Mountain Life – Coast Mountains - Summer 2021

THE

BACKYARD ISSUE

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TABLE OF CONTENTS The Backyard Issue

UPFRONTS

FEATURES

EDITOR’S MESSAGE Feet First p. 17

WHAT’SUP GARIBALDI Two Lakes, Six Mountains, Heavy Packs p. 28

JUST THE TIP Brett Tippie’s Home Sweet Home p. 18

EPIC TRIP The Summer of Heights—Baffin Island p. 54

HEROES OF THE DEEP Cleaning The Lakes, Again p. 21

VALLEY OF REDISCOVERED DREAMS Back in the Saddle in the Squamish Valley p. 64

SEARCH & RESCUE Shifting Culture Or Numbers Game? p. 22

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DEPARTMENTS BACKYARD Grip It & Rip It p. 37

BEYOND Leave No Trace… p. 49

CULTURE First Journey Trails p. 43

ARTIST Levi Nelson p. 73

ON THIS PAGE Stu Smith on 'Pool of Death' 12+(FA), Mamquam Canyon. KIERAN BROWNIE ON THE COVER Mia Noblet, Stawamus Chief 3rd Peak. JEREMY ALLEN

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PUBLISHERS JON BURAK TODD LAWSON GLEN HARRIS

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CONTRIBUTORS Jeremy Allen, Dave Barnes, Kieran Brownie, Chris Christie, Jim Martinello, Clint Trahan, Jon Turk, Justa Jeskova, Taylor Godber, Mason Mashon, Dan Ashton, Erik Boomer, Sarah Bulford, Tim Emmett, Mason Mashon, Anne Price, Andre McCurdy, Pierre Melion, Ben Haggar, Andrea Huberdeau, Josh McGareal, Sarah McNair-Landry, Pearce Mundy, Neve Petersen, Mack Rankin, Levi Nelson, Matthew Sylvestre, Brett Tippie, Anatole Tuzlak, Shawn Watson.

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Published by Mountain Life Media, Copyright ©2021. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. Publications Mail Agreement Number 40026703. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Mountain Life Magazine, PO Box 2433 Garibaldi Highlands BC, V0N 1T0. Tel: 604 815 1900. To send feedback or for contributors guidelines email feet@mountainlifemedia.ca. Mountain Life Coast Mountains is published every February, June and November by Mountain Life Media Inc. and circulated throughout Whistler and the Sea to Sky corridor from Pemberton to Vancouver. Reproduction in whole or in part is strictly prohibited. Views expressed herein are those of the author exclusively. To learn more about Mountain Life, visit mountainlifemedia.ca. To distribute Mountain Life in your store please call 604 815 1900.

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FSC® is an international, membership-based, non-profit organization that supports environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world’s forests. By printing on post-consumer waste paper instead of virgin fibre, this issue of Mountain Life preserves 2.3 tons of wood for the future, saves 3,000 gallons of wastewater flow, and conserves 6,000,000 BTUs of energy. Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Paper Network Paper Calculator Version 3.2. For more information visit www.papercalculator.org.

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EDITOR'S MESSAGE

FEET FIRST Let's keep the backyard fresh and clean. Watersprite Lake.

Let’s not kid ourselves, pretty much every issue of Mountain Life is “The Backyard Issue,” that’s kind of the point of it all—we love the Coast Mountains and the people who live, work, play, and adventure here. It’s not always easy to create a sustainable life in this part of the country, but the chaos of the past year has definitely driven home just how lucky we are to be able to escape into these mountains, drift away on the waterways, get lost in these incredible forests, and soak in that fresh air and pure mountain freedom.

But let’s get one thing straight—freedom isn’t free. It comes with a responsibility to the places we love. Because the Coast Mountains are not my backyard nor are they your backyard—if anything, they’re a communal place that have been here long before us and will be here long after. Take Skwxwu7mesh (you know that word from the highway signs in Squamish), as my friend (and ML contributor) Keiran Brownie recently pointed out to me, Skwxwu7mesh is the name of a people, not a place. More than that, it’s a name given to a people BY a place—specifically by the river that provides the people with the water they depend on. As human beings, we belong to these lands, not the other way around.

Let’s also remember, we not only share this ridiculously amazing part of the planet with each other, but with the future as well. Which means it’s on all of us to take the best possible care of it, and as more people begin realizing the value of getting outside, it’s our job to ensure everyone understands how that value extends far beyond themselves.

British Columbia is home to one quarter of all the temperate rainforest IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, and most of that is along the Pacific Coast. Think of it this way: if the planet had lungs, our backyard would be half of one of them. Ever seen someone puncture a lung? That’s the earth without temperate rainforests.

As well, coastal BC is home to 78% of the variety of mammals in the province (and 66% live only on the coast), plus 64% of all bird species that

ANATOLE TUZLAK

breed in BC. This region is also home to 67% of the province’s fish species, and 69% of the reptiles (nice). Don’t even get me started on lichens, mosses, fungi, and old growth forest (or the current provincial government’s keen desire to destroy them). Pound for pound, the forests in our backyard are among the most (if not the most) ecologically diverse places on the planet.

And yet, for all the hive knowledge/community building of the internet and the proliferation of eco-conscious everything, our backyard is seeing more abandoned campfires, more tire tracks in riparian zones, more beer cans in the local lakes, and more garbage piled at the trailhead than any other time in the history of life itself. Are we collectively “funning” our favourite place to death under a faux “unplug-to-reconnect” ideology that’s really just an ego-driven Instagram photo op?

It certainly seems that way. So this summer, as we delve even deeper into “our” backyard, let’s pledge to leave it in better shape than we found it (which may require picking up after others, some volunteer work, or donations to organizations fighting the good fight), and vow not to sit idly by while someone else disrespects the land. If we leave any trace this summer, let’s make it the shared understanding that these Coast Mountains, our backyard, are an incredible paradise of beauty and adventure, but also a complex and interconnected matrix of life. I guess the take-home message here is one as old as civilization itself: don’t shit where you eat (or breathe, or play, or raise your children) and if the winds of progress blow someone else’s trash over the fence and into the backyard, it’s up to all of us to clean it up. –Feet Banks Footnote: I need to give a big shout out to friend (and ML contributor) Keiran Brownie for his input and excellent discussion on the link between people and place. As well, to Heather Paul at the Squamish Lil’Wat Cultural Centre in Whistler and Chepximiya Siyam (Chief Janice George) of the Squamish Nation. These conversations are essential to creating a magazine that holds true to this area. Thank you!

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JUST THE TIP

If you don't see the transition that's because it's not there. (But at least it's close to home).

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MARGUS RIGA

SIZE DOESN’T MATTER When it comes to backyards, it’s what’s outside that counts The nice thing about backyards is that they are never indoors. For the most part, the backyard is where our first outdoor adventures begin—out the back door, past the patio, into the grass (and hopefully trees)... and beyond. The backyard is the gateway to nature, the elements, and the feeling of getting rad and sporty.

I grew up in a house on the city limits of Kamloops, British Columbia that had no fence and the hills rolled away for hundreds of kilometres from the back door.

I could play frisbee in the grass or I could take my bike and pedal far into the vast, magical world searching for adventure, fortune and fame… as long as I was home for dinner.

Not everyone has a backyard, but your backyard can also be the front yard, a park, or the street itself (that’s where most of the best 1980s plywood ramps were built). According to at least one dictionary, the backyard can also be “anywhere in your area of interest or activity.” My backyard got huge when

“I’d like a map of the world… life size.”

– Steven Wright I bought my first 4x4 after tree planting all summer. Harper Mountain, Sun Peaks, Whistler… anywhere I could walk, pedal or drive to—chasing down my interests and expanding my universe.

Technically, the entire province of BC could be your backyard if you wanted, the whole country even—why not the entire planet? If you were travelling to Mars in search of perfect big mountain slopes and you met some shredding aliens you could brag about the trails and freeride lines in your backyard; the third planet from the sun. Then you could send them postcards with a picture of Earth taken from space and on the back it could read, “Wish you were here.”

That reminds me of a joke from Mitch Hedberg. He said, “If you get lost in the woods, just build a house! I was lost, but now I live here. I’ve seriously improved my predicament!”

That reminds me of another joke by Steven Wright, who said, “I’d like a map of the world… life size.”

Which reminds me of another joke by Mitch Hedberg. He said, “I’d like to stick a thumbtack in a map of the world of every place I’ve ever visited. But first, I’d have to travel to the upper two corners of the map... so it wouldn’t fall off the wall.”

It’s all relative I guess, but that’s the fun—every season we get to decide how big our backyard is gonna be (well, almost every season). Just remember, it’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it. – Brett Tippie

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ENVIRO

THE UNSUNG HEROES OF THE DEEP Meet Henry Wang and his merry band of divers on a mission

Not all heroes wear capes. Some of them, like Vancouverite Henry Wang, wear scuba gear. As co-founder of Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans, Wang dedicates a minimum of six weekends every spring and summer cleaning up trash from the bottom of Sea to Sky lakes and ocean sites around Vancouver.

“It’s a collective effort,” Wang says of his volunteer crew of scuba and free divers. “If everyone can pitch in and do a little bit, it all helps. We do this for Mother Nature, but it also keeps me diving, and I like hanging out with all the divers—some have become great friends. We usually make a camping weekend out of it.”

Wang founded the group with Jonathan Martin in 2013 after heading under for his first-ever lake dive. “We saw some trash and wanted to take it out, but there was so much we needed more divers.”

Finding more divers proved easy enough, but the trash kept re-appearing each season. Everything from parking street signs to park benches, from laptops, cell phones and GoPros, to old tires and shopping carts—all of it picked up by an underwater army now numbering more than 20 volunteer divers who come from Squamish to Abbotsford and everywhere in between. (They also cover their own costs for equipment and air fills.)

