GDT 3: Superhighway NP
Peter Lougheed to Field
Don't get excited - I'm not in Jasper yet! The story of that will follow this update, but for now it is enough to say that we got diverted by weather into an unplanned zero at Saskatchewan Crossing. We are safe and well-fed and warm for now, and we're planning to hike out tomorrow if the weather holds. Here is what happened on the way to Field:
We were certainly in Alberta. It was explained to us that the previous night’s leniency had been an exceptional circumstance, and probably a mistake made by a new staff member. We tried our best to look pitiful and hungry, but the camp store manager was firm. At 2pm, we'd have to leave. “If you want to get a walk-in spot at Interlakes, I'd go earlier. It was full last night.” How far was Interlakes campground? Ten minutes by car, and she didn't know how far to walk there. None of the staff seemed to have heard of the GDT, and they watched incredulously as we circled the meager camp store, filling our baskets with overpriced jerky. No, there was definitely no way we could have a shower, not even for five dollars, not even if we cleaned it ourselves afterwards.
We didn't risk asking for permission and simply plugged our batteries into an inconspicuous outlet as we loafed outside next to the ice cream counter. We had wanted to have a zero day, but it was only about three miles to Interlakes by the road and it was sort of on-route. Call it a nearo day. We bought hot dogs and buns to cook for dinner, betting that we could yogi firewood off of a kindly car camper. There were plenty of people with BC plates, after all. There was no cell service or wifi unless we wanted to walk nine miles round-trip to Highway 40, and the payphone at the camp store was broken. We'd have to get our permits via InReach.
That was another pandemic obstacle. In April, the National Park Service had quite sensibly closed all campgrounds to overnight use, but they would begin allowing reservations again on the 24th. Before the trail, we had armed my mother with a spreadsheet and a list of campgrounds, and she would make the reservations for us the moment they opened and send the permit numbers via satellite text. We could not get to Field without staying in at least one Banff campground, and we weren't going to camp illegally in a national park, so we had to wait until the next morning to continue.
We waited for our devices to charge and ate muffins from the camp store. We were going to start hiking to Interlakes at one o'clock and hopefully score a spot right as people were leaving at the prescribed 2pm check-out, so we were in no rush. Keeping hiker's hours, we had already had an intolerable wait between sun-up and the opening of the camp store, and now we were parked for a while longer as the ice cream stall didn't open til noon. A stroke of luck - they did serve smokies and hot-dogs, so at least we could have something resembling town food. As we sat, we attracted curious looks from the Albertans milling around, and several oil-field dads came over to ask us for reccomendations on where to go hiking with their families. “We're hiking the GDT, we only know how to get to North Kananaskis Pass. I'm sorry,” we explained over and over again, leaning backwards to keep our distance as the un-masked men spoke loudly and far too close. Men really seem to love warning me about bears - I was told about the same set of grizzlies that had been sighted in Loop B about six times while Constantine was in the outhouse.
Our mediocre food took forever. It was a quarter past one when we got going, and we hustled down the road to Interlakes, which was not marked on our maps. We could have taken an earlier unsigned turn-off, but we missed it, and ran into the campground at 2:23. Three SUVs passed us as we walked the pavement looking for a campsite, and we watched in horror as they slotted themselves neatly into the only open spots.
“Oh my god, those assholes! They saw us walking down the road, they knew we were here first and they could easily have driven to the next car campground six miles away. But no, they're just gonna make us walk more, fucking jerks.” I was mad. Barely missing the store hours was frustrating last night, even though I wouldn't have been upset if it had actually closed at four-thirty and we'd missed it completely. Now we’d been screwed by one minute’s difference again, and I'd had it with Alberta. I talked loudly about how far we had to go and how narrowly we'd lost out on a site as we walked the one-way road back to the highway, trying to at least shame some of the people who'd passed us. We were waved over by a group. “Did you see the bears?” An SUV family who'd stolen a spot pointed out a grizzly mother and her cub, calmly sitting in a patch of weeds across the road. “Oh cool, bears.” I said acidly. “Too bad we couldn't get a campsite when those cars passed us, or we could look at them more!” I felt petty as soon as I said it, and resolved to hold my tongue.
I trudged down the highway in a black mood. The campground loop had put us a mile back towards where we started, and now we had additional miles to reach the first backcountry site. A pristine silver Jeep with Alberta plates stopped and informed us that there were grizzly bears at Interlakes. “Yes, we saw them. We were gonna camp there but some cars pulled in ahead of us and took the last spots.”
“Oh, you could have our spot tomorrow!” The driver said helpfully.
“We'll be forty kilometers away by then, but thanks.”
She actually turned pale at the prospect of walking forty kilometers, then wished us luck and sped away. She did not offer us anything from her cooler full of beer. “Alberta,” I grumbled under my breath.
“I see what you mean about it being Canada's Texas,” Constantine said. “Those were some oil-rig dudes back at the RVs.”
“Yeah, they work the oil fields for sure. Big trucks, fancy toys. And rude.”
Cars sped past us obliviously as we walked the narrow shoulder, coating us with dust and fumes. I was getting hot and cranky, and my left ankle was beginning to complain. My weird fall on the approach to Tornado Saddle had overextended the tendon, and it was aching on and off to complement the shin bruise. My shin was a lovely yellow-green colour by now, but the swollen lump had at least gone down some, and the cuts on my hands had healed.
Lake Kananaskis was beautiful, I had to admit it. After we left the crowded trailhead and received two more advisories about bears, we turned onto a wide gravel trail and sat down to admire the view. “Mile and a half to the camp? It's three-thirty, not bad.” I eyed an Albertan carrying a case of soda and silently willed him to give me one.
“Sort of a nearo anyway. Although with the campground detour, I think we’ve ended up walking something like seven miles to get four miles up trail.”
“Oh well. Still a nearo, and we don't have to move once we get there.”
It was hot, hot, hot, and Constantine was loving it. He took off his shirt and walked bare-chested in the sun, soaking in the rays like a cat. I felt a little bit happier as we left the busy trail full of yoga-pants moms and their beefy petroleum husbands, scampering up beyond their range through a fun boulder field. The backcountry camp was lovely and peaceful, and we settled right in at a spot near the water's edge. Constantine wanted to go for a dip, but I knew the water would be snowmelt-cold, so I went around to all the empty campsites and scavenged unburnt ends of wood. While he was swimming, I found a cold little pool away from the lake and gathered up water for drinking and to put out the fire, then got naked and rinsed out all my clothes. While I was crouched upside-down scrubbing my hair in the pool, I glanced back through my legs and saw the occupied campsite behind me. Hope you enjoyed the show, I thought, and dressed quickly.
