UDDY ARYL’S B D Y B T TEX
98
skier
Y DARYL’S OTHER BUDDY PHOTOS B
“Dude, slow down! These Pilsners are heavier than they look.”
100
skier
I ain’t no frickin’ writer, but just sit down and read this because I didn’t skip out on the ice-fishing tournament to stay home and write a story nobody would read. I’m frickin’ serious. It all started last year after hockey when my buddy Daryl—who misses a lot of games ’cause he’s always doing trips, even outside of the province—piped up in the middle of a discussion I was having with our goalie about how cool it is to go sledding on nearby Riding Mountain, elevation 1,016 feet. I mean 310 metres. “You ain’t seen nuthin’ till you’ve seen the Canadian Rockies,” Daryl said, looking all distant, like he was daydreaming out loud. Well I was all fired up after the game, so I cracked another Pil—sort of over by his face, which snapped him outta his trance—and shot right back. “Well, what the hell are we doing here in frickin’ Manitoba then? Let’s go!” And that’s where it all began, right there in that sweaty dressing room.
i’ll tell you what:
The newest in avalanche shovel technology abandons high-tech materials in favour of good ‘ol Canadian Maple.
I wish it ended there, too, ’cause right now I’m having a flashback just like Daryl’s, except the opposite. I close my eyes and imagine a nice warm, post-game shower where all I need to worry about is dropping the frickin’ soap—not some snowy blizzard or avalanche or people with no sense of humour. Even after half an hour of skiing I’m feeling muscles I never knew I had—especially my eyelids, from fending off laser-like snowflakes. I stick my poles in the snow to lean on them just like the suave instructors in those ’80s ski movies, but instead of instantly picking up some babes I face-plant right to the ground when both those little basket thingies fall off. It’s dangerous as hell out here in the mountains, and no place to show up unprepared. We’re supposedly outfitted with the best gear that any outdoorsman could hope for, but even my battery-powered socks aren’t kicking out enough watts. The wind is blowin’ full-on and the snow is drifting into my very soul (which is about as poetic as I get when this many body parts are freezing off). I suddenly realize Daryl was right. I fade back to the dressing room on that fateful night where I made the spontaneous decision to ski the most famous tour in the Rockies, the Wapta Traverse. Daryl—usually the one with the bright ideas—had hesitated big time. “Hold the frick on a minute,” he’d said. “First of all it’s ass cold here in Manitoba, so just imagine how cold it is in the Rockies. You’ll freeze your balls off. Jeans might be okay for sleddin’ around here, but the mountains are a different story. They’re high. Besides, I’ve gotta work… every day from now on… but I can hook you up with everything you’ll need.” Daryl works as the main stock guy at Canadian Tire and so he obviously knows all about outdoor equipment and how to use it. Too bad he couldn’t come, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to the Rockies by myself just to prove a point. One quick call to my buddies Kari and Nelson, however, and I had an elite squad. Whether it’s ice-fishing, hockey or getting into who knows what kind of trouble, those guys never say no. Of course, if they had any idea what was in store there might have been a first time. So here we are, with indestructible yellow plastic egg cartons jammed with Timbits, 40-below boots (where Celsius and Fahrenheit merge), trapper toques, backpacks with sofa-thick shoulder padding, waffled thermal underwear, short plastic kids skis, and, most importantly, a case of Pilsner lashed to a toboggan with some yellow glacier rope. And these are only some of the weapons in our arsenal of Canadian Tire regalia, purchased in a one-stop shop for everything—except for food, cameras and some rented avalanche beepers.
but i tell you what:
skier
101
“I lost the English instructions for these skis. Good thing I took Grade Eight French twice.�
102
skier
Snow is such a good insulator, we covered ourselves in it for extra warmth.
If you’d met us in the Bow Lake parking lot this morning and needed some grey wool socks with fluorescent orange stripes, we could have helped you. The same goes for a snow shovel that can clear off the gnarliest avalanche debris—or your grandma’s front porch. It was pretty cool to find out that you didn’t need to be sponsored by NASA to go on a simple winter camping trip. As Canadians, resiliency is in our blood, not in the waterpoof, breathable (or, in our case, non-breathable) coating of a snowshoeing jacket. According to Daryl, the Bow Hut, first stop on the Wapta, is the coolest place to be seen if you’re the type that likes to wear a puffy jacket out to the bar. I’m not sure what he meant by that but I’m not here to generalize or make fun, just like I don’t want anyone giving us a hard time because we’re from Manitoba. Because despite never having skied before, we still had the balls to drive out to Alberta and try the Wapta. So hopefully people will give us the benefit of the doubt if, for example, we ask for instruction on how to use those beepers. We’ve got a map that Daryl drew and enough Thinsulate to keep an Eskimo warm, plus plenty of street smarts and cold beers. According to Daryl a traverse isn’t exactly skiing, but if you’re looking for an adventure and maybe to publish a story in some ski magazines, a traverse is good enough. The best thing about it is you don’t need to pay for a lift pass, which works great for me since I just quit my frickin’ job. See, last month I completely lost it and realized life was too short to only have weekends off for sledding. Daryl told me about this course at the college
Keeping the tags on meant extra fire fuel and the opportunity to return the gear at the end of the trip.
