God, I was tired. And we still had to hike out.
I had wanted to see 60 in with a flourish, not a walking stick and a sit on a bench in the Park. That was the reason I was so tired.
I had sent my twin brother a card congratulating him on hitting 60 . . . or 80 was it, or 100? (It’s only a matter of time.) Liam had given me a card, too, and I opened it when we got to camp at the top of the valley and beneath the mountain we were hoping to climb.
After setting up the tent and making a cup of tea, Liam came to the kitchen spot. A big grin and hands behind his back. “I’ve got something for your birthday, Dad”: a big bottle of beer—La Fin Du Monde. Nine percent alcohol.
“I’ll drink it after supper. If I have it tomorrow after the climb I won’t feel like hiking out.” We dined on instant spuds and a can of chicken.
Bright moonlight in the tent, and dreams that evaporated on waking next morning—as an old man. Damn ! . . . Time . . . you can’t stop It.
“But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr, and chime;
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time”
(WH Auden)
Well, we’ll show them. I’ll climb a mountain, as if Manx Peak is time and I can conquer it.
I didn’t mind turning 50, even 40 or 30, but 60? Hell! I’m officially a senior citizen.
Where’s the time gone? What have I accomplished? Hardly anything, might be the quick answer. But I’m here, about to climb another mountain with my boy; I could be on that gilded bench among the flowers.
We hit snow half-way up the mountain. At first I stayed on top then I sank in. At times I was wallowing in sugar snow up to my arse. Liam was far ahead. With a view of the summit, what I figured would take forty minutes to the top took me two hours. But I made it. Manx Peak 3,080 metres. It had only taken 60 years to get there.
Turning 70 was a breeze by comparison. It wasn’t a bottle of beer this time, it was an envelope that Liam handed me with his usual grin: Two nights at Shadow Lake Lodge in Banff National Park. We were off to warm beds and noses and stuffing ourselves. Breakfast lunch tea dinner, a cabin of our own, and we could hike around the area if so inclined. So it paid to be 70!
At dinner the first night the dining room is singing Happy Birthday and they are bringing me a flour-less chocolate cake with one candle on top. So age is timeless then; I must have just been born.
The Bible says our lifespan is “three score years and ten.” I’ve reached my limit. The end. The blank blank end !
“[The day is done], and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums are beating
Funeral marches to the grave”
(Longfellow)
Gorged and bloated, there was nothing for it but to climb a mountain on the way out. We hung a left from the trail and hiked into an open larch forest. Soon, a big bowl with a larch-fringed rim. Dazzling gilded light and a deep blue sky. We stopped for lunch then climbed through a golden dream to the top of Copper Mountain, my first peak as a 70-year-old. Tomorrow is another day—hopefully.
Eighty. I can’t believe it. The Bible says those who make four score years are possessed of ‘special mightiness.’ I don’t know about that; I’m more feeble today than I was last week. I’m at the end of the plank, to fall off any moment into the abyss. So, while I’m still in the light, to hell with it and best to push on.
Everything hurt. Knees, back, neck, legs, ankles, hips, one wrecked shoulder and arm, even the sole of one foot pained me the longer I kept walking. I don’t know what it is but kilometres these days go so slow. I figured we must have done four kilometres at least. But when I asked Liam his phone said we had only done two. It was so depressing.
The pay-off for the pain was the birthday dinner that night. The camp spot was on the Poboktan trail. Tomorrow we’d backtrack a kilometre and take the Maligne Pass trail.
We set ourselves up with a gin and peach cocktail as the steaks cooked medium rare over the fire. Ribeye with a mushroom sauce, roasted Kennebec potatoes and carrots, a homegrown purple pepper salad. For desert an apple crumble pie with smoked (aka burnt) Bird’s custard. Excluding the ‘smoked’ custard we might have been dining at the Paris Ritz. And a bottle of bubbly toasted an old man on his last legs.
At the turn-off for Maligne Pass the sign said Unmaintained Trail. To Avalanche camp, our next gourmet stop, we crossed Poligne Creek seven times in five kilometres. Sometimes boulder hopping, sometimes risking rotten titling wobbly planks. I even tried riding a tree trunk to get across. We were following a route that years ago, corporate visionaries figured to build a road from Maligne Lake to Highway 93.
It should have been a breeze to the campsite, but again the kilometres foxed me. When we stopped for lunch I wondered why we were stopping there with the campsite so close. Liam said, “We’ve still got a way to go, Dad,” and gave a big smirk.
“What’s so bloomin’ funny? I’m knackered and you’re telling me we’ve a way to go yet. I wish you didn’t have that blasted app and we were travelling by map as we used to do. Anyway, I reckon it’s measuring distances in a straight line.” Liam said it wasn’t: I said I didn’t believe him.
Avalanche camp. We were last here 30 years ago on our 13-nighter from the Sunset Pass trail all the way home. I’d set off with a 100-pound pack; Liam’s pack had his sleeping bag and a bunch of stuffed animals.
We were low on grub (we were down to chewing on long juicy stems of grass) when we got here, and a kind Dutch family had restocked our provisions. At Maligne Lake I had brought a loaf of bread to see us over the Skyline. When we hit town we gorged ourselves at North Face Pizza before staggering home to watch “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.” We both fell asleep, though, before anyone was murdered. Back then Liam was The Littlest Hiker and I was a spring chicken.
That night, birthday bash round two, was Chris’s duck a l’orange, herbed potatoes and carrots, garden tomato and pepper salad, finishing up with a sour cream sour cherry pie. Washed down with a French red wine. Life begins at 80, don’t you know!
It was raining heavily by morning. Lying in the tent, I figured there goes our chance of doing a mountain. But the rain stopped, and robotically we got organized to wander off—up a mountain maybe. We’d see.
It was a steep climb through wet trees and bushes. I was soaked and shivering, and when we hit the ridge the snow started and the wind picked up.
One step then another . . . and another, your thoughts, why the hell am I doing this, floating above you like a balloon on the end of a string. The simple truth, to answer the why the hell question, was that I hiked to climb because I couldn’t help doing it. It was a kind of disease.
There was a cairn on the summit of Replica Peak but no register. Liam left one, and I wrote my name, nothing else for my hands were too cold.
No twenty-one gun salute, no fireworks, no cheering with hats tossed in the air on our achievement. So you’ve climbed another mountain—big deal. We would shake hands back at camp, for we were only half-way.
I wished I were half-way instead of limping towards that finish line that was now in sight.
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.