A campfire is always a pleasure. After a few false starts - the wood was damp, and the spruce tinder burned terribly - I built us a nice blaze, and we set all twelve hotdogs on the firepit to cook. Make that eleven hotdogs; Constantine had gotten hungry and eaten one cold. We had no condiments, no sodas, and we had overlooked the possibility of s'mores, but we were still happy and satisfied after our feast. Six dogs each plus candy, and I enjoyed watching the paper toffee wrappers burst into flowers of flame. I played with the fire as it burned down, letting it go to embers and restarting it again with a breath and a well-placed pile of twigs. I spent two hours doing this while Constantine napped and edited video on his phone, teasing me for being such a firebug.
We had to wait some more the next morning. Texting my mom on the InReach was slow, and the mountains all around made it hard to get signal. The online reservation system only allowed fifteen miles per day, and eventually my mom gave up on trying to trick it into accepting our itinerary and called the ranger station directly. At ten-thirty am, we got our permits and broke camp.
We had to do a very short mileage day, since we'd otherwise be trespassing into Banff National Park before it was officially open. We were kind of bummed that we couldn't go past the boundary and reduce our mileage for the day after. Somehow we had decided it was feasible to hike thirty-three miles over a pass and a snowfield when we made the itinerary, but our experience north of Waterton told us that would be a hard day. “Oh hold on, I made us a rez at Og Lakes while we were planning, remember? That's only twenty-eight, we can definitely get there.”
It was good that I had jumped the gun on that reservation in the planning stages, although it had initially seemed like a mistake. I hadn't been able to reserve the Assiniboine Provincial Park campsite for the actual day we would be there, so we'd planned to push on farther to Crown land, but now we were behind schedule and our Og permit was only off by a single day. Comments on the map said that the Assiniboine rangers were understanding about GDT permit issues and it balanced out our mileages nicely, so we set out for Palliser Pass Camp feeling sunny.
We had to go over North Kananaskis Pass first though. The elevation wasn't too steep, and initially it seemed like the weather would be fine. Constantine once again took off his shirt, and I sweated and panted through the heat. Why was I so slow going uphill? Gradual elevation seemed to do me in worse than the steeper stuff, and though the clouds rolled in and cooled, I was still struggling. A bit of spitting rain came down as we neared the end of our initial ascent, and Constantine was well ahead. I welcomed the rain and didn't put on my jacket - climbing made me so damn hot, I couldn't bear the idea of sticky pertex fabric on my skin. I was still behind when I crossed the relatively flat ridge in the trees, and the rain came down harder as my feet touched snow. My sweat was now uncomfortably chill, and I was pulling on my jacket when two dayhikers came around a stand of trees and informed me that my partner was waiting just ahead. I assessed them skeptically - the woman was dressed in just a crop top and joggers, and the man was wearing jeans and a light long-sleeve. They were carrying JanSport backpacks. “Yeah it's really snowy, it goes off a cliff just ahead!” they said. “We're going back to the car.” There was no cliff on my map, and so I was also dubious about the amount of snow.
I found Constantine - it was indeed snowy enough that the trail was obscure, and he had waited so we could find trail together. There were lots of little side trails in this park, and many sets of misleading footprints, so it would be easy to get lost if we weren't careful. “Did you talk to those people?” he asked.
“Yeah, they said they were going back to the trailhead. I'm glad, they didn't seem prepared for this weather at all.”
“They told me they didn't have maps, but it was okay because they were following the spray paint on the snow.”
“Spray paint?”
“They were following watermelon algae and thought it was the trail. I told them it was a micro-organism and they turned around.”
“Oh my god. That scares me so much for them, what are they doing all the way back here?!”
“They were lost, obviously. But they can follow our footprints now.”
It was almost logical, provided you started with the very incorrect assumption that the backcountry trails would be as well-marked as the wide gravel boulevards near the trailhead. If you'd never been at altitude, how would you know that a beautiful sunny day could turn into a minor snowstorm in an hour? It was hailing gently now, and I shivered sympathetically for the woman in the crop top. It was such perfectly coherent nonsense, I had to admire them for it. I was so glad they'd turned around.
Sure enough, a long spray of watermelon algae led to a short drop-off. There were sneaker prints leading up to the edge, and then a patch of trampled snow. “They sat down in it? Oh, poor babies. They must be so cold.” We consulted our maps and then headed uphill, away from the algae and the lost souls. They'd been correct regarding the snow. We postholed up in the general direction of trail, and the temperature fell steadily as we climbed. Both of us were still wearing our sweat-soaked shirts beneath our rain jackets, and soon we were breathing fog and shivering.
Atop a small rise, we sighted the pass and its approach. It was a winter wonderland, entirely surrounded by a high rim of peaks and blanketed in ice and snow. The only sign that anyone had ever been there was a bright red mountaineering tent anchored to a bluff overlooking the lake, partially embedded in a snowdrift. The occupant was rummaging around inside, wearing heavy boots and an official-looking pair of pants. A ranger? This wasn't a designated campsite, but anyone who was up here had to know what they were doing, so we followed a line of footprints past the tent and beyond. The person in the tent said nothing, and didn't seem to notice. It appeared that our silent friend had come down from the pass, headed in the opposite direction from us, but the tracks did tend to go the right way and we felt comfortable trusting them.
The snow had the grainy texture of a slush-puppy, and I immediately recognized that it was dangerously cold. Constantine had been breaking trail for us, but he was beginning to weave and stumble as his feet froze. After asking him several times if he was doing ok, I decided that he wasn't and quietly took the lead. I hadn’t eaten enough during the stress of obtaining permits, and I was so beyond hunger that it had turned into nausea. Still, I pushed on through the snow and took on the task of being cheerful and making jokes. Constantine was really struggling to walk straight, and he was uncharacteristically subdued. He didn't want to stop and put on a thermal, though I thought it was the smart thing to do. “How are your feet doing?” I called to him, waiting for him to catch up in a rare dirt patch beneath a tree.
“They're talking to me.”
“Talking how? Painful? Numb?”
“Both? I don't know.”
