He passed us, not a care in the world as if he were strolling on a tropical beach. He wore running shoes and just a pair of shorts.
It was hot, boiling hot as it can be on a glacier with the sun blasting down. The four of us, roped and on the way down, were not in beachwear; we had crampons on and were dressed for the deathly crevasses we might fall into.
We watched as he disappeared into the labyrinth of the glacier, one more candidate for the Darwin award. The mountains do not suffer fools. There is the law of consequences: dress like a fool, die like a fool. However, you don’t have to be a complete idiot to have stuff happen.
Bowling Alley
Three years ago I made a trip into the White Goat Wilderness (borders Jasper National Park) to climb an unnamed mountain. The first night I bivvied at a high col, fortunately out of the wind that was so fierce it had tried to bowl me over and would have hurled my thick wooden hiking stick down the other side if I’d have let go. The next night I camped in the moraine at the foot of a glacier and on the edge of cliffs that I would try and get down in the morning.
The wind was still blowing strongly, gusting at times to the east over the cliffs. As I only had my boots and hiking stick it took a couple of hours to clear the snow and ice and bash out a tent pad in the gravel. I fixed my kitchen and a cup of tea then set to getting the tent up.
Tents blow away on mountains all the time, sometimes with climbers inside. This thought crossed my mind as I set to work. I got the tarp down, pinning it with rocks. Even so the wind got under it. I opened up the poles then started to assemble the tent. Not easy on your own and in a gale.
Some purchase necessary
Tent pegs in gravel don’t work, there is no purchase, no anchoring. I lay the pegs horizontally at the four corners, piling rocks on top. But the wind beat me and I had to grab the tent before it took off. I reinserted the tent poles and started again.
I got one side pegged down . . . two sides . . . three sides. It was coming along. Four sides—great! Now the fly. I was working on it, figuring which end was which when suddenly a mighty gust of wind.
The front reared up, the tent flipped over and the anchors at the back came up . . . and away went the tent like a blank blank balloon! I gawked like an idiot, for a moment too stunned to move as the tent flew up the slope then hung a right and disappeared. I set off in pursuit as if I were chasing the golden ticket.
I recovered a couple of the pegs as I ran. I made the right turn where the tent had, and glory be! There was the tent flat as a pancake two hundred yards ahead on the glacier.
Please tent, stay where you are, and as for the wind—give us a break, eh?
Learning on the fly
The tent did a few skips and bobs but I was able to catch up. Amazingly nothing was broken or ripped, even the poles were still in place. I carried the tent half a kilometre back to the launch pad. The wind still wanted to have it.
Luck had been on my side because when I made the tea the wind was blowing in the opposite direction over the cliffs. If it hadn’t done a complete 180° it would have been sayanora tent ( I later discovered it was impossible to get down the cliffs).
My big mistake—and I knew better—was that I should have immediately put my pack in the tent to weigh it down before messing with the fly. Oh well, we learn by our mistakes, eh!
Thunderstruck
Just a couple of weeks ago I was on a six-nighter to Shangri-La. No, not the one on the Skyline trail nor an imaginary spot, but one of the most beautiful places in the mountains. (Sorry, can’t give it away!)
The third day in, camped by a lake, I was fixing tea before making supper. The sky to the north east was turning black as the bruises I would later have on my arm (read on). I grabbed a bag of chips, some biscuits and my tea, dove into the tent, got nice and cozy, everything zipped up as the first fat drops of thunder fell. The storm came in full bore: hail, thunder and lightning, driving rain.
What a lovely home a tent can be. Zipped up inside the yellow fabric, snug in a sleeping bag, munching away on black pepper & balsamic vinegar chips, chocolate digestives and sipping sweet tea. I listened to the fury outside, enjoying it. The hail and rain was so loud I could barely hear the thunder.
Pool party
The nicest thing about rain is that it always stops—eventually. For a moment there was a pause in the downpour and I thought I heard the sound of water running. Funny, there was no creek within earshot. I unzipped the fly and took a look. There was a large pool of water up to the foot of the tent, and a waterfall, which had never been there before, crashing over the cliffs behind my camp. I was camped in a flood plain.
I rushed out, pulled up the pegs and dragged the tent to higher ground. I’d camped here before, and judging by the furrow from the base of the cliffs with the little lines of gravel and dead leaves a stream might run here—in a 100-year rain event? Nah! Never happen! What fooled me was the flowering Grass-of-Parnassus in the furrow.
The rain and thunder continued into the night. Next day I discovered it was Texas Hill Country above my camp spot. Acres and acres of karstic limestone slab with groves and fissures funnelling the water down. Not that dissimilar to the topography above Camp Mystic that caused the Guadalupe River to rise 29 feet in a number of hours.
Star gazing
Two days later I was heading to another camp spot. It started to rain as I was about to come down through cliffs. I was struggling to get my pack on after putting on the rain cover when I heard an ominous pop from my left shoulder. (It was the bicep muscle tearing, I later discovered.) I had to keep that arm bent in a V and my hand flat to my chest. Not ideal for navigating a tricky descent.
Coming out on the last day I hit a steep trail slick with mud from overnight rain. There was a flat square rock step across the trail. I positioned my hiking stick, tightly held a fir branch for extra security—the next thing I’m crashing face first into the trunk of a tree. It happened in a split second. I have no recollection of slipping just a momentary sensation of flying through the air before banging into the tree and seeing stars.
At first, I couldn’t figure what had happened, and I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t broken anything or wasn’t bleeding profusely. I struggled to get up but the pack wouldn’t let me; I was jammed tight between the tree and a rock. Face down, the steepness of the slope against me getting up, no one on the trail—I was a goner!
Eat your spinach
I had to get the pack off somehow. The only way was by using my bad arm, which finished the muscle off perfectly: I now have a free-floating “popeye” muscle of my left bicep. The metal water bottle that was in my pack has two dents from hitting the rock. That could have been my head.
For seven days I had navigated dodgy rocks, boulders, scree, climbed a summit and gone up and down cliffs, only to almost end my days slipping on the proverbial banana skin. An acquaintance later said I had been a fool to go alone.
To quote a line from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables: “We’re all fools for most of out lives. It’s unavoidable.”
David Harrap // info@thejasperlocal.com
Jasper’s David Harrap is the author of The Littlest Hiker In The Canadian Rockies. Get it at the Jasper Yellowhead Museum and Archives.