The number one culprit is beer cans. Wang says they have recovered more than 45,000 beer cans over the years. “Cat Lake in Squamish is beer can city, it’s probably the most contaminated lake we clean.”

Even after a number of years cleaning local waterways, litter seems to be increasing. Wang has heard of people justifying their actions by using the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ excuse when throwing stuff into the water, but that doesn’t sit well with him.

“When you see all the trash that we pull... it’s annoying. We pulled a barbecue out of the water the other day, and you know that just didn’t end up there by accident. This stuff doesn’t belong here. All the plastics and batteries and foreign things, they’re just leaching into the water table and eventually into the food chain.”

Since 2013, Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans have picked up approximately 35,000 pounds of trash over their 133 local ocean and lake clean-up dives. Their biggest haul? 1,700 pounds of boat-renovation junk near

The strangest thing they’ve ever pulled from a lake? Probably a computer hard drive, discovered in the lake at Murrin Park south of Squamish. “The rumours are that lake is really deep,” Wang says (pictured right, shirtless, with numerous bags of trash gleaned from Squamish's Cat Lake). “It isn’t. I just recycled the drive, whatever information someone probably thought they were getting rid of forever, I’m sure I don’t want to know.” COURTESY OF @CLEANERLAKES

the bottom of the marina at Deep Bay on Bowen Island, including metal bed frames, filing cabinet, La-Z-Boy, and a heavy mass of five anchors all stuck together in an “anchor ball.”

But the number one culprit is beer cans. Wang says they have recovered more than 45,000 beer cans over the years. “Cat Lake in Squamish is beer can city, it’s probably the most contaminated lake we clean.”

When Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans organize an official lake cleanup, they generally include presentation and education components, set up on the docks and beaches, so passersby and the public can actually see how much garbage accumulates under the surface. With any luck, that first-person connection will inspire changes in personal behaviour, as well as help spread the message via social media or word of mouth to encourage everyone keep our lakes and waterways clean.

“Don’t think that beer can that you quietly try to submerge under the water will never be found again,” Wang says. “It’s not cool man. Pack it in, pack it out... it’s not that hard.”

No, it isn’t. Just crash those cans and put them in your pocket, or tie a mesh bag to your floatie. Real superheroes leave no trace. – Todd Lawson To support Wang and the rest of the Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans, please visit patreon.com/Northshorehenry or check their social @cleanerlakes 21

Long-line rescue—one of the few times a free heli ride is not awesome.

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CLINT TRAHAN

UPFRONT

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF SEARCH AND RESCUE A shifting culture or purely a numbers game?

As the old song goes: “When the shit goes dooooowwwn, ya better be ready.” And if you’re not, British Columbia’s Search and Rescue (SAR) teams will be. In 2020, BC SAR organizations were deployed 2,099 times—more than all other provinces in Canada combined.

BC’s SAR forces consist of approximately 2,500 volunteers working in 79 community groups across six defined regions. The Sea to Sky Corridor benefits from eight different SAR groups overseeing an area that stretches from the southwest Fraser Valley up past Pemberton and out to the Sunshine Coast.

Despite border closures, stay-at-home advisories, and a lack of international tourism, 2020 was the busiest year on record for Sea to Sky SAR groups, and one of the most complex.

The early spring COVID-19 lockdown reminded BC residents that nature nurtures sanity, and when restrictions were eventually lifted, people dispersed into the backcountry like a shotgun blast. Every logging road, pull-out, and hydro cut suddenly filled with parked cars as people searched out any scrap of green space to enjoy away from others. According to David Mackenzie of Pemberton SAR, 2020 also pushed people deeper into the wilderness.

“We usually see a lot of calls coming from Joffre Lakes,” Mackenzie says, “but when that closed, places like the upper Hurley, Tenquille, and Semaphore Lakes became hotspots.”

This trend carried throughout the corridor as Watersprite Lake, the Squamish Valley, and the Tantalus Range became the fastest growing rescue areas in Squamish. As outdoor recreation becomes hipper and more popular, people will venture further for that #secretselfiespot.

“Social media plays a big role,” says Squamish SAR’s Anne Price. “Spots that were relatively unknown a few years ago are pumping now. And it’s not just Instagram and Facebook feeding the frenzy. Apps like Gaia, Trail Forks, and Strava make it easier to share information. ”

The spring 2020 closure of BC’s Provincial Parks catalyzed the public’s quest for new areas to explore. Parks generally offer a safer and more functional space where wilderness newcomers

can cut their teeth. With parks closed, outdoor recreationalists were pushed to areas with less development and infrastructure such as trail markings, which creates challenges for users and rescuers alike, says Tom Zajac of Coquitlam SAR. “We’ve performed rescues where inexperienced planning contributed to the need for rescue. Now that these remote spots are being ‘discovered,’ we’re expecting people to keep going.”

The lack of outdoor courses and classes during COVID-19 limited peoples’ ability to gain skills before they headed out alone. Similarly, directives to only socialize in small, family bubbles likely prevented people from venturing out with more experienced friends, possibly adding to the rescues attributed to lack of experience.

The spring 2020 closure of BC’s Provincial Parks catalyzed the public’s quest for new areas to explore. Parks generally offer a safer and more functional space where wilderness newcomers can cut their teeth.

An overconfident reliance on technology can give a false sense of security, with people holding the mindset that carrying an InReach (or similar GPS tracking device) compensates for their lack of experience. This attitude places SAR as the primary backup plan if things go wrong—although SAR members are hesitant to pin the blame solely on new backcountry users.

I’ve never been able to determine a primary user group for our services” says Raz Peel, VP of Squamish SAR. “Accidents happen, and they can happen to anybody.”

Peel adds that of the 120 calls received by Squamish SAR in 2020, 79 resulted in physical rescues. Improvements in cell phone technology and coverage is helpful, but users still need to know how to find their location and describe their surroundings accurately. The time SAR call takers spend teaching people how to find their GPS location on their phone is time that could be better spent on safe rescues.

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Rope rescue on the Stawamus Chief by Squamish SAR.

It’s amazing to realize that SAR is a life-saving service staffed entirely by volunteers who operate at a high level to accommodate the varied demands of rescue situations. As part of each one of Squamish’s seven specialty units, Squamish SAR member Shawn Campbell is something of a Swiss army knife of volunteering. He could be dispatched as a level two avalanche

“I love the altruistic aspect of SAR. I have a passion for first response and enjoy the fact that I can use my wilderness skills to help others. It’s my dream job, I just don’t get paid for it!” –Shawn Campbell technician or a swift water rescuer; he could be piloting jet boats or dangling out of a helicopter. With each rescue task averaging about four hours, Campbell commits roughly 650-900 hours per year to SAR—not including training time and administrative hours (conservatively, an additional 10-15 hours per week).

ANNE PRICE

However, Campbell couldn’t see his life any other way. As volunteer since 2008, SAR has given him lifelong friendships and made him an integral part of the community. “I love the altruistic aspect of SAR. I have a passion for first response and enjoy the fact that I can use my wilderness skills to help others.

It’s my dream job, I just don’t get paid for it!”

This community-minded motivation preserves the culture, dynamics, and magic of SAR. Despite the fact that volunteers are often pulled away from family dinners, evenings, weekends, work, sleep, ski days and personal adventures when called into action, people are lining up to join the SAR teams. “The whole system is built around giving back to the community,” Peel says.

“Just being able to volunteer is, in itself, a great privilege.”

Accidents can happen in the wilderness, regardless of one’s level of skill or experience. By first supporting ourselves (and other members of the outdoor community) with proper training, equipment, and good decision making, we are also supporting our local SAR. We know SAR is trained to be ready when the proverbial shit goes down, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be ready as well. –Ben Haggar

*Note: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the participants and do not represent those of the Search and Rescue organization.

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Social distancing on the Sphinx Ridgeline, Garibaldi Park.

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Two lakes, six mountains, and a homegrown pack ‘n’ paddle mission words :: Tim Emmett photos :: Jim Martinello

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A morning crossing on Garibaldi Lake.

Many moons ago, I was flying south from Whitehorse to Vancouver. For more than two hours, I stared out the airplane window, amazed and inspired by the vast expanse of snow-covered mountains and peaks below. The wilderness seemed endless, and I knew few humans had set foot across much of this vista. It was the first of many times I’ve been absolutely mesmerized by the Coast Mountains of British Columbia.

Slightly larger in size than the European Alps, which border eight countries and are home to more than 8,000 ski lifts, BC’s Coast Mountains contain fewer than 200 ski lifts (and Whistler has 32 of them) and much more wild country. The first time I looked at a map of BC, months before I saw or ever set foot in this magical land, I’d scanned my finger all over the province trying to find this fabled “Whistler”. Prince George… Bella Coola…

Williams Lake… my fingers danced over these strange names. I finally found it just an inch and a half north of Vancouver and quickly realized my British sense of scale was dwarfed by the hugeness of this province. Even now,

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having lived here for a dozen years, I’m still impressed with all its unsullied wilderness, although accessing it can be challenging.

As always, Jimmy Martinello had a plan …

“I had taken my SUP board up to Garibaldi Lake years back with a couple friends, paddled across the lake and climbed Guard Peak,” says Jimmy, a lifelong Sea to Sky resident. “Looking from the summit that day, I realized the SUP potential for accessing other peaks and wondered about linking Garibaldi to Cheakamus Lake by way of this horseshoe of magnificent peaks and glaciers. I dreamed about it, studied and researched the maps, and

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assembled a super crew of amazing people to take a shot.”