That got me concerned. I was feeling mildly hypothermic as well as dizzy from hunger, and Constantine feels cold much sooner than me. I started to suspect he was developing frostbite in his feet, and he was definitely suffering hypothermia. “We're close to Turbine Camp, there's a ranger cabin there and picnic tables where we can eat. Can you make it that far?”
“We have to. I have to get out of this snow, I can't stop moving or I'll freeze.”
I was flexing and wriggling my toes with every step to keep the blood flowing, and I was still feeling the tingle of frostbite nipping at me. “Okay, mile and a half, follow me.” I led us on, using the fast high-stepping snow gait I knew so well from my childhood in Manitoba. The trick is to not let both feet plunge deeply at the same time, but Constantine was a subtropical child and didn't know how. I was deeply worried about him. He was quieter than I'd ever seen, responding to my questions and encouragements with short grunts of information, and so I started singing “Here Comes The Sun” in a bad warbling pant as the flurry cleared.
We had to wade through an icy snowmelt lake just before we reached Turbine, and it was so shockingly cold that I thought I might pass out. Constantine seemed confused and pale, but he was still dutifully following. We reached the camp as a bit of sun broke through the clouds, and he flung himself heavily onto a picnic table.
“Okay, pack off. Shoes off. Put on your puffy, let me see your feet.” I kicked my sodden shoes off too and stripped the frozen socks. My toes weren't bad - a little bit pale at the tips, but I'd be okay once I was dry.
“Sunshine! Yes!” he yelled gratefully, pulling off his sweaty cold shirt and donning a thermal and puffy. He was shaking badly, and I was feeling better as I rapidly spooned peanut butter into my mouth. “Feet.” I mumbled around the spoon. “Socks off, please.”
It wasn't as grim as I'd feared, but his right foot didn't look good. The smallest toes were mostly white and waxy, and the rest of the foot was a mottled blue. “You have frostbite and hypothermia. Did you drink enough water today? Did you eat?” He had eaten, but conceeded that he was probably dehydrated. I tucked his frozen foot between my thigh and thermal sit-pad, and wrapped my puffy around it to hold the heat. “Why aren't your feet as fucked up?” he asked.
“I drank water, and I know how to walk in snow. That icy, grainy kind of snow is extremely cold, it can melt into your shoes and re-freeze.”
“There are different temperatures of snow?”
“Oh, my poor little tropical boy, yes there are different temperatures of snow. This valley is so socked in by mountains, it probably never melts here. Eat something, it'll warm you up.”
We spent an hour getting his feet warm at Turbine Camp, and gradually he came back to life. “Oh my god, I thought we would have to camp here tonight. I really didn't think I could do it, I'm glad we only have eight more miles,” he said.
“It'll be warmer on the other side of the pass, I guarantee. Not far now. Ready?” He was.
Our new dry socks were immediately soaked, but we ate up the distance to the pass in record time. The pass itself was no more than a little bump upwards, but it wasn’t clear where we should go. It was almost entirely below treeline and we couldn't see the top. “Grizz tracks?” Constantine asked, pointing at some faint prints in the snow.
“Hmm, I think it's a black bear actually. It looks like it’s using the trail though. I followed a grizz trail over Stoney on the PNT, bears usually know where to go.”
Our friend the black bear led us true, even weaving up and around the invisible switchbacks marked on our maps. “The bear knows the trail better than we do!”
“Well, if you were bushwhacking and found a really good game trail that went pretty much where you were going, wouldn't you use it? The bear was probably like, 'Human tracks, sweet. This is way easier,’ and just kept on using the trail.”
“Imagine momma bears talking to their cubs about people. 'Now, humans look scary, but just leave them alone. They're usually more scared of you.’”
We reached the alpine and were met with an astonishing view. North Kananaskis Pass marked the border between Peter Lougheed Park and a BC park called Height of the Rockies, where random camping was allowed. Height of the Rockies was correctly named, for as we came over the pass we saw a vast range of pinnacles stretching to the sky. Black peaks shot upward and surrounded us on every side, a barren and inhuman beauty that stilled the soul.
“Wow. The Canadian Rockies are something else.”
“Colorado, eat your heart out.”
We had been forewarned by the guidebook that this park was rarely maintained, and was referred to as the “LeRoy Creek bushwhack". But just to the edge of a patch of snow, I saw a scrap of good trail. We followed it down until it disappeared beneath an avalanche runout.
“Wow, this was recent. The downed trees are still bleeding sap, this could have been last week. Even a few days ago.”
“So what you're saying is, we should have started the trail earlier?” Constantine teased.
“No! We did not want to be here for this one, it was huge!”
There was no snow left on the overlooking slopes - everything had come down in one enormous rush, and the swathe of destruction continued for nearly half a mile. It wasn't a huge amount of snow, as the peaks were too steep to collect very much, but it had travelled fast and far, and there was a very nice ramp of rubble down the edges. We picked our way down it, hopping over fragrant dead trees, until we came to a boulder the size of a small house. The downed trees became damaged but living ones, and we fought through thick brush until we found LeRoy Creek. From there, it was simple enough to spot the good trail again, and we we happy to find that it was undamaged and snow-free.
“Leee-Royyy JENKINS!” Constantine yelled triumphantly.
“Oh god no.”
“Should we just Leeroy Jenkins it down?”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means… LEEE-ROYYY... JENKINNS!”
“Dammit Leeroy.”
He had his sense of humour back, at least.
We camped that night in a marked site just shy of Palliser Pass. I struggled with the uphill as usual, and my slow pace frustrated me. I was fit and strong, so why oh why did I have such a hard time walking uphill? I resolved to try taking shorter steps and leaning forward, as my friend Enigma had advised last year, and it did seem to help a little. Constantine had the tent set up in a beautiful spot by a lake, and it was so late in the evening that we got to watch a little of the alpenglow before we fell asleep. This far north, the sky was light until 10:30 or 11pm, and we usually set up camp in full daylight around nine. “You gotta eat more tomorrow,” Constantine mumbled sleepily.
“And you've gotta stay warm.”
“I'll try.”
The next day brought us good weather for the first time on trail, and we followed another helpful grizzly over the last bit of Palliser and into Banff NP. "It's a superhighway now!" Constantine enthused, eager to be out of the bushwhack and onto maintained trail.
"I guess we'll see," I said, "We're in a remote corner of Banff right here, but it's a pretty popular section of the park once we get close to Sunshine."
