards up another OHV road. My energy bottomed out on a steep narrow climb, and I whined bitterly as the foliage snatched at my pack and clothes. “Oh, so they can put up an official GDT sign but they can't do some damn trail maintenance? I hate this!” Constantine was amused.

“Well,” I conceded, “I hate this a normal, hiking amount and it feels good to hate something that's not going to kill you. I like that I hate this the normal way.”

We camped that night on a deactivated forest service road, then got up early and pushed the last twenty-seven into town. It was a beautiful walk through the valley, though we did encounter bad blowdown. I was exhausted and my blisters announced their unwelcome return. I was wearing the knock-off socks again today, the only semi-dry pair, and I concluded that they were indeed the problem. It was so beautiful and such good hiking, so how was I able to be in a bad mood? Feeling cruddy and tired, I guiltily put on an audiobook for the last half of the day and pushed my aching body as fast as it could go. It was not fast, and even walking on level ground required an exertion of will. Town today, town today, town, town, town! I sing-songed in my head, trying to encourage my spent body to find a hidden energy reserve. It was not there to be found, but eventually, achingly, we did reach the town. The last mile of pavement walking was more than I could bear, but we hastened over to the trail angel's door.

A nervous-looking woman answered the bell. “Yes?” She stuttered.

“Oh hi! Hello! Sorry we didn't call ahead, we didn't know when we would be in town. Are you open? We're GDT hikers, we just got into town, the last section was BRUTAL! If you're not open we can get a hotel, sorry again we didn't call.”

“Oh no no no! You're the first ones of the season, we weren't expecting anyone so soon is all. Drop your packs on the deck at the back, I'll get your room ready for you.”

---

And that's that! We’re getting out of Coleman in an hour - just twenty two miles of flat roadwalk today, and despite everything so far we're convinced it should be easy. Time and trail will tell.

There was so much to write about, I stayed up until three and still didn't finish, so I don't have time for an edit now. It's eleven o'clock and we must go! I'll write you again in Field.

Take care, and talk soon

-Magpie