I set the alarm for midnight as instructed—a true alpine start—but the clock read 2:30 a.m. by the time Jimmy, Justin Sweeney and I actually leave Squamish (shout out to Mountain Life publisher Jon Burak for the midnight shuttle). We hit the trailhead in the dark, with my 115-litre backpack bursting at the seams. Struggling to get that monster on my back, I’m reminded that Jimmy’s enthusiasm for manifesting huge objectives is sometimes built on misguided optimism—in any case, we’re staring down a long, hard day.

Several hours and 900 metres of ascent (by headlamp) later, we arrive at Garibaldi Lake. The pure bliss of taking off my pack compliments the beautiful

remainder of the day carries us safely across the ice and up to our bivy spot below the Sphinx. Unlike my previous alpine SUP mission with Justin and Jimmy, I bring a sleeping bag, albeit the lightest one I could find, with a lofty plus 4-degree Celcius rating—with a fully-inflated SUP as a sleeping pad, it’s good enough. (Pro tip: On cold alpine nights, melt a pot of snow and place a warm-water Nalgene between your legs. It can save the night!)

Day two brings one of the most memorable parts of the expedition—an immaculate knife-edge ridge with heaps of exposure. Creeping along footholds the thickness of an iPhone, we put our trust in the edges of our boots and focus on keeping things balanced. Then it’s a blast past The Bookworms, a collection of spires rarely seen

We came walking over the brow of a hill to discover one of the most beautiful meadows I had ever seen. The sheer brilliance and myriad of colours of the flowers.

I couldn’t believe it, a true garden of Eden shimmering before the barren and lifeless peaks of rock, snow, and ice towering above.

blue hues of pre-dawn morning light. Time to pump up the SUPs and give our aching shoulders a rest. We launch and paddle across water like liquid crystal, the reflections mesmerizing us into silence for almost the entire twohour lake crossing (which I thought would take far less time, my Brit eyes still not accustomed to the supersized BC landscape).

We hit the far shore at 9:00 a.m., having covered 14 kilometres from our starting point. AeroPress time— fresh coffee to accompany breakfast as the heat of the sun chases the morning chill back down the mountain.

Smearing suncream onto exposed skin, we deflate the boards, then repack and deadlift our giant packs onto our backs before slogging off. Across the meadows, up over a ridge into true alpine—no plant life; just rocks, snow, ice, towering peaks and views that instantly make all that hiking in the dark worthwhile.

With Mount Garibaldi, Atwell Peak, and rarely seen Table Mountain behind us, we scurry down loose rock and unstable terrain and onto Sphinx Glacier. Roped up, the

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at close quarters with stunning vistas all around us. It’s a special feeling to be amongst these giants, far away from a human footprint or trail. We continue beneath towering walls of granite towards the summit of Mount Carr and on to the bivy spot below Mount Davidson. We choose a bivy equidistant between two crevasses, and fall asleep staring up at the peak we hope to summit come morning.

Halfway up the north face of Davidson, the climbing gets steep and technical. I look down to see determined faces protruding from giant backpacks. Justin had taken first lead, navigating a series of corners and grooves.

Jimmy pitches in with some great climbing—no need to break out the ropes and rock shoes just yet. Knocking rocks onto my mates below would be disastrous, but I power through a few spicy moves and soon enough, we’re at the top. Whistler’s ski hills seem close, yet the terrain to get there is the toughest yet. In front of us is a thin ridge with walls dropping off steep enough to BASE jump from, and to our left is Cheakamus Glacier, renowned for its vast array of crevasses.

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Adventure is often adverse to a good plan and there’s no possible way to descend via the route we wanted—loose rock and major consequences: too serious. So we inch back down the way we came and out onto Cheakamus Glacier, which we now must cross. I take the lead… and fall into a crevasse, thankfully only up to my waist.

It feels pretty out there to be crossing glaciers with inflatable watercraft on our backs. Carefully, we soldier on; avoiding future mishaps and eventually finding a spot to camp with perfect views, flat ground and snow so we can make water. The bivy of champions!

The morning sunrise brings warmth—of body and spirit. All that remains is a descent to treeline, a bit of bushwhacking (following bear trails is great if you don’t run into the bear) and voila—the eastern shores of Cheakamus Lake. Relieved of the pack weight, it’s a joyous paddle to the main trail followed by one of those millionshades-of-green rainforest hikes back to the vehicles.

I always appreciate the end of a mission, taking off the hiking boots, high fives, and sometimes even a frosty beverage. We’re an hour from home, less than that from Whistler Village, and aside from the final descent trail from Cheakamus Lake, we haven’t seen another person in four days. There’s no doubt our backyards are getting busier, and the close-to-the-beaten-path natural world is feeling the pressure of increased usage, and especially increased usage by people who have never learned how to travel through and enjoy the outdoors responsibly. But for those willing to venture a bit further, to get up a bit earlier or push on a bit longer, the Coast Mountains can still possess that vast magical emptiness that impressed me all those years ago—my nose pushed against the window, jaw agape and mind churning. All that space, all that adventure waiting to happen. Best backyard on the planet.

With an over-stuffed 115-pound backpack on, you feel every step. "How far to the next lake fellas?"

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words :: Sarah Bulford Scrolling through Instagram, I roll over several photos of dudes—covered head to toe in sponsor logos—hitting jumps on a dirt bike. A trail of positive comments flood in below.

A few clicks on the sponsored tags reveal more images of men living it up in all their moto glory. Throughout the brand profiles I do see splashes of female faces, usually portraits where the woman’s face is clearly visible, hair down to the side, smiling. I get the feeling I am looking at two different representations of a dirt bike athlete.

Before the summer of 2020, it’d been more than ten years since I’d twisted a throttle.

Messing around on a dirt bike was routine in my younger years: crashes, stitches, a lack of protective equipment—standard childhood fun.

Moving to Squamish thrust me into the world of human-powered adventure and, after a decade of climbing, ski touring and hiking, I began to long for the smell, the power, and the flow of a two-stroke engine. Getting back on the bike as an adult has been an eye-opening experience.

Not only do the crashes hurt more, but here in Squamish the enduro riding is much like the other sports in the area: hard.

grip it & rip it

But not as hard as trying to find anything to do with women and dirt biking on the internet.

My Instagram explore page is loaded with shots of men riding gnarly hill climbs up sand dunes or intimidating granite features. I watch several race clips from events like the Erzberg Rodeo (an annual Austrian motorcycle enduro event— the largest of its kind in Europe), races where legends like Graham Jarvis, Tadeusz Błażusiak and Manuel Lettenbichler hold incredible victories in the sport. I become completely obsessed with watching these races. But that feeling comes back—out of the 500 riders in the Erzberg Rodeo, about 31 are women. Digging deeper, the first Google-suggested search is “Are there any female motocross racers?”

TOP Pembertonian Lison Boilard practices her wheelies DAN ASHTON BOTTOM Biker gang. A cold, wet spring day but smiles all around.

ANDREA HUBERDEAU

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M-C manoeuvring a technical climb in Squamish.

SHAWN WATSON

Finally, I find a poorly written article from 2019 about South African enduro rider Kirsten Landman, who made history as the first female to finish several extreme events. 2019 is not that long ago and races like Erzberg have been around since the ‘90s. Why haven’t more women made the cut? It’s only when I shut off the internet that I hit paydirt. The Coast Mountains is home to a community of women absolutely crushing it on their motos.

“I think women are underrepresented in motor sports,” says Crystal Borrelli. “There are old mindsets out there that will take time to reprogram.”

Crystal Borrelli is no stranger to crushing stereotypes: She’s a dedicated yogi of eight years and founder of Mythic Mantras (an immersion on stories of the gods and goddesses of yoga) but also covered head to toe in tattoos, and excited to talk about how she loves mixing gas and kicking ass on her bike.

Growing up on Lasqueti Island, a small, remote community off the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, Borelli spent most of her childhood outdoors but didn’t buy her own dirt bike until she turned 40. Snowboarding occupied most of her early life (she competed professionally into the early 2000s) but after seven concussions, Borelli decided to find another way to get that 38

flowy freedom back. Dirt biking gives her the same sense of speed and satisfaction she once received from snowboarding. Going out for a ride with Borrelli, you instantly feel the stoke.

However, standing barely 5-feet tall, she has to

has been great to help clear her head and focus on progression and skill. It’s also helped her build a ton of self-esteem. “Looking at something that seems impossible to ride and making it over is such a rewarding experience”.

“It can be intimidating to start riding bikes. From loading it, to doing maintenance, with a little help from some friends it’s not as hard to get started as people think.” – M-C Vanasse ride what is essentially a modified child’s bike, there are no full-size (ie: full power) options.

Regardless, she’s determined to progress and not let any limitations slow her down.

“The focus is not on female riders but to get more of our presence known” she says. “We can use social media as a tool to spread the word that women are killing it and need support, apparel and equipment that empowers them. We definitely have some strong females around here who are paving the way for the next generation.”

M-C Vanasse has been riding trails in the Sea to Sky Corridor for about a decade. “As a kid, I always wanted to ride. But my family wasn’t that interested in having motorsports around the house,” says Vanasse, who bought her first dirt bike for 2009 and became immediately hooked.

She says the sport forces her to be present and

While Vanasse agrees there are far more men than women dirt biking, she’s starting to see many more women on the trails. “For some women, it can be intimidating to start riding bikes.

From loading the bike into a truck, a hitch rack or a trailer, to doing maintenance—or even riding the trails themselves and fearing crashes and struggles—with a little help from some friends it’s not as hard to get started as people think.”

There is a culture of support and mentoring on local trails—and also online. Angelise Edwards started the Braap Babes Instagram account (@braapbabes_official) back in 2018, “At the time, I was a new mom who lost my identity and was trying to find myself again. Being a mom is beautiful and rewarding, but I wanted to continue learning and expanding my skills in my sports as well.”