We dropped a short way down through the forest and came to a broad river valley surrounded by peaks. It was snowed in, but the trail was easy to follow due to the wide cutline and obvious maintenance of downed trees. Finding bogs is my unfortunate specialty, and so as the snow turned to patches and melt, I followed a deceptive moose trail and led us straight to swampy ground. "Oops," I said, wrenching my shoe out of the mud with an audible pop, "trail's to the left of us. Maybe you'd better lead."
"You do not wanna be behind me right now, Magpie. I ate my entire bag of cookies last night and they're talking to me."
What I had taken for the methane-scent of the bog was actually emanating from Constantine, and after following him for the short squelchy walk to the trail, I gratefully passed him and took back the lead.
It was a superhighway for most of that day. The trail was often flooded out and we were required to wade through the edges of muddy lakes, but it was well-defined singletrack and simple overall. We took lunch at a backcountry campsite with a privy, which relieved both Constantine and I of his burden of cookies. "It was continuous, Magpie. Continuous! For three hours I was jet-propelled."
"I pity anyone who walks into that valley."
"Yeah, poor bears. I bombed it, Magpie. It's never gonna be the same again!"
"So now all you've got left is dinners and peanut butter?"
"Let's cross that bridge when we come to it."
"I'm pretty sure we've arrived at the bridge. Want some bars?"
"Ugh. No."
We skipped along good trail to the base of Wonder Pass, where we would cross again into Assiniboine Park and camp at Og Lakes. Wonder Pass was aptly named; Marvel Lakes at its bottom was a sparkling glacial teal, and the peaks of Mount Assiniboine stood grand and austere above. "Fred Beckey climbed that in his eighties?" Constantine marvelled - we had watched a documentary about the famed mountaineer while in quarantine, and we had sighted many of his first ascents from the trail. "I wouldn't climb that now! Look at the knife-edge!"
"It's very hardcore," I agreed. "I want to be that good at something someday."
The long rise of the pass above treeline was once again socked in with snow, and I was at the last of my endurance when we finally reached the drop on the other side. It was harsh trail down as well. Not steep enough to avalanche and sheltered from the sun by high ridges all around, the mellow descent was made arduous by hip-deep postholes. It reminded me of John Muir pass on the PCT, where I'd found the hut I'd planned to sleep in was iced shut and was forced to descend through seven miles of slush at sundown.
"A little less brutality please!" I implored the trail. The guidebook, of course, had nothing to say about this pass other than that it was moderately steep up and pleasant hiking down, and I could see how that was true in a lower snow year.
I caught up to Constantine at the bottom of the snow, where he was chatting with a father and son who were staying in the park's huts. I was glad to let him socialize on our behalf, as I was too tired to make polite conversation. He related the difficulties of our resupply to our impressed audience, and while they had very little to offer in the way of calories, we walked away with several bags of spices to improve our monotonous meals. We had Og Lakes to ourselves, apparently. The father and son duo were outdoorsy and informed, and the son even asked us for details about the PNT. I was surprised that any Canadians besides me had heard of it, but then reasoned that anyone this far in the backcountry during a pandemic was just as obsessed as we were.
"So are trail names an American thing?" He asked, when we introduced ourselves as Constantine and Magpie.
"It's a long-distance hiking thing, which is mostly Americans I guess," I answered. "We live in BC." I didn't want to give the impression we had skipped the border and were spreading virus carelessly. Constantine was in the habit of rolling down his signature American flag socks when we got to town, but we hadn't expected to see anyone here and the snowpack made it too cold to go bare-legged. I was careful to state our distances in kilometres whenever we encountered people, but measuring hikes in miles is automatic to me at this point and I occasionally slipped up and got asked if we were from the States.
We had just under two miles left on the day. The Og River valley was breathtakingly gorgeous, but I was absolutely whipped by the post-holing and the climb, and found myself whining and cranky. I chastised myself internally for my lack of gratitude - it was lovely maintained trail and the views were so good, I should be flying down the track with joy! But I was so hungry and so tired that I couldn't muster up even a hint of good-humour, and I trudged along miserably beneath the wild craggy canyon and sunset glow. Throwing down my pack at the campsite, I sat and gobbled down my most-hated variety of protein bar, and then felt energized enough to take in the surrounds.
It was glorious. The sun was sinking below the crest of Assiniboine Ridge and the peak itself was lit with pink and orange pastel, the alpenglow shading into deep brilliant bronze as it hit the lower canyon walls and reflected off the sandstone. I was in the midst of my annual re-listening of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, and I was at the point where Sax Russel is exploring the fellfields and alpine meadows of Isidis Planitia, so the reds and pinks and bronzes of the mountain sunset corresponded perfectly with the book's ruddy tones. I imagined myself wild and free on the terraformed surface of Mars, and felt a deep sense of peace as the canyon winds ruffled the surface of the lake and sent up sparks of gold. "This is beautiful," I said to Constantine unnecessarily. We had chosen the very best tent spot overlooking the glacial lake, and he had paused in the work of setting the tent up, also overcome by the view.
"I guess there are some advantages to hiking during a pandemic. I can't believe we have this all to ourselves!" Og Lakes is normally impossible to get a permit for, and tonight the campsite was supposed to be full. We felt like the only people in the world on that night, and we took full advantage of the seclusion under the moon.
Up and over Citadel Pass early the next day, and we were shocked when we passed another hiker on the way. I'd gotten an Instagram message from a hiker named Yeti before we'd started the trail and he'd said he was starting a few days before we were, but we'd seen no sign of him whatsoever aside from an entry in a logbook. We'd been amusing ourselves all trail by speculating about Yeti's route, and when I passed the thru-hiker-looking man on trail, I asked if that's who he was. "Yeti had to go back to work," he said. "We've been roadwalking because of the snow." So that explained the lack of footprints, as well as the occasional snowshoe trail - the Osprey-toting newbie was carrying snowshoes instead of microspikes, and he proudly informed me that he had broken a lot of trail for us. Of course, you can't follow a person on snowhoes if you have none, so I declined to enlighten him that his snowshoe tracks over deep ground hadn't helped us at all.