where you could learn to be a journalist, so I signed up. A flexible schedule, getting the hell out of Brandon—the lifestyle seemed to have all the perks. After the first week of class we got handed a tough assignment: Go out and document something. I figured half the guys were covering the ice-fishing tournament and the other half weren’t guys and wouldn’t have anything to talk about, so I’d come up with something different if I followed in Daryl’s footsteps, so to speak. Which was why I decided to try and write about the Rockies and to capture some photos and video of the trip, too. Which brings us back to the present situation, and a story that is so far titled “Up Shit Mountain Without a Frickin’ Ski Pole, Part 1.” Our first challenge is regrouping and making it across this frozen lake in a total white-out. This shouldn’t be a problem for Manitobans since it’s basically like walking to the outhouse. But not only are our skis not gliding properly (the bungee cords we put them on with aren’t holding), we also met some pretty hot mountain chicks in the parking lot who warned us about death from above. After we’d made it clear that no, we didn’t check the avalanche bulletins, they went on to explain that with all the wind and the snow-loading going on, the slopes around us could come down at any minute. But we didn’t want to seem like losers so we headed out into the storm anyway. “They were right—it’s basically a death wish,” says Kari in the middle of our musk-oxen huddle, pulling out the map Daryl drew for us.
skier
103
Not pictured: the trail of full Pilsners left behind.
104
skier
Special attention had to be paid to the plastic skis, which would shatter in the overnight cold but melt if left too close to the fire.
Although not entirely accurate, the drawing clearly shows the lake and hut with some mountains in between, but near as Nelson and I can figure, we should be far enough away from the bottom of the slopes to stay safe. The same can’t be said for the so-called canyon up ahead, but for now peer pressure rules and Kari reluctantly decides to continue with us into the tempest. Shaking out his hands, he admits that his experiment in glove technology has yielded some poor preliminary results: “This one doesn’t have a battery in it and this one does, but they basically feel exactly the same: cold.” Right. This seems like another example of how Canadians shouldn’t rely on topof-the-line clothing to protect against the elements. At least, this is what I’m thinking but I don’t want to say it out loud because he spent 50 bucks on those—not to mention the D-sized battery. We make it across the lake and the weather starts to lighten—enough to see some skiers approaching from the direction of the hut. Their orange plastic boots are like highway pylons visible from
miles away—oh, sorry, kilometres—marking out the nice little trail they’re making. We exchange pleasantries and they throw us some inquisitive looks, but just when I’m thinking, Sweet—we can follow their tracks! One guy says, “Whatever you do, don’t follow our tracks.”
the guy repeatedly encourages us to go and check it out for ourselves, emphasizing the phrase each time. It isn’t completely patronizing, but I recognize the absence of any discussion about the actual hut—like whether or not it’s low on toilet paper or how many people are up there. Then,
He’s nice enough, and starts talkin’ to Kari and Nelson, mainly about our gear, while I try to appear like I’m not filming the whole thing, a trick I learned from watching Dog the Bounty Hunter. When we try to deflect the conversation (another trick I learned) to snow conditions,
finally, he drops a bombshell: “With that equipment,” he says, “you won’t make it to the cabin tonight.” I see Nelson about to snap. This is exactly what I was hoping to avoid—somebody pre-judging our outdoor prowess based on appearance alone. More specifically,
I’m afraid of Nelson’s fiveknuckled reaction to this kind of stereotyping. Kari and I look at each other like we’d better hightail it, knowing the importance of de-escalating encounters between Nelson’s brick shithouse frame and zero-per-cent-body-fat-dogooders who suggest his abilities might not be up to par. Fortunately—and this is another one of those poetic moments—after years of these encounters we’ve also learned to harness his anger. We bid the gentleman a hasty farewell and ask Nelson to take over and lead us into the deadly canyon. I once saw him sled across inch-thick ice to save his favourite icefishing toque so I don’t doubt his motivation in the face of danger. Besides, he opted for a cross-country ski setup and can advance quicker than Kari and I through the icy corridor. We’ll never know whether it’s genuine teamwork or pure survival instinct, but the tactic works. Sure enough, we not only make it through the canyon, but even ski right past the spot where those other guys went the wrong way and cost themselves several hours of dicking around.