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Initially set up to help bridge the gap for women getting into the sled community, Braap Babes hosted ten events in the first two years with the goal of connecting and empowering women in the dude-centric world of motorsports. “I felt the struggles and pains of wanting to see more women that could influence and motivate me in my sports,” she says, adding that there are userbuilt “feature” groups showcasing female athletes, but brands and the media have a long way to go.

To this end, Edwards started her own women’s-only snowmobile and dirt bike digital magazine and podcast. “All female athletes deserve representation and their voices to be heard and I’m so proud to give them a platform to do so.”

In an age where equality, of all sorts, is at the forefront of our minds—motorsports needs to catch the hell up and make a big shift in their culture, language, brands, media, and sponsorships.

It really comes down to opportunity—creating space, increasing the development, efforts and availability of women’s clinics, more events, better gear and bikes. It will be a process, but it’s happened in other sports and the women I spoke with all agree that in the meantime it’s up to us to make our presence known and bridge that gender gap (and freakin’ send it!).

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FIRST JOURNEY TRAILS In Indigenous communities around BC, the benefits of biking go beyond economic words :: Josh McGarel & Mack Rankin photography :: Josh McGarel Most off-road cycling associations in British Columbia can trace their beginnings to battling to legitimize rogue trail builds, but Indigenous communities have been fighting over land rights for much, much longer— and on a far greater scale. For most rural Indigenous groups around the globe, natural resource extraction has long been the only value given to their lands by colonialism.

In Soda Creek, a tiny farming and First Nations community on the banks of the Fraser River just north of Williams Lake, mountain biking offered a fork in that road. It wasn’t an obvious path however, and the local nations needed a trailblazer. Luckily, they already had one in Thomas Schoen.

Originally from Germany, Thomas Schoen literally fell from the sky and landed in Soda Creek in the early 1990s. A paragliding pioneer, Schoen had been sampling thermals on a road trip from Seattle to Alaska when he took a liking to the open rolling hills of BC’s Cariboo region and returned to make it his new home.

Foreseeing the fascination European tourists would have with North American Indigenous cultures, and needing some way to convince the Government of Canada to let him stay in the country, Schoen pitched the local First Nations on the idea of building a traditional heritage village to promote cultural tourism, an industry in its infancy at the time.

Schoen was unable to convince the first few Nations he approached, but when he approached the Xat’sull with his pitch, he was suddenly interrupted by a man sitting quietly in the corner. “I’ve been waiting 15 years for you to

TOP LEFT Fine tuning the final few turns of the Canim Lake connector. TOP RIGHT Dylan Onikamo follows James Doerlfing as the trail crew tests the rhythm section on a Friday afternoon ride. BOTTOM LEFT Vince Ready floats off 'The Separator,' one of the biggest features of the Xat'sull Nation trail network at Soda Creek. MACK RANKIN BOTTOM RIGHT Visionary Thomas Shcoen at the Xat'sull Heritage Village.

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From the beginning, the Soda Creek trails were designed to traverse the village, offering a mix of adrenaline-fueled fun and the opportunity to interact with the rich history that the Xat’sull people still champion today.

arrive!” exclaimed Ralph Phillips, a community elder. Phillips explained that he’d experienced a vision of Schoen during a sweat lodge ceremony years before—and a partnership was forged. With Schoen’s leadership, grantwriting skills and a sizable volunteer work team, the Xat’sull Heritage Village began to take form on reserve land just off Highway 97. Completed in 2012, the project was the first of its kind in the Cariboo region, and quickly gained national recognition. In addition to attracting (and educating) visitors, the village fuelled economic growth through workshops and demonstrations of traditional cultural practices.

But there was more to come. After buying his first downhill mountain bike in 2007, Schoen had another idea.

“It sure beats flipping burgers or paperwork,” says mountain biker and Xat’sull Nation member Kyle Sellars. As a child, Sellars would ‘guinea

pig’ the jumps he and his friends would build in the forest, and the freedom and thrill of the ride never went away. In 2016, he joined the First Journey Trails crew, a Schoen-led and community-driven project to develop a public campground and more than 32 kilometres of bike trails on traditional Xat’sull land. With an aim to extend the successes of the preexisting Xat’sull Heritage Village, Schoen, Sellars and a group of local trail builders got to work crafting technical downhill singletrack flowing through fir forests into an open burn, punctuated with berms and jumps before dropping into a rocky, wooded bridge and stunts section through tight aspen groves. The trails loop around and through the reserve before ending at the shuttle pick-up zone beside the heritage village. From the beginning, the Soda Creek trails were designed to traverse the village, offering a mix of adrenaline-fueled fun and the opportunity to interact with the rich history

TOP LEFT Dylan Onikamo, mid-build at Canim Lake. TOP RIGHT Xat'sull Heritage Village on the shores of the Fraser River. BOTTOM LEFT Airing into the spruce leading to the Heritage Village.

BOTTOM RIGHT The final few corners come together quickly.

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Schoen pitched the local First Nations on the idea of building a traditional heritage village to promote cultural tourism, an industry in its infancy at the time.

that the Xat’sull people still champion today. It’s an experience many riders would be hard pressed to find anywhere else in the province.

As Soda Creek welcomes mountain bikers into their community, Schoen says it’s important to remember that mountain bikers are “only a small part of society. We have to be able to self-reflect as riders, as trail users, as builders and as recreational land users. While we love our sport and take trails as serious business, let’s be respectful and honour the reconciliation process by listening to what the Indigenous community is asking for. I deeply believe in my company motto ‘All Trails Are Indigenous’.”

The crown jewel of the Soda Creek build is the recently-completed, flowy XC trail connecting the Xat’sull-operated campground and the main community down the road. Planned as an economic driver—an easy way for visiting tourists to access the community and heritage village from their accommodation—the benefits of the trail extend far beyond tourism.

“We get the most satisfaction by watching others use our trails,” Schoen said in the summer of 2020. “Elders walking to berry picking grounds, new riders having a blast, band office staff out on a lunch walk… the trail has a profound impact on peoples’ lives.”

Sellars now has kids of his own. He recently moved just a few hours down the highway from Soda Creek to to Canim Lake, where he’s rejoined Schoen and the First Journey Trails on a new project: the development of a multi-use connector linking regions of the Tsq’escenemc community.

While the Soda Creek trail network was developed with primarily economic benefits in mind, the Canim trails are decidedly community based. The Tsq’escenemc have obtained bikes for local youth and established riding and repair workshops to ensure people can continue the sport and maintain their own trails. While trail builders gather additional skills in forestry, first aid, and fire-fighting, the local youth gets something much deeper—a new way to connect to the wilderness and their traditional territories.

While there is no silver bullet solution to help small, rural communities and First Nations in BC diversify their economies or reduce reliance on resource extraction methods that often leave scars on both the landscape and communities, mountain biking and recreation are proving beneficial in a number of important ways. And the biggest impact isn’t strictly economic.

The act of building and sharing time out on the trails, across generations and user groups has proven crucial to establishing a strong sense of community. For Sellars, that comes with riding with his friends on a Friday after work. And, when his kids are old enough, he’ll bring them out on the same trails he spends all day building.

“Mountain biking has been a thing for me since I was able to ride two wheels,” says Sellars. “Now watch this, I’m going for it!” He launches himself down the trail, pedalling hard all the way to the lip of a roller and takes to the air, weightless once again. For the Xat’sull, the Tsq’escenemc, and for many other Indigenous communities in BC, mountain biking is providing new opportunities for future generations. Maybe for those few moments on a bike, growing up is optional.

TOP A fast singletrack through the remains of a charred forest. Soda Creek.

BOTTOM Big views of the Fraser River from the Soda Creek trail network.

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BEYOND

words :: Jon Turk illustration :: Dave Barnes Tiny spring leaves formed an iridescent green sheath around the ocotillo stalks that swayed gently in the breeze. As we pulled into camp, the setting sun refracted through the cholla spines, embracing those branches with an orange halo. Nearby, a giant grandmother saguaro—with its gnarled, twisted, chaotic branches wrapped around each other—looked so unlike those perfectly symmetrical, trident-shaped cacti in Arizona Highways magazine.

A long string of half-shredded, brown-streaked toilet paper draped over the desert scrub and fluttered in the same breeze that moved the ocotillo.

What kind of a brain-dead jackass would leave used toilet paper strewn around an otherwise idyllic desert campsite? Even if this person had no appreciation for the beauty of nature, didn’t he or she remember the basic lessons learned in kindergarten: Be considerate of others, clean up your mess, flush the toilet after you poop?

I shouldn’t need to ink up the pages of this magazine with a tired, old, and obvious lecture: Leave no trace.

But wait a minute—what is a trace?

Let’s jump as far away—ecologically, climate-wise, and culturally— from southern Arizona as we can, but still remain on planet Earth….

Misha and I had planned to kite-ski across a segment of Kamchatka, eastern Siberia. But the wind had blown so strongly that it essentially cleared all the snow off the tundra, so we struggled to man-haul our sleds over bare ground, rock, moss, and occasional hills of rock hard strastugi.

Then we had a warm anomaly, and the river ice began to break up six

weeks earlier than normal. So we abandoned our ambitious plans to travel from random point A to random point B—a route only relevant to some arbitrary story in my head anyhow—and instead began wandering willynilly, like an Russian puteshevstinek* in the olden days, with no agenda, no plan, no place to go, and nothing to prove.

During Stalinist times, the Soviets organized everything into structure collectives—from tractor factories in the industrial heartland, to fruit growers near the Black Sea, and they did the same with the indigenous Koryak reindeer herders. As part of this system, the Russians built strings of wooden houses along the old Koryak migration routes. Constructed with dimensional lumber, the structures stood out conspicuously against the icy sky, in a vast and otherwise featureless tundra. Misha and I stumbled across one by chance, and met an old woman, in her mid-80s, who had lived alone in this isolated windswept house, staying put after the collapse of the Soviet Union, after rogue bandito tax collectors absconded with nearly all the reindeer, and after the other members of her collective gave up and moved to town.