It occured to me while climbing Citadel Pass that I might be going about uphills in the wrong way. A passing aside in a podcast I was listening to reminded me of the fact that it's not lack of oxygen that makes you feel out of breath, it's accumulation of carbon dioxide. I had always been told that the key to a fast ascent was efficient breathing, and I had been doing my best to breathe very efficiently. The only problem was my years of competitive water polo and classical music training. In those disciplines, "efficient breathing" means making a single inhale last as long as possible, and so I have an automatic tendency to hold my breath when I anticipate muscular effort. I deliberately forced my lungs to release as soon as I had drawn a breath in, and suddenly I felt my legs drive forward and gain power. My throat loosened and my heartbeat slowed, and I felt small muscles in my chest complain as I put them to a use they had never tried before. I was moving! I was really climbing fast, and for the first time ever I didn't have to stop and gasp for air at every quarter-mile. I imagined my breath as a wave, in-OUT, in-OUT, and only had to pause when I released my diaphragm from concious control and slipped accidentally into my usual rhythm, IN-hold-hold-hold. It was amazing not to feel as if I was about to die on an uphill, and I reached Constantine at the top only a minute or two behind. I was grinning ear-to-ear and excitedly explained my new discovery to him as he filtered a litre of water.
"You've been holding your breath? On every uphill? Holy shit Magpie, no wonder you feel like you're dying. You're an incredibly strong hiker if that's what you've been doing the whole time. And you've hiked what, like ten thousand miles?"
"Well, someone without my training would probably have figured it out sooner, I can hold my breath for a really long time before it gets uncomfortable. Like three or four minutes, I do it all the time when I'm bored at work."
"Damn! I'm never going to keep up with you now."
Beaming, I tramped merrily up the snow to the official marker of the pass, and we took a quick break in the sun. "It's still not at all intuitive to me that breathing faster would make your heartrate slow down, but I think it'll start to feel natural with some practice," I told Constantine.
"Well, we've got four more passes today to try it out," he replied. "Shall we go?"
"Let's shall." We have a lot of these nonsense grammatical jokes between us - thru-hiking spawns idiolect like nothing else.
Our second pass was a miniature bump below treeline to Quartz Hill Saddle, and I flexed my lungs with purpose as we gained the summit. It was hard to remember to breathe out, and I was concious of tiny muscles in my ribs that I had never felt before. My chest hurt in an unfamiliar way; not with the burning of a desperate lungful, but with lactic-acid ache as I exercised the neglected places. I felt as powerful as a Mack truck in low gear, and the increased torque more than made up for the trivial pain. Coming down the backside of the saddle, the trail snowed in again and led us to the wide plateau of Sunshine Meadows. Clouds were gathering on this side of the pass, and the wind cut my thermal with icy chill. Constantine looked miserable, and I could tell his feet were bothering him.
"We can take a side trail to Upper Sunshine Village for lunch, it doesn't add any miles and something might be open. Hot food!" I was in encouragement mode again, and genuinely cheerful. "Even if it's closed, we'll get out of the wind."
He agreed with cold-induced taciturnity, and I called out each half-mile to spur him on.
Upper Sunshine Village was closed but the daylodge still had wifi, so we tucked ourselves into a sheltered corner next to the building and ate our peanut butter. Ski patrollers were running drills on the bunny slope, and alarms were going off periodically as they rushed between hidden avi transceivers. It was not the most relaxing lunch. With the wifi came real-life concerns, and my phone wouldn't stop dinging to allow me to attend to any of them. I had emails and bills and a voicemail which I didn't have enough service to listen to, and I was filled with dread at the prospect of hearing it in Field. I hate voicemail so much that my recorded message is an instruction to please not leave me a voicemail, so anyone who persists is usually official with bad news.
Lunch over, we walked back up the ski slope and headed on to Simpson Pass. It was not really a pass at all for us. We actually walked down to it, and it was mostly called that because of another trail that angled up to it perpendicularly. Constantine's feet were super sensitive because of his recent frostbite, and he remained terse and stoic the whole way past it to Healy.
Healy Pass was another baby bump, as the route was keeping us high. It was open to the sun's rays and the snow had mostly melted off, so we were treated to a few miles of dry trail and an expanse of yellow wildflowers. "This is gorgeous!" I shouted to Constantine above the wind.
"The flowers definitely help," he muttered irritably. His poor frozen feet - he was persisting admirably, but I could tell he was in pain. Healy descent dropped us all the way to the valley floor at Egypt Lakes, and we had one more good climb up Whistling Pass before we'd reach our permit at Ball Junction. Rain was coming down in bursts, and we took a break at the Egypt Lakes hut to eat a snack and put on hats and gloves. The camp was busy with weekend hikers, and we felt a little abashed when we spoke to the regular backpackers about the distances we'd crossed.
"I see why you don't like talking to daysies," Constantine said, "I feel like I'm bragging when they ask where we came from and we say we've hiked twenty miles."
"Yeah," I said, "it feels like we're being condescending, and then they get all weird."
We summited Whistling Pass in freezing rain, and I made good time when I remembered my wave-breathing. It was steep enough that that it wasn't particularly snowy until we reached the top, and I reflected on the mixed blessing of having regular hiking passes again. The section north of Waterton had been straight mountaineering, with the so-called passes being gaps in the cliff wall. Snow was a benefit there when it wasn't a threat. It made the vertical climbs easier with good foot- and hand-holds. Usual hiking passes have steep switchbacks up to the alpine, and when you reach the flatter terrain near the summits, deep snow is an obstacle. I chose a bad line for the last push over Whistling Pass and ended up traversing a steep sidewall through a boulder field, taking extreme amounts of care not punch through in the gaps between rocks and break an ankle. We were able to glissade down the drainage for a mile or two after the summit, but once we reached the break in the snowfield, the easy going was over.
The trail was a waterfall of snowmelt. It surged and cascaded down the drainage we were following, loud and turbulent and utterly deadly. We had to pick our way down the slick and treacherous trees to either side, bushwhacking in the rain through thick steep brush. Claustrophobia closed in on me and I had to fight down panic. We had a little less than three miles to our campground, but I felt trapped by the snarl of undergrowth and irrationally worried that we would never make it there. What if I fell and cracked my head open? What if we had died on Kananaskis and this horrific bushwhack was actually Hell? My Whippet pole sticking up over my pack was constantly snagging on branches and pulling me off-balance, and an especially elastic spruce tree knocked me backwards over a log. I tripped awkwardly trying to stand again and slammed the exact spot on my shin that was already bruised. Tears sprung into my eyes and the panic came with them, and for a minute I could only yelp and cry wordlessly as I tried to persuade my nervous system to calm down. You're safe, you're safe, you're only two miles from camp, you're gonna make it. I could see where the trail resumed on the valley floor, and Constantine was shivering in the rain waiting for me there. Crying and hyperventilating with cold and mindless fear, I made my painstaking way down to him and shuddered the last blowdown-choked miles to camp.