skier
105
A new soon-to-be trademarked waterproofing technique.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about life it’s that you should never get too cocky. Like, when you score a goal in hockey, you don’t skate to the corner and do a backflip to the crowd. Okay, we don’t have crowds, but you know what I mean—the shit soccer players do. That over-hyped celebratory moment is precisely when your knee will buckle through your shin and you’ll appear in a YouTube video. So I know something is bound to go wrong when Kari suggests we commemorate the passing of the canyon by downing a couple of beers. Sure enough, he goes for a cold Pil and sees that the case has a hole in it and a dozen soldiers are missing. It’s not like outside the beer store, where you can go back in and complain about the broken case and get a new one. Out here, lost beer is as real as it gets. You can’t control for everything, like when Nelson hastily thrashed his way through the canyon and somewhere tagged our precious cargo on a rock, knocking half of our case into the raging creek. Before anyone suggests we cancel the trip, however, I chime in. “Fellas, look on the bright side,” I say. “The beer is symbolically being returned to its place of birth: an ice-cold Rocky Mountain stream. Let's move on, and maybe we’ll find some others at the bottom of our backpacks we forgot about.”
106
skier
I think Daryl would be proud of this pep talk. Just when we’re finished our hydration break, another pair of guys blow by us on their way out. They don’t say much, but before passing out of earshot one of them yells back, “Hey guys, do you have any idea why these trees are so small and bent over?” I correctly surmise that he’s going to mention something about avalanches, but I decide to stay quiet, partly because I’m afraid that yelling might trigger the big one, but also because I’m taking a noncombative approach. “Uh, why’s that?” Nelson yells, dangling a carrot, still spoiling for a fight. “You’re in the middle of an avalanche track—keep moving!” yells the ski coach from over by some trees. While Kari and I herd our brazen buddy Nelson along, he tries to rationalize the encounter. “If we were dressed in Gore-Tex leotards those guys would be giving out man-hugs instead of ragging on us.” “When we get to the hut we can chop some wood or some other thing that Manitobans do well,” I say, hoping to calm everyone. “People are people and if we’re just ourselves we should get all the respect we deserve.” And with that, we turn to face the last major obstacle on Daryl’s map—the Headwall— breezing up the thing like it was the overpass behind my house.
“Shit man, I should have budgeted for some hockey pads.�
skier
107
at the hut, we’re greeted by two rather surprised mountain guides from Canmore, plus their clients. Some of them have these avie-lung things strapped to their packs, to help breathe if you get buried. They’ve got short, fat skis, too, though not quite as short as ours—plus theirs have the added weight of climbing skins instead of the lightweight fish-scales we use. Nicki, the female guide, offers us some tea before we even get a chance to remove the duct tape from our boots. But of course it was beer o’clock about eight hours ago so we politely decline while savagely tearing apart our toboggan. Nelson kindly offers one of our coveted Timbits for them to dip in their tea but they decline, symbolizing the dichotomy between, well… pretty much everything. James, the other guide, provides a grim-looking weather forecast that has us all (including guide and client) thinking we might not get much further along the Wapta Traverse than the Bow Hut. Apparently Daryl’s map doesn’t show much detail about the other three shelters along the route, nor the crevasses or seracs to name a few more of the deadly hazards associated with these majestic Rocky Mountains. Just to have a bit of fun—because, after all, we’re friendly Manitobans—with straight faces we ask James and Nikki whether we can tag along with their expedition up and over to the next hut.
Freaking out the granola crowd in classic Canuck style.
108
skier
“If we make it out of here alive this list will remind me why I’ll never listen to Daryl again.”
REDEEMING QUALITY This all-Canadian trip was accomplished with $1,500 worth of Canadian Tire gift cards redeemed by our intrepid travelers. All the gear used, with the exception of the avalanche beacons, was purchased from that most famous of Canadian landmarks, Canadian Tire.
“We’re faster than we look, you know,” Kari says with a smile. You can watch this video I’m shooting if you want to see how they squirm out of that one. We pretty much know we won’t be able to continue anyway, mainly due to our diminished beer supply and because I totally blew a bungee on the headwall. Also, Kari’s ski poles are broken in half. Despite these being only minor problems, our various encounters have taught us not
to take the seriousness of this terrain lightly. The gear actually, generally, for the most part, has held up just fine, maybe getting a little battered but nothing we can’t return to the service desk. Our egos, on the other hand, remain fully intact—they’re built to last in Manitoba. Not in the self-gratifying manner of achieving some arbitrary goal and backflipping over it, but more in the way of a peaceful, easy feeling down inside, best described as not giving a shit. I sit and watch Nelson stirring the Kraft Dinner and reflect on the reality that Daryl laid out for us but didn’t quite put into words nor include on his map: Everything about these mountains—the slopes, snow, and even the people who play on them—deserve the utmost respect. We’re so frickin’ happy to have made it to the hut and tonight we’ll sleep like lambs in our minus-80 Thinsulate sleeping bags. Tomorrow is another story, however, and one that will be written on the powdery slopes of the infamous Headwall. Because there is no way to go from here but down.