We gathered firewood and hauled water for the grandmother, then relaxed by a warm fire drinking that uniquely bitter Russian tea. With a hot steaming cup pressed against her wrinkled, weathered face, the old woman told us about one small band of reindeer herders remaining on the tundra, led by a man named Alexei. She asked if we would like to visit them. When we replied that we would love to visit, she told us to travel upriver for about a day, until the Magic Mountain spoke to us, and then follow the small tributary creek toward the east.

49

She gave no description of the Magic Mountain, no X marked on a map, and certainly no GPS coordinates. The implication was that if we were tuned in enough to recognize Koryak magic and to speak with rocks and mountains, we would find Alexei—and if not, we would get lost in this roadless tundra that stretched nine time zones from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

I can’t tell you what happened. There were many mountains on the landscape and many rock outcrops rising above the river valley. Misha and I would stop periodically and ask each other, “Is that the Magic Mountain?”

And then one or the other of us would shake our head slowly and reply, “No, I don’t think so.”

After a day and a morning, this exercise started to feel silly. We weren’t Koryak and this wasn’t going to work. Then, just as we were about to give up, I turned toward Misha and saw him turning toward me. We looked at each other in astonishment because we both heard, or felt, or recognized, the Magic Mountain. It’s not like it spoke to us in a booming voice in Russian (or English, or in any other audible language). I can’t explain it in words, but we both knew, with absolute certainty, that it was time to turn east and follow a small tributary creek, assured that we were on the right route.

That evening, around dinner time, we saw smoke rising from a weathered skin tent and found Alexei with a few comrades and 300 reindeer. We spent a week there, sitting on snowbanks, watching the deer.

There were fish in the nearby river. I had some line and a few hooks, so the group could catch and eat fish for the first time in many years—amazing how a few ounces of stuff can change peoples’ lives for the better. We drank tea, cut firewood, and shared stories. At the end of that time, I explained to Alexei that I was a writer and asked permission to write about his small tribe. “Could I write about the Magic Mountain,” I asked, “or is that a special little secret to be shared with just a few visitors?”

50

Alexei replied, “There is a big world out there. Many cities. People from faraway countries, like you, who speak languages we don’t understand. We know those people exist, but none of those people know that we exist.

Yes, write about us. Please do. Tell all those people in those faraway cities and countries that we are out here, talking with the stones and the Magic Mountain, herding our deer.”

So why do I write about Alexei in the same article that I describe brown, stained toilet paper strewn across the Arizona-Sonoran landscape?

You see, a trace is something we leave behind. Given that definition, a trace can be either a concrete thing or an abstract idea. Alexei had few things, but he wanted his idea—his perception that survival is achieved by nurturing a loving, spiritual, reciprocal communication with nature—to be left behind. Somehow, he knew that, “those people in the cities who speak languages we don’t understand” had lost their deep love of nature and, consequently, were altering the planet in ways that would reverberate negatively for everyone—including the reindeer, including the rocks.

These traces—these ancient but still relevant ideas—exist in the great backyards we play in every day in North America. Telling the world there is another way to live. Telling the world to treat every tree, rock and crystal of snow as a living, communicating, sentient being. Telling the world to accumulate and exchange ideas—not stuff—and to leave behind a personal legacy of thoughts, love and inspiration… not garbage and toilet paper.

“Please, Jon. Tell this to the world.”

*A puteshevstinek is a perpetual traveller. In the old days, these people carried the news and hence had a diplomatic immunity. xsBecause they accumulated no possessions, bandits and tax collectors left them alone.

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The Summer of Heights Baffin Island backyard adventures words :: Sarah McNair-Landry photography :: Erik Boomer & Sarah McNair-Landry

“A

re you sure you want to be left here for a month?” My friend Jeremy asks one last time, his aluminum hunting boat loaded and ready for the 200+ kilometre journey back to Iqaluit.

I look around. Our red tent is pitched on a small grassy bank just above the ocean, surrounded by 1,000-to-1,500-foot unclimbed granite cliffs. Yes, I’m excited to call this little base camp home for the next month, but the thought of Boomer and I putting up new routes in a completely unclimbed zone definitely makes me nervous.

Boomer’s world is whitewater kayaking and first descents of big rivers. Mine is long, cold, Arctic expeditions travelling by kite ski, dog sled or ski. We’ve only recently started climbing.

We don’t have a boat pickup organized, but we’re hopeful that in a month a couple of our friends will make the 200-kilometre trip from Iqaluit to retrieve us before we run out of food. Of course, that depends on the weather co-operating, and the Arctic Ocean ice not blocking access to the fjord.

A bit of a loose plan, but if all goes well, we’ll enjoy a great month of climbing and have just enough time to get home, repack, and head out on a two-week whitewater kayaking adventure, exploring four unpaddled rivers on the Meta Incognita Peninsula. Amidst COVID-19 lockdowns, travel restrictions and a cancelled expedition—this summer is all about exploring our backyard.

Lucky for us, our backyard is Baffin Island, the fifth largest island in the world, and home to some of Canada’s most impressive (and most isolated) landscapes.

“Yup, we’re sure,” I finally say to Jeremy. He smiles, fires up the boat, and motors away. Here we go…

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The Sedna Wall is only accessible by boat. Boomer hauls his kayak above the high tide zone, and secures it to the wall, before starting the 1,500-foot climb.

55

Following a crack system running up the solid granite wall, Boomer climbs one of the harder routes. This climb took three separate days to find a good route to the top.

Climb On!

Since COVID-19 closed Auyuittuq National Park-home to most of Baffin’s developed climbing areas—Boomer and I spent the spring searching for granite cliffs a little closer to home. After weeks of scouting via satellite images, Boomer spotted Anijaaq Fjord—inspiring the purchase of a rock drill and the beefing up of our climbing rack. Training was limited to short 20-metre single pitch climbs around my hometown of Iqaluit, but we climbed them often when it wasn’t snowing or raining. We also scoured the surrounding area for new cliffs, learning how to problem solve and put up new routes. Watching the sea ice melt, we eagerly anticipated the start of our climbing adventure.

Aside from satellite images, we had little information on Anijaaq Fjord.

No guidebook or climbing topos. In fact, we couldn’t even find a photo of the cliffs. Of course, we are by no means the first people here. Inuit have extensively travelled and hunted this land for centuries, as evidenced by an old tent ring made of rocks adjacent to our camp. The only information we did gather from people who have travelled this coastline is that this area is infested with polar bears and is always windy.

But to our knowledge, the cliffs remain unclimbed.

We kayak around the corner and get a better look at what we eventually decide to call Sedna Wall—the tallest formation in the fjord, the 1,500-foot granite face juts straight out of the Arctic Ocean.

“I think I see a line.” Boomer points and passes me our cheap, twentydollar monocular to get a closer, better(ish) look at the system of cracks that run up the wall. “Should we try it and see how far we get?”

“I thought today was a scout day,” I reply, still sore from the previous day’s route, the first of our trip, which ended up being 1,200 feet of grade 5.7 crack climbing.

“Yeah, we can scout from the wall,” he replies. “And we can always retreat at any point and come back to the boats.”

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There is confidence in his voice, but we both love pushing long days and I mentally prepare myself. Stepping awkwardly out of my kayak onto a small ledge at the base of the cliff, taking extra care not to slip into the frigid ocean water, I haul my boat up out of the tidal zone and pass it to Boomer so he can secure both our kayaks to the wall. Climb on.

Following the crack system we’d spotted from our kayaks, we jam our hands and feet into the fissure and move up the wall. As we advance, the crack becomes narrow and less featured. Boomer, the much stronger climber, leads what turns out to be the steep crux of the climb—a long, 70-metre pitch of 5.10 climbing. I follow with the heavy pack.

The only information we did gather from people who have travelled this coastline is that this area is infested with polar bears and is always windy. But to our knowledge, the cliffs remain unclimbed.

We move steadily upwards until we reach a section of loose rock too dangerous to climb. Avoiding the loose blocks requires almost a full rope-length traverse to the left. Boomer starts off while I slowly feed out rope. He moves horizontally across the rock—carefully, deliberately—and eventually reaches a small ledge where he sets up a belay station and yells, “off belay, climb when ready”.

I break down the anchor and yell back, “climbing”.

I hesitate and take a deep breath. I focus on my feet and hand placements, slowly moving across the wall, stopping to remove the pieces of protection Boomer placed. The traverse is easy—probably one of the easiest pitches we’ve done today. But, while placing my left foot, I accidentally dislodge a rock.

Watching it tumble down the side of the cliff and plunge into the ocean below drives home the sheer size of the void below me. I try to play it cool, but my heart is racing. This is a good time to be honest: I’m scared of heights. Or maybe I’m scared of falling from heights. Either way, the effect is the same.

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I know I’m safe. If I fall, the rope will catch me. Maybe I’ll swing and get banged up, but I’ll be fine. I tell myself my fear is irrational. I take another step, then another. Inches give way to feet, I make it.

It’s now close to 7:00 p.m. and the sun is getting low. We need to get off this cliff before darkness falls. More than halfway up the wall, our quickest exit option is to simply keep climbing rather than retreat back to our boats. I feel like this was Boomer’s plan all along, and I am just as keen to get to the top. Neither of us brings up the idea of retreating.

Ten pitches later, we reach the top of Sedna Wall just in time to watch the sun disappear. After a celebratory high-five, Boomer hands me half of his granola bar, and I dig out the last of my gummy sharks to share. I’ll need the boost of energy, and my headlamp, for the trail-less hike back to camp (we’ll use our inflatable pack raft to retrieve the kayaks tomorrow).