"I'm fine," I told Constantine when he asked with tender concern. "It was a bad couple of miles, I just got hungry and freaked out."
"Only three passes tomorrow. Ball Pass looks gnarly but Numa and Tumbling shouldn't be a big deal. We should be able to do some miles."
"And then we have an easier day to Field?"
"Two passes and then it's downhill. We'll get to have a real town day soon."
Ball Pass was not actually so difficult the next day. We broke camp in a slight drizzle but the skies soon cleared, and the pass itself was a sharp up and down. "We're mountaineering again," I said at the base of the pass. It was a vertical snow-climb to the visible peak of the boulders, then hardpack for a half-mile before heel-stepping straight down. It was the good kind of snow that yields just enough to give traction, and we didn't need to get out our whippets or micros. The trail picked up again after the descent, and led us over a flooded plateau and then directly under a melt lake.
"Huh. It's good trail under there," Constantine said. The water was so clear and still that we could see the beautiful stone-lined trail beneath it, but the water was over our heads and we didn't feel like swimming. We bushwhacked around the crystalline water and followed it on a slow descent around boggy areas and patches of snow.
Ball Pass Trail became decent tread not long after that, and we were fairly optimistic that it would be maintained all the way down to the road. It crossed Highway 93 at a popular trailhead, and then we would roadwalk the highway for a few miles to another parking lot where the trail resumed. It was not maintained, however. The gentle downward slope was clogged with blowdown and partially washed out, damaged severely by a wildfire a few years ago. It had been cleared of logs every year since then, but the trail crews had not gotten to it yet this summer and most of the trees were at waist-height - the type of blowdown hurdle that we termed "the fuck-you". Fuck-you blowdown is too high to step over but too low to limbo, and I was even more irritated by my Whippet pole as it forced me to army-crawl over the burned dirt.
By the time we reached the highway, my front was entirely black with soot, and my pack had accumulated a whole forest of hitchhiking branches. "I'm sending this stupid thing home in town," I growled. "I mean, I don't think we'll need it. It's regular hiking passes after Field." I wished I had the newer style of Whippet with a detachable head, the kind that just turned into a regular hiking pole when you didn't need it, but I was reluctant to spend money on a piece of gear I already had. Constantine had bought the new version, and I was kicking myself.
A ranger came up to us while we were taking a break at the next trailhead. "Going for a hike today?" He asked, looking very official and stern.
"We're hiking the GDT!" I said brightly, and his whole demeanor relaxed. Instead of requesting our permits or giving warnings about walking the highway, he asked me about the conditions while Constantine was in the privy, and we chatted amiably about the snowpack on trail. Nobody had been as far as Rockwall yet, but he guessed that it had several feet of snow. "Floe Lakes is buried and that campground is still closed, but we've had trail crews up there so Numa Pass approach should be pretty pleasant for you."
"Yeah, Numa looks pretty chill."
"Where are you camping?"
"Wolverine, on the provincial side."
"Think you can make it there today?"
"Oh yeah! It's only about sixteen miles."
He smiled, and gave no indication that I was wrong to be confident. "Enjoy the trail!"
It was a hot, sunny day as we pounded the switchbacks to Numa. Constantine sung the numa-numa song to the point of annoyance for both him and me, and I was still not quite so fast on the ascents in the heat, so I gladly let him get ahead to Floe Lakes. Numa Pass ascent was two stages - a first climb into the sub-alpine forest at Floe Lakes Camp, then another steep scramble to the pass in the alpine. We agreed to eat lunch at the campground before we continued, but it would be a short break. We wanted to beat the 3pm thunderstorm over the summit, and as I climbed higher on the ridge I could see it was on its way.
The weather changed suddenly, as usual. Once above the 2,000m contour, an icy fog rolled in and I could see why the lake had its name. It was another peak-shadowed valley, and the lake was solidly frozen. The air was so still and cold that we could hear avalanches clear across the valley, and only a single brave bird broke the silence otherwise. "It's kind of creepy here," I said to Constantine, mouth full of peanut butter. We were out of tortillas now and were making do with spoonfuls straight from the jar. "Beautiful though," he replied. "Let's go? I don't like those clouds coming in."
It was beautiful. I told myself the silent woods were peaceful as we set off over the snow, and with the soundtrack of our breath and footsteps it began to seem true. I was warm with the effort of climbing in my thermal, and I didn't pause to don a jacket when it began to snow. The buried trail was tricky to find and seemed to be routed very specifically to avoid avalanche zones, so I took the lead and tried to stay as close as possible to the red line. Constantine's GPS was updating infrequently, so I was in charge of keeping us on route. As we crossed a flat snowy valley and began our second ascent to the alpine, I was struck with an intuitive knowledge of the trail. It was a deeply prophetic feeling, a kind of proprioceptive synaesthesia. Instead of feeling where my body was located in space, I was feeling with the same inarticulable certainty where the trail lay on the mountain. I felt the turn of the switchbacks unerringly, only glancing at my maps for confirmation that I was on the right track. The gentle snow increased and turned to hail, but I was still warm and feeling welcomed by the environment, my senses located somewhere other than within my body's confines. It was a gigantic glorious now, and my breathing felt effortless and correct.
I reached the alpine in this timeless reverie, and we watched as a small avalanche thundered down the flank of the opposing valley slope. That snapped me out of it, and suddenly the pass seemed cold and dangerous indeed. Pulling on my jacket just shy of the saddle, I pointed out the cornices that threatened the left side of the pass. "I thought this part of the trail was specifically routed for a reason, and that's why." I said. "It's keeping us on this ridge to stay out of the danger zone. Stay high and right on the flank when we reach the pass, I can't see how stable it is on the other side."
The wind was whipping hailstones to a frenzy over the low saddle, but I insisted we stop in a safe place when we could see over. The descent from Numa was very deliberately routed too, and we would be all right as long as we stayed on the invisible trail. "It's the third drainage that's safe, don't take any of the other ones. Danger, danger, danger." I said, pointing out the risky snow. My sense of the mountain had deserted me, and in skirting a band of cornices, I lost the trail.
