A Series of Unfortunate Events

One late-September day, Graeme Budge’s local run club attempted to run the entire Howe Sound Crest Trail, and their motley crew’s morning began with a bad omen: One runner arrived at the trailhead with just two small 500 ml bottles of water. Everyone else was packing anywhere from two to three litres.

He did have a filter nozzle and Graeme says, “He was confident that there would be an opportunity to replenish water along the trail. He even pointed out some snow patches on satellite imagery.”

Any day you take a miss from a giant boulder is a good one.

About four and a half hours into the full-day run, another group member started to feel off and decided to abort the mission, heading down into Lions Bay. Not long after, an off-duty nurse found him having a “mild cardiac event” and contacted the group. Realizing she was not going to finish the run and still make an afternoon appointment, one member left to assist.

As they headed toward the saddle of The Sisters, the group stopped for a moment to watch hikers ascending the West Lion on an improper route. “The sounds of falling rock echoed, and everyone was suddenly alert,” Graeme recalls. “A boulder the size of a microwave broke loose and tumbled across the trail in the area we were about to cross, no more than 50 metres ahead of us.”

Picking their way through that section safely, it wasn’t long before they began noticing their water supply quickly depleting. And that friend who packed way too little water? “He was feeling fatigued and dehydrated to the point of seriously considering calling SAR,” Graeme says.

They weren’t even halfway yet.

Making the decision to bail, the remaining crew headed towards Lions Bay when someone spotted a pool of water—about the size of a dinner plate— under a boulder. “We spent the next 40 minutes rehydrating,” Graeme says.

With the objective aborted, the group strolled into Lions Bay to meet up with the runner who left the group earlier in the day. He was feeling much better, welcoming everyone with soda, chips and a ride to their cars.

“Completion or not,” Graeme says, “a day in the backyard with friends is always good. One for the memory books.”

And any day you take a miss from a giant boulder is a good one.

Small Misstep, Big Consequences

Sometimes disaster can strike even on the most innocuous trail. On a non-technical single track in Pemberton, just out for a relaxed run with friends, North Vancouver ultrarunner Katie Mills stepped off the gravel to cut a corner—just a couple of steps—and landed on a stick.

“Basically, a stick impaled my foot,” she says, “all the way through the bottom of the running shoe.”

With the nearest road just about a kilometre away, Katie’s friends carried her out of the forest and rushed her to the Pemberton Medical Clinic, where the on-call doctor dosed her with fentanyl for the pain, then cut off her shoe and pulled out the stick.

“It took months to heal,” Katie says. “Bits of stick and bark kept appearing in the wound.”

Ultimately, Katie ended up in North Vancouver’s Lions Gate Hospital months later so a plastic surgeon could fully clear out the injury. “This was a few years ago now,” she says, “but it’s still imprinted in my brain.”

Cutting corners might be fine most of the time, but on the trail, Mother Nature’s consequences can be pointed.

All this goes to show, anything can happen out on the trail (let’s just say every trail runner has a poop story that’s better left untold), but that’s part of the appeal. What’s the other option? Log onto Netflix and hit the treadmill? No thanks.