“That was a nice relaxing rest day” I say, massaging my shore shoulder.

“What should we climb next?”

•••

We don’t have a boat pickup organized, but we’re hopeful that in a month a couple of our friends will make the 200-kilometre trip from Iqaluit to retrieve us before we run out of food.

Low clouds conceal the mountain tops, and a light drizzle patters the roof of our tent. I keep an eye on the pot of water. As soon as it boils, I turn off our stove and pour myself a cup of mint tea. I pull my sleeping bag over my legs and pull out my book. Boomer strums his small travel guitar. These small tasks are all we have, tent-bound as the weather forces us to take a much-needed rest day.

At dusk, Boomer heads out to pee and check that the electric bear fence encircling our small camp is turned on before we retire for the night.

“Sarah, there is a bear outside the tent,” he says calmly, but with urgency in his voice.

I grab our gun from the vestibule and tear open the tent door to get a visual. I spot a large polar bear on the beach.

“That is the fattest bear I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t look hungry.”

Convinced, Boomer returns to the shelter of the tent and we keep an eye on the bear. Very slowly he wanders past camp, stopping often to dig up the tundra or rest. Then, he hikes up the valley, takes a sharp left-hand turn and begins climbing the steep scree slope—our descent route off the Sedna Wall.

“Where is he going?” Boomer asks, “There are no seals or food up there.”

Trying to ignore what’s below and how much rock is above; I focus on my next step and hold. Suddenly, I hear Boomer’s voice, “Is that a bear swimming in the ocean?”

I brave a glance downward and see a white blob. It disappears into the ocean and reappears. “It’s a beluga whale,” I shout back, and pause for a moment to watch the whale pass by. A thousand feet up, the views are endless and the Arctic Ocean extends as far as my eye can see to the east. To the southwest, the ice cap glistens, surrounded by another entire range of unclimbed peaks. Pausing and taking in the panorama, I’m reminded of the beauty and vastness of Baffin Island. In this moment there is no place I’d rather be.

Home for 25 days, surrounded by an electric bear fence with amazing views of all the potential climbing.

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ABOVE The final river dropped quickly as it neared the Arctic Ocean, creating four massive waterfalls. Boomer and Sarah scouting one of the drops at sunset. RIGHT Boomer running a juicy falls with a powerful hydraulic at the bottom.

“Maybe he wants to enjoy the view,” I reply, “And he must not be afraid of heights.”

For three more weeks, we climb and explore the Anijaaq Fjord, soaking in the solitude of our own private playground. When we are not climbing or resting, we hike and kayak the fjord to explore our temporary home. In the end, our friends’ boats do arrive (slightly delayed due to the ice blocking the entrance of the fjord), and we pack up and ship out with five new routes behind us. Ahead lies the Meta Incognita Peninsula—where the next adventure awaits.

River Time “You ready?” Boomer yells back at me as his kayak plunges into the rapid. I follow, paddling hard to compensate for the strong current and keeping an eye on the path he choses to navigate the turbulent water. The rapid is long, and I zig zag back and forth avoiding rocks.

Soon, a horizon line appears ahead of us on the river and we quickly pull over to shore. I scramble down the steep bank to get a better look at the rapid ahead. The river funnels into a tight rocky canyon and drops steeply, creating an impressive slide before disappearing out of sight. The short canyon has steep, committing walls, and the next waterfall is impossible to see.

“I’m going to hike around this one,” I tell Boomer. But first, I take up a position on shore with my throw-line bag in hand to ensure Boomer makes it through the tight canyon safely. He does, so I hike back to my boat, awkwardly balancing it onto its nose before lowering it onto my shoulder.

Now that we’re halfway through our trip—carrying less food and fuel— the weight of my boat is somewhat manageable. We started at the ocean a week ago, and spent the first two days hiking ten kilometres, hauling gear and boats up 2,000 feet of elevation to the source of our first river. The expedition route—with lots more hiking to come—will lead us across the Meta Incognita Peninsula and link together four never-before-run rivers. If these waterways have names—in English or Inuktitut —we haven’t been able to find anyone who knows what they are.

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I rejoin Boomer below the rapids, and we casually float along as the river meanders through the lush tundra valley and past several curious caribou grazing on the shoreline.

“You hear that?” Boomer asks, suddenly excited. “Sounds like a big rapid ahead.”

It’s not a rapid, it’s a waterfall. I stand at the lip watching the clear blue water tumble and freefall 20 feet into a pool below. “I’m going to run it” Boomer says, handing me the camera. Through the distance of a viewfinder, I watch him steer his yellow kayak into position, take a final stroke, and brace for the impact of the landing, tucking his body forward onto the bow of his boat. He comes up grinning, gives a hoot and looks expectantly at me.

Nervous, I stare at the waterfall, my mind churning: do I run this drop, or hike around? It’s the biggest waterfall I’ve even contemplated running— big enough for potential injury on impact. Excuses come easily: it’s remote, a rescue would be difficult, I’m cold and tired, it’s the end of the day. Standing at the lip, I feel a splash of vertigo and take a couple steps back.

This waterfall scares me, but I also want to paddle it.

I hike back to my boat. I get in and stretch my neoprene spray skirt over the cockpit, running my fingers along the edge to double check everything is properly secured. I splash my face with cold water, take a deep breath, and force a smile—this is why we’re here. I’m doing this for fun. In the moment, my fears are uncomfortable—but all the planning and preparation, the training, that exposed feeling climbing and clinging to a 1,500-foot cliff, the brutal hikes with our loaded kayaks—these are moments I will remember forever. This waterfall is exactly what we came for, to explore the hidden corners of our backyard.

I push my boat into the flow and the current carries me quickly downstream—there is no turning back. I focus on entering the rapid just left of the visible rock and keep my kayak pointed down river. As I approach the falls, I plant my paddle to set my angle, so I don’t injure myself on impact. The current pushes my boat over the lip and I spot my landing in the pool of water below.

“F**k that is a long way down.” I can feel myself start to freefall…

Did I mention I’m scared of heights?

CLIMBS BY THE NUMBERS

RIVERS BY THE NUMBERS

“The Line” on Raven Rock Wall / grade: 5.7 / 1,200 feet / 6 pitches

Rivers paddled: 4

“Sedna” on Sedna Wall / grade 5.10 / 1,500 feet / 10 pitches

Kilometres hiked: 40

“Beluga” on Sedna Wall / grade 5.8 / 1,500 feet / 10 pitches

River kilometres paddled: 85

“Taqriaqsuit” on Shadow Wall / grade 5.9 / 600 feet / 4 pitches

Waterfalls run: 32 waterfalls / slides

“Shape Shifter” on Ijiraat Wall / grade 5.10 / 1,100 feet / 8 pitches

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BACKYARD

THE VALLEY OF REDISCOVERED DREAMS Time travel on the Upper Squamish words :: Feet Banks & photography :: Neve Petersen The spirit of the forest—untamed, untouched, painted with life, and teeming with both the promise of adventure and the sense of insignificance that comes from simply existing within one of the most complex and biodiverse areas on planet Earth.

Time can stand still in the giant temperate rainforests of the Coast Mountains. It can also shift and flicker like the light filtering through the canopy of mossy cedar, towering fir, or big-leafed maple. In the forest, our pace slows—a lifetime here can last hundreds, even thousands of years, yet there are also hundreds of lifecycles that renew each season. Through this alchemy of permanence and impermanence, the rainforest lures our consciousness towards a simpler era, where life can be lived on its own schedule.

And there’s no better time machine than a horse.

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Which is why, 39 years after being bucked off and kicked by one, I find myself sitting atop another living, sighing, snorting, shitting, grass-and-leafchewing, 1,200-pound animal about to forge off into the unknown. Well, the unknown to me; Whiskey, my trusty (I hope) quarter horse, is well versed on where we’re going and what we intend to do.

“He is a pro,” says Stacey Paradine as we meander through a fenced field on private land deep in the Upper Squamish Valley. “All these horses literally helped build these trails so anything they may encounter on the trail, they’ve already seen it before.”

Paradine, who recently started Squamish River Horse Adventures with friend Vincent Pennarun (he’s taking up the rear of our four-horse pack train, atop a horse named Nero), has been riding as long as she can remember

“I’m the queen of countless canyons, king of a million peaks; Nymph of my timbered valleys green, and lord of my swollen creeks; Ruler of flowing glaciers, God of Eternal Snows; Mother of giant conifers and every shrub that grows; Spawn of the swamp-loving Cedar, seed of the long-needled Pine, Crown of the stately Douglas Fir; but the Human is not mine…

—Robert E. Swanson, excerpt from The Spirit of the Forest 1942

LEFT Dusty (and Stacey) lead the path into the spirit of the rainforest.

RIGHT 'We don't need no canoe!' Nero and Vincent forge into the mighty Squamish River.

and guiding horse trips in the Sea to Sky Corridor for the past decade. My nervousness, she claims, is her favourite part of the job.

“I love the vulnerability and how people immediately feel humbled,” she says. “They realize pretty quick that this is not like riding a bike. We’ll take a big tough-acting guy, put him on a horse and his hands start shaking. Then we teach him how to work out a partnership with this 1,000-pound animal, and that partnership allows us to go explore the most beautiful places.”

Paradine first came to the Squamish Valley in 2016, and immediately connected with the landscape. “This valley is so sacred, wild, and beautiful,” she says. “It’s completely different from anything I’ve ridden before—even compared to Whistler and Pemberton. I saw these huge sandy beaches and immediately wanted to ride them. The freedom out

here is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.”