It was terrible hiking. The cross-country descent was riddled with snow traps and cliff bands, and we backtracked and wallowed repeatedly trying to find our way to trail. At last, my GPS indicated that we were on the red line, halfway across a long slow switchback. "I bet we could cut it and just go straight down the snow," I said. But four steps in, we looked down and saw that the switchback was there for good reason - we were directly above a cliff. So we hauled back up to the switchback and commenced post-holing, in some places sinking up to our chests and having to pull each other out. The snow began to ease on the fourth switchback down, but now this meant we had a choice between the deep unstable post-holes or trying to tiptoe across on the inch-wide ledge of exposed trail. It was excruciatingly slow. We had summitted the pass around three-thirty, and it was quarter to five by the time we exited the snowpack and hit dry trail.
Our celebration didn't last long, however. Almost as soon as we were able to see the ground, we ran into a wall of avalanche debris. It was obviously a regular occurrence. The slope next to the trail was head-high with cutlogs and cleared trees, but the maintence crews hadn't been here yet and the route was utterly choked. It was no ordinary blowdown either, but stacks and stacks of downed trees, and the debris field extended for over a mile. It was another hour before we were free of it, and we still had Tumbling Pass and ten more miles. The guidebook said nothing notable about Tumbling Pass, but then it hadn't said much about Numa Pass either. "Goddamn high snow year!" I fumed. Numa Pass had tried my patience severely, and during the blowdown I had been reduced to angry monkey noises.
We had no choice but to continue, though the skies promised even more rain and hail. I put on my last pair of dry socks and ate M&Ms with a vengeance as we left the closed Numa Campground and headed up into the brush towards Tumbling. The path was mercifully clear and straightforward, but all my strength had been exhausted by the brutal snowpack/blowdown combo, and despite my best wave-breathing I was lagging on the climb. The wind was howling at the top of the pass and the wet slushy snowpack chilled us to the bone. It was raining hard again and turning to sleet as the sun went down, and we were both beginning to slip into hypothermia. "I think we should stop at Tumbling Pass Camp!" Constantine yelled on the windy descent. "I don't think I can make it down and back up to Wolverine, and that'll be snowed in too!" I caught up to him for a short discussion, and we decided that though the campground was officially closed, any ranger would understand that it was a safety issue. It was terrifyingly frigid on the way down, and I was shaking as hard as Constantine by the time we reached camp.
The next day greeted us with sleet washing down the tent walls, and we waited inside til seven when the weather began to let up. Constantine had never been so consistently cold in his life, and he was scared to get up and move. "Everything's wet Magpie. This is going to be terrible. Oh god, I just want to get to town."
"Just Rockwall and Goodsir Pass today and then we'll be in a warm bed in Field."
"If we make it to Field today. I don't know what's out there, I don't know if we can."
"We're going to make it Field. We have to, we don't have enough food."
We spotted mysterious bootprints on the way up Rockwall Pass, and guessed that they belonged to a ranger. There was a patrol cabin near the boundary with the provincial park, and who else could they possibly belong to? So we trusted them gratefully, and though they weren't strictly on trail, the person seemed to know where they were going. Rockwall Pass Trail paralleled the line of a high escarpment to a glacial moraine, and the trail would have kept us higher on a slow-dropping ridge. The bootprints went directly to the moraine and descended next to it, and as the walking was easier with Ranger Rick to lead the way, we followed them over to the line of loose rubble.
"If we hop up the moraine, we can get off the snow!" Constantine's feet were killing him in the slushy snow, and he was eager to get away from it.
"Okayyyy," I said, looking around carefully. "Stay high on the moraine and don't drop into the glacier field unless the ranger went there, we can't see what's on the other side and it could be dangerous." I was just as happy to stop post-holing, but we had heard an enormous avalanche boom just a few minutes ago, and I was concious that the escarpment was shedding its snow load.
The moraine was good easy walking for a long time, and I had enough spare brain power to admire the unusual rocks it consisted of. They were head-sized stones banded in every combination of colours, but mainly orange-on-black or purple-on-orange. "Interesting geology," I mused, but Constantine was cold enough that he didn't answer me. The moraine grew sharper and difficult to follow, and we'd lost all sign of our ranger friend. "We can drop down into the glacial field and walk the flats to the bridge at the trail," Constantine said. "I'm tired of having to follow this knife-edge line."
I surveyed the escarpment around us and saw the danger immediately. "Do NOT do that. Look there, see the cracks in the slope? Those are three or four metres deep, if it avalanches it'll sweep right through here."
The flatness of the glacial field would channel the avalanche straight to the moraine and down, where another transverse moraine would stop it before it reached the trail. "We need to stay on this side of the moraine contour and drop at the other ridge to meet the trail. Hey! Where are you going?"
"It looks safe to me! I'm keeping an eye on it, I'll just run uphill if it goes."
"You won't be able to! Hey, stop! Avalanches are really fast and we just heard a big one. If it goes, it'll fall right on top of you!"
"I don't want to walk in the snow! I'll be careful!"
"Please listen to me right now. That is a very risky decision and I'm not comfortable doing it. I am telling you, the snow is not stable."
"I'll be fine. I'll watch it and be ready to go." And he was off. I was not going to follow him into the avalanche zone, so I walked as quickly as I could along the steep moraine ridgeline, watching him walk with my heart in my throat. What could I do to rescue him if it went? We didn't have transceivers or avi equipment with us, and even if we did I would not have risked where he was determined to go. I kept my eye trained on him so I would at least have a good idea where he went down if the avalanche came, and some chance of digging him out.
He got extremely lucky, and the slopes held stable for the five long minutes it took him to cross the plain. I was furious that he had ignored my warnings, and also confused. He had never disregarded me so completely before, and I was baffled that he chose to now when it was so consequential. I had pointed out the danger in the same way I always had, how did he not see it? We reached the safe harbour of the bridge, and I tried to approach him calmly about it while we filtered water. "That really scared me, and I'm still upset with you. Why did you make that decision?"
"It looked safe, and it was easier to walk there."
I took a deep breath. He didn't understand what to look for, and I had to teach him how. This was a discussion, not an argument.
"What did you see that made you feel safe there?"
"It was flat, so it wouldn't go very fast, and I could run up the moraine if it started moving. I don't think it would have reached where I was."
"Okay. Do you see the bumps under the escarpment?" I pointed back with my trekking pole. "Those would channel the avalanche directly next to the moraine, and they're steep and have no trees to slow it down. The cracks there - and there - would go first, and then the first avalanche would trigger the sides of the escarpment to go, and the whole side of the mountain would fall on top of you. Have you ever seen a video of an avalanche?" He shook his head no. "It doesn't roll like a wave. It's a very fast, very cold landslide, and it isn't soft fluffy snow. Avalanches are as hard as concrete, and they have boulders in them. You would have no warning, it would happen in a split second before you had time to run two steps. If you got buried, you would have put me at risk to rescue you. You would have been seriously injured and I would have to push the SOS button for first responders, and that would put them at risk too."
"Okay. It doesn't look so safe now."
"You understand how risky that was?"
"Yes."
"And you'll listen to me next time I tell you it's dangerous? I don't mind discussing it, but we have to both agree it's safe before we go."
"Yes, I promise. I'm sorry I scared you."
Feeling somewhat reassured, I spotted the ranger's tracks on a safe line next to the trail, and we followed our friend down from the pass and up another low ridge. We had only one more pass to go, and it looked gentle on the elevation profile. A loud boom shattered the high alpine quiet, and we watched as a boulder the size of a car split off the side of the cliff wall and hit fifty feet from the trail. "This is why we follow the ranger!" I said, feeling vindicated. Constantine looked back at the glacial field, now fully visible from our perch on the ridge, and shuddered visibly. "Yeah, that was really stupid. I can see that now, it would be funneled right where I was walking." The giant cracks in the escarpment snow were still obvious, and it looked even more precarious from this angle. "Well, you know how you screwed up and you won't do it again. I'm glad you're safe." I gave him a kiss to show I forgave him. "Let's go?"
It was a slow descent to the valley floor, and the snow dogged us all the way to Helmet Falls. We didn't have time to stop for a lunch break if we wanted to make it to Field for dinner, so I scarfed down a Snickers and a handful of jerky and we pushed uphill again for Goodsir Pass. It was surprisingly wonderful trail, and the pass was a true gentleman. We raced up well-graded switchbacks and gave thanks to the GDT for its mercy, as the footing on top was good firm snow. "This is like the PCT!" I exclaimed. "It's just hiking. It's regular, normal hiking!"
"We're going to make it to Field!" Constantine was excited too. "Burgerrrss."
"Showerrrss."
"Warm beds!"
"Town food!"
The north side of Goodsir was snow-free but brushy, and it felt a lot like good PNT. Lilac bushes and lupines filled the air with heady florals, and the sun came out and warmed us as we sped along decent trail. The last ten miles to the highway were an old fire road past the campsite, and we were certain it would be a fast, easy hike. I popped in my audiobook for the gravel roadwalk, and I was just getting to the climax of the Second Martian Revolution when my headphones burst into static and died. "Dammit!" I'd have to endure three miles of highway with nothing but road noise, and I was newly annoyed. Constantine didn't mind if I played it out loud however, and we skipped down the roadwalk to the murmurs of Richard Verrone.
It was not fast hiking. The old fire road was littered with fuck-you blowdown, and eventually I had to pause my book to focus on navigating the road. When we at last reached the highway, I flipped out of airplane mode to make a hotel reservation and my phone immediately drained of battery and died. "Fuck!" There was barely any cell signal, and playing audio through the speakers consumed more battery than headphones. My battery bank was out of juice and Constantine had no service, so he scrambled his battery bank out of his pack and we waited impatiently for my phone to hold a charge. It was seven-fifteen, and the only restaurant in town closed at nine. The call dropped three times, but at last I ascertained that the hotel was open and had room for us. The front desk closed at the same time as the restaurant. We'd have to run five miles if we wanted to make it in time.
"We'll never make it," I panted as we jogged laboriously down the highway. My DIY hipbelt repair had let go on one of the blowdowns, and the pack was digging painfully into my hipbone with every stride. I could feel it swelling, but there was nothing I could do. We had to make it to the hotel or go hungry, and that meant I had to endure the pain.
"We'll make it!" Constantine insisted, and we doubled our pace. Highway One was busy and loud, and my tortured expression while running in the shoulder must have been a curious sight.
"There's no such thing as town. We're never going to get there, there's no such thing as town. No town food, no warm bed, no showers." I whispered to myself. I wanted to set my expectations low, so if we made it it would be a good surprise. I couldn't quite make myself believe this though, and my anxiety about missing dinner drove my legs even faster. It was eight-twenty when we turned onto the gravel road to town, and we had done the three miles of highway in under forty-five minutes. "Two point one miles left!" I called as we ran breathlessly. "Two miles! We might make it!"
"Keep going! We're doing point one every minute, that's a ten minute mile!" Glancing between my watch and my phone, I realized my watch was three minutes fast. It was eight-seventeen. We would make it!
"The hotel is closer than the waypoint for Field! We have one point seven left, go, go, go!"
A herd of elk danced across the road in front of us, begging to be admired, but we had burgers dangling in front of our noses and did not spare the time.
"Elk!" I panted, "Cool!" and we raced on.
We burst sweatily through the front doors at eight-forty. There was nobody at the desk, and with great effort I limited myself to ringing the bell once. It was perhaps a minute and a half before the host appeared, but in that time I was convinced that nobody would show up before the restaurant closed, and we would have a repeat of Peter Lougheed. A friendly blonde man materialized, and we tripped over our tongues explaining the situation. You look hungry! I think I spoke to you on the phone. The kitchen's open for twenty more minutes, do you want to sit down?" Our hero! We thanked him profusely as we dropped our packs in the empty dining room, and he charitably didn't comment on our smell. He brought us ice waters and beer, and we ordered $24 bacon burgers without blinking, we were so grateful for the food. Within ten minutes, we were happy and full, and the easygoing host gave us heaping portions of fries and free fried pickles. We checked into our room. It was warm, and there were showers, and it was everything we needed it to be.
I don't know when the next update will go out - wifi here is uncertain and slow, and I've already been writing all day. An unplanned zero means an absence of town chores at least, and I'm determined to enjoy our impromptu respite in town. I'll talk to you from Jasper! It's already been quite an adventure.
-Magpie
Thanks again. I really enjoy your writing and the adventure. Take Care of C's feet.