As we push through the edge of the forest and out onto one of those big sandy beaches, the mighty Squamish River comes into view. Born from snowmelt at the toe of the legendary (and massive) Pemberton Icecap, the Squamish is joined by the Elaho, Ashlu, Cheakamus and Mamquam rivers over the course of its 80-kilometre (50-mile) run to the headwaters of Howe Sound. The mountains on the western bank rise sharp and steep still holding lots of snow, and as our horses pause to drink the glacier-fed waters, I count no fewer than four separate waterfalls cascading down the far side of the valley.

‘The river is a lot higher than yesterday,” Stacey notices. “We’ll cross over to the sandbar up ahead.” She knows the terrain intimately, and it 65

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makes me realize how seeing the world from the back of a horse offers the opportunity to connect with the landscape without having to think about where to place your feet, or which way the trail turns. The mind is free to wander, to observe—and I find myself watching dragonflies mating on the tip of a cottonwood branch or noticing how the silty river water eddies around a massive, upturned cedar stump like time itself washing past the tree of life.

For generations, the Upper Squamish Valley held incredible value as a rich fishing and hunting area for the Indigenous Skwxwú7mesh stelmexw (Squamish Peoples). The river teemed with salmon runs and the shores, ridgelines, and forests were home to mountain goats, deer, moose, elk, grizzly and black bears, wolves, cougars, bobcats, beaver, mink, wolverine, ducks, grouse, and more. Even in the early 1900s, it wasn’t unusual to see more than 200 mountain goats in one area. In those early days, nearly all of the hunting—and general travel—in the Squamish Valley was done by canoe.

In his book I Remember, Clarence “Hank” Tatlow writes about legendary Squamish Chief Jimmy Jimmy (Swahsh in the local language), the best canoeman to ever ride the river. After an early snowstorm interrupted a trout fishing and hunting trip, Tatlow—who was given the name Ta Kaya (Lone Wolf )— recalls paddling 30 miles downriver in the pitch black night with Jimmy Jimmy and his wife.

“He said his wife had good ears,” Tatlow writes, “and warned me about keeping quiet and not to touch the canoe with my paddle as his wife wanted to catch every sound the river made. We took off and every few minutes she would shout and we would really dig the paddles in and we could hear the water roaring under a log jam as we went by.”

Dusty and Stacey let loose in the sand.

THE COWBOY HAT Tradition meets function Mongolian horseback riders are said to have worn wide-brimmed hats since at least the 13th century. And while early American pioneers wore a variety of different hats while pushing west across the country (the bowler was popular) the archetypical cowboy hat seems to have evolved in the 1800s from the sombreros Mexican vaqueros (horsemen and cattle herders) had been wearing for at least 100 years.

“A good hat is everything on the trail,” says Squamish River Horse Adventures’ Stacey Paradine. “It’s a sun protector, a rain protector and it also shields your face from branches or cobwebs on the trail. Out here, your hat is a part of who you are.”

Which means you want one that looks badass. For Paradine, that meant turning to Braeden Paterson for a custom build at his Paterson Hat Company workshop in Victoria, BC.

“For the leader of a trail adventure company,” Paterson says, “I wanted to make sure Stacey’s stood out above the rest, literally. It’s real tall and wide but that’s made with intention to keep her head protected from the elements. The silverbelly felt matches her horse Dusty and I don’t think there will be any mistaking who the boss of the trail is.”

Hand-crafting his first hat in 2015, Paterson apprenticed under a milliner in Montreal before studying with a number of masters across the western United States. He says the key to a good hat is quality materials (in this case: beaver fur felt, shaped by hand on a vintage hat block and garnished with a horsehair band).

“I pull inspiration from hats made over the last century and bring them into a modern day shape. If I’ve made a hat that looks good now, would look good 50 years ago, and has the quality of build to last another 50 years, I’ve done my job.”

One more thing about cowboy hats, Paterson explains, is that a ‘ten-gallon hat’, isn’t called that because of its size, nor does it mean the hat can hold ten gallons of water for your horse. The name comes from the Spanish word galón, which means braid. Some Spanish hats were fashioned with braids on them—ones that had ten braids on them were referred to as a ‘ten-galón hat.’

“I don’t recommend using your hat as a water bucket, but if you’ve got to do it, my hats will get the job done, I’ve tried.” patersonhatcompany.com 67

Jimmy Jimmy also used to transport colonial hunters and logging surveyors up the Squamish River, and there are records of horse logging in the valley as far back as the 1890s, with a pack trail following the riverbank all the way back to the farms of Brackendale and the port town of Newport.

These days, a paved road runs deep into the valley and the wildlife is less plentiful, but out amongst the timeless murmur of the river, a horse can follow paths on the riverbanks that have been used for more than a century. Whiskey is less concerned about all that and more interested in straying from the group to forage on the fresh leaves of early summer. “Whiskey was the first horse I ever bought,” says Pennarun, expertly maneuvering Nero up beside me. “He’d never been ridden—didn’t have gears or steering, nothing. But I worked with him and trained him to be who he is, now he’s our top horse.”

For Pennarun and Paradine, rescuing and rehabilitating horses is both a passion and a way to build their herd—seven of their 14 horses have been cast aside by previous owners. “A lot of people buy a horse impulsively,” Paradine explains. “It’s not a lawn ornament or an accessory. It’s a full-on lifestyle—you need land, proper tack, food and resources. You have to be devoted to that animal for the rest of its life, which can easily be 30 years.”

Paradine’s white gelding, Dusty, was considered a problem horse who was showing aggression and hadn’t been ridden in over seven years when Paradine adopted him. “He hated putting on a bridle so the first thing I did was swap in a bit-less bridle, then I went back to the basics and rode him consistently, worked on gaining his trust. No one wanted to go near him when I first met him, now he’s the sweetest guy. I’d put my grandma on him.”

The Squamish Valley has a number of horse rescue operations and both Paradine and Pennarun say that local culture inspires them. “The horse community in this area is incredible and really steps up,” Paradine says.

“There are always horses that need to be rescued—a couple of auctions a month with hundreds of horses. The more horses that can be rescued and rehabilitated, the better.”

As the sun dips behind the mountains, our guides tie off the horses

while the rest of us prepare a fire for smokies, laughs, and the timeless ritual of cowboy coffee. (Legitimately, real cowboys and ranchers will drink 15 cups of coffee after dinner and still fall asleep within minutes. The gift of an outdoor lifestyle, I suppose.) Time slips by as a sliver of moon follows a steep ridgeline towards the valley.

Then, after the embers have burned down and the first stars have poked through the deep blue fabric of dusk, we remount the horses and head for the barn. With no moon, headlamps, or light sources of any kind, our trust is 100 per cent with the horses. Perhaps they have far superior night vision or can navigate by sound and instinct like Jimmy Jimmy’s wife, or maybe they just know the way back to the barn, but the partnership Paradine mentioned just hours ago feels complete—I trust this animal like a friend.

“That connection only gets deeper,” explains Pennarun, as Nero takes the lead. “And I feel like it’s in all of us. One hundred and fifty years ago, our great grandparents rode horses, and so did theirs for generations before that—that’s all still in us. And then if you take that connection and layer it with good experience on top of good experience… once that trust develops just about everyone starts to fall in love.”

“The person that got on the horse is not the same one that gets off,” Paradine adds. “And it’s because of the horses, that’s the coolest part. It all comes from these beautiful animals.”

And so, riding blind and happy up a dry river channel in a valley carved by thousands of feet of glacial ice several millennia ago, I think about the spirit of the forest and the history of the horse. They’re both here, surrounding us with a connection unburdened by time and space. A bond that is coded into our human DNA but also continually subverted—beaten out of us by the noise and lists and throat-clutching ego of contemporary life. But that connection is why we search for these wild places and, I’m discovering, why we ride these animals… because they know the way to get us back home. squamishriverhorseadventures.com

Another fine night in the Squamish Valley.

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Boarder X has been organized and circulated by the Winnipeg Art Gallery, curated by Jaimie Isaac

ARTIST PROFILE

LEVI NELSON

Raven and the Last Meal. Oil on canvas, 2019.

words :: Feet Banks There’s an interesting photo on Levi Nelson’s Instagram feed, dated August 21, 2019. Sandwiched in amongst shots of his paintings or images of life in his hometown of Mount Currie, there’s a simple photo of a clear plastic cup with the words “urine only” scrawled on it in thick blue ink.

“One of these days I’ll be able to afford to install plumbing and a window in my modest studio,” Nelson writes in the caption. “Today I meet with the head curator of the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, and tomorrow a curation visit from the Maury Young Arts Centre. Ever grateful! My dreams are set to come true.”

It’s safe to say those dreams are working overtime, and so is Levi Nelson. Since that post, he has sold a painting to the Audain Art Museum (one of the world’s most celebrated collections of art from Coastal British Columbia), and had multiple pieces featured in the Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver. His solo show at Maury Young Arts Centre was among the most celebrated they’ve ever had, and he just graduated with a Bachelor of Fine

Arts degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver (after winning the prestigious IDEA Art Award there in 2018).

One of the most celebrated contemporary Indigenous artists in the country (Nelson is a member of the Lil’wat Nation) he’s recently been accepted to do his master’s degree at Columbia University in New York City.

And perhaps best of all, his modest studio now has a beautiful window overlooking a grassy field and the eastern flank of Mount Currie… shit could be worse.

And it has been. The old saying is that the darkest hour is just before dawn, and Nelson says his path to painting full-time started during an alcohol-and-depression-fueled mental breakdown at work in the kitchen of a pizza parlour in Salmo, British Columbia.

“I’d let alcohol take control of my life,” he says. “And I hit a point where I felt, ‘I can’t be doing this with my life. I need to be doing more.’”

Thirty-two years old at the time, Nelson had already established and let go of careers as a fashion designer and actor, as well as worked a plethora of service industry jobs. Painting and visual arts had always been 73

ABOVE Gender Performativity. Acrylic on canvas 2019. BELOW Nelson and The Messengers, 2021.

Over the next half decade, through the alchemy of hard work, raw talent, sobriety, and wild ambition, Nelson catapulted himself into the upper echelon of contemporary Canadian artists.

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more of a hobby, but in that rock-bottom moment he wondered if art school might offer a way forward. A search for the best art schools in Canada led him to Emily Carr University; but they needed a portfolio submitted.

“I didn’t have any art supplies, so I grabbed an old pizza box and a piece of charcoal and sketched out this Indian chief with a gas mask on.

I dug up another small painting I’d done and filled out the application— drunk—and sent it off. I got accepted. I had to defer until the January intake [at the school] but that gave me a path, a goal to work on getting healthy.

It was a battle. It was a battle the whole way, but art saved my life.”

Over the next half decade, through the alchemy of hard work, raw talent, sobriety, and wild ambition, Nelson has catapulted himself into the upper echelon of contemporary Canadian artists. And while his works definitely speak to and incorporate traditional West Coast Indigenous form, style and subject matter, he is not afraid to stir things up by mixing pop culture icons, European influences, or biting social commentary into his work.

“When I was in high school, my paintings were heavily influenced by surrealism and Salvador Dali, and of course cubism and Picasso, and even the ‘60s psychedelic type of artwork. I didn’t even really start exploring Indigenous art until eight years ago when I worked at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre in Whistler. But wow—that art influenced me and speaks to who I am as a person. I guess I relate to the world mostly through an Indigenous lens, so I create Indigenous art, but with a contemporary aesthetic. So, Sitting Bull could be on the same painting as Snow White, which is something I did in a piece called Hunter Gatherer. I guess that sort of thing is an attempt not to be pigeon-holed as simply Indigenous. Plus, I’m an oil painter, and that’s a European tradition so I think about that every time I do work.”

Nelson says a lot of his work is influenced by the writing and art of Marcia Crosby, who speaks a lot about the First Nations peoples living in

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urban landscapes outside of their traditional territories. The piece he sold to the Audain Art Museum is titled Nations in an Urban Landscape, and imagines an urban street scene of Indigenous people wearing traditional masks and using artifacts like bent-wood baskets. Trade Blankets features a person sleeping on the sidewalk beneath a classic Hudson’s Bay Company blanket.

While having his work in museums has always been a goal, Nelson says he’s grateful to have pieces hanging in his hometown as well, and that connecting to regular people—selling canvasses for people’s homes, or even seeing his work on a newspaper cover sitting on the back of a public toilet—is still something he values incredibly.

“Absolutely. It’s an honour to have somebody want to live with your art on their wall. Like a piece I did called Gender Performativity for a group show at the Bill Reid Gallery called ‘Resurgence: Indigiqueer Identities’— the show was about two-spiritedness and a lady who has a transgender daughter saw my piece and we’ve been emailing back and forth because they want to commission something similar that speaks to what it’s like for their child’s experience going through life. It is incredibly touching that people want to have a relationship with something that, I’d like to think, comes from my soul. I open myself up when I do work. Otherwise, it’s not worth it.”

Check out Levi’s work on his Instagram @levi.nelson.artiste and listen for a full hour long conversation on the new “Live it up with Mountain Life” podcast. Watch for it in July.

ABOVE Two-Spirited Medicine Man Named Old Doctor. Acrylic, silkscreen, and collage on canvas, 2020.

BELOW Nations in an Urban Landscape. Oil on canvas, 2019.

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MOUNTAIN HOME

Island Paradise. Whisper Creek Retreat and Howe Sound.

A LEGACY OF GATHERING Honouring decades of family tradition in the heart of Howe Sound

words :: Todd Lawson photography :: Eric Berger In May of 1969, North Vancouverites Barry and Margaret Higgins wrapped their newborn daughter Keeley in a blanket and brought her, in an apple box, across Howe Sound to their newly-purchased island hideaway on Gambier Island.

Arriving at the government dock in West Bay, the Higgins, both in their 20s, placed their tiny bundle in a wheelbarrow and wheeled her up a gravel road to a plot of land known as The West Bay Church Camp, ‘discovered’ by accident when Barry found an old for sale sign overgrown by the bush that had, by his telling, “probably been there for ten years.” And so, underneath a towering stand of hemlock, cedar and Douglas fir trees, a lifetime of memories began.

The Higgins joined three other young couples and purchased the seven-acre property for $6,000. “At the time it was quite a bit of money for us,” says Barry. “It was a big deal.”

After diplomatically ‘evicting’ the members of the Church Camp, the four couples moved into a large and airy four-bedroom cabin, built in the 1920s to house workers in a logging camp, while the families’ kids all slept in a smaller cabin behind the main house. Each weekend throughout the summer months, the new owners would cross the sound to cut and split wood, fix things that had rotted over the winter, build an outhouse, or clear new land.

“Whatever we needed, we did ourselves,” Barry says. “With that many people you could get a lot of work done in four hours. The rest of the time was for recreation.”

As a kid, Keeley remembers collecting water from the creek and mowing the lawn, then going fishing and playing horseshoes for fun.

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LEFT Berger preparing some seaside cocktails on nearby Keats Island. RIGHT Keeley with another homegrown haul.

“The place at the time was pretty rustic,” she says. “It didn’t have any power, and we used oil lamps and candles at night. Growing up, life was pretty simple. We’d all come together in a shared boat to the island to relax.”

Jump ahead 20 years to a less relaxing locale—Buffalo Bill’s Bar & Grill, a Whistler nightclub where Keeley met Eric Berger, a transplanted Quebecer on his way to becoming one of the ski and mountain bike industry’s most prolific photographers.

Sharing the island vibe is exactly what the couple hopes to continue into the future, a vibe that comes from not only from the impeccable hosting and culinary skills of Keeley and Berger, but from the decades of hard work put in to make the place what it is today: an amazing patch of West Coast life. Canvas tents and yurts punctuate the clearings, while a wood-fired hot tub, clawfoot cold bath, and a fireside nook made from salvaged wood, offer pure relaxation after a long day on the water. The

What brings all of the elements of Whispering Creek together is the tiki bar—a rustic, open-air bar and kitchen space where guests can prepare their own food, or have Keeley and Berger craft unique cocktail-and-culinary magic that all (except for the Tequila of course) comes from the island’s bounty.

At the same time, Keeley carved herself a niche in the Whistler fine dining scene, serving and managing at establishments like Il Caminetto, Trattoria, and the Red Door Bistro.

In 2001, Keeley and Berger (with Keeley’s brother Jamie) bought out the other partners and family members and took over the island compound, rechristening it Whispering Creek Retreat.

“Eric borrowed every jack on the island and jacked up the house to replace all of the termite-infested beams and posts,” Keeley recalls, adding that she wants to keep the old structure around. ”We’ll probably create an indoor gathering space, and revive the old fireplace and its big square hearth, maybe funk it up with some lights. We don’t really want to just knock it down. I feel like the place has a good vibration... It’s really energizing to share that.”

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campfire hosts conversation and laughter all night long, while mornings are best for barefoot walks in the grass and visits to the waterfall at the bottom of “Fern Gully,” before heading out on a boat or a board to experience West Bay and Gambier’s marine life from the water.

The Skwxwu7mesh (Squamish Peoples) call Gambier Island Cha7élkwnech, in reference to its deep protected bays, and used the island for resourcegathering, a tradition that Eric and Keeley have continued to this day.

What brings all of the elements of Whispering Creek together is the tiki bar—a rustic, open-air bar and kitchen space where guests can prepare their own food, or have Keeley and Berger craft unique cocktail-and-culinary magic that all (except for the Tequila of course) comes from the island’s bounty.

Berger sets his own crab and spot-prawn traps, and Keeley maintains a flourishing garden that supplies fresh produce eight months of the year.

THIS COULD BE YOU!

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“It’s her biggest passion,” says Berger, putting the final touches on his signature agave-smoked margarita. “She spends a lot of time there and she can zen out, gardening barefoot and getting her hands and feet dirty. It’s all a very organic process, right down to the compost.”

Over the course of a season, Keeley will harvest and serve everything from spinach, asparagus, carrots, radishes, leeks, beets, scallions, garlic, dill, chives, cilantro, green beans, onions, peppers, and blueberries (transplanted from Hare’s Farm in Pemberton).

“What I love most about this place is escaping to another world so close to home,” says Berger, who is more likely to be checking his crab traps these days than he is shooting skiers on Whistler Blackcomb.

“We’d really like to keep sharing it with others,” Keeley adds. “Keep it rustic as possible with the idea of doing retreats so people can come and enjoy the space and what we’ve created there.”

What they’ve created is a well-thought-out collection of coastal character—a place where you can be yourself and escape from reality for a few days. Whispering Creek’s rich history lives on as a destination for wellness, yoga and SUP retreats, weddings and small corporate getaways, as well as nightly Airbnb rentals.

“All walks of life are welcome here,” Keeley says. “The place just has great energy... and I feel like people really kind of need that.”

As another summer dawns, Barry Higgins says he still loves coming to the island to reminisce, relax, and to “get my fingers dirty in the garden with my daughter. There’s a lot of memories for me there that’s for sure” he says. “Keeley and Eric have put so much sweat and love into that place. I’m happy to see it flourishing.”

Instagram: @whisperingcreekretreat

TOP LEFT Yurt life is the right life. LEFT Extra-curricular activities include blowing your mind.

BELOW The legendary Tiki-Bar.

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LIVE WHERE YOU LOVE

Photo: Tourism Whistler / John Henebry

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Rad Ron wants everyone to know this photo was right taken after a big rain and the crew had fire suppression equipment on hand. He's rad, but responsible.

Summer 2021—Comin' in Hot! Next issue drops November 2021

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