The Travelling Life of Silvan Colani
July/August 2001 - Canadian Rocky Mountains
Yet again, I had to answer the call
of the mountains, transporting my polluted city soul into the pristine altitudes of the
Canadian Rockies.
But before I would even come within sight of a mountain, my Rocky Mountain Adventure went off to
a rocky start. Firstly, I had to endure 11 hours of packed economy class travel on Cathay Pacific
without any in-flight entertainment - no music, no films, no nothing!!! What a journey - I
killed time by drinking beer and trying to pass out.
Having arrived in Vancouver I picked up my flashy ride for the next two weeks: an almost
brand new, silver, convertible Ford Mustang. I spent a few days for business in Vancouver
when I ran into my second incident - well, it kind of ran into me. A client had picked
me up for dinner and as we were crossing a busy intersection his car was hit full impact
by an oncoming Porsche. The Porsche went off into a tree and we spun into a stationary
vehicle. There was a bit of shock and carnage but fortunately no major casualty.
Nevertheless, I spent the next three hours in a hospital waiting for a pretty medical
student to stitch up a small wound on my head, thus making my contribution to the Canadian
medical education.
Back at the hotel I had a message from my office to call some clients, which just happened
to be in town that day. I invited them over for a drink (which I definitely needed by now).
I didn't want to spoil their night with the tales of my somewhat unpleasant evening, but as
we chatted away blood kept running down my temple. I guess they didn't notice in the dark
and, hey, the show must go on!
Things could only get better now and indeed they did as I headed out East on the Trans Canada
Highway. A very scenic drive brought me to strangely named Salmon Arm (salmon have arms???)
where I spent my first night away from Vancouver. Plenty more driving the next day (this
country is BIG) I reached Banff and then Canmore, where Yamnuska, my guiding company for the
next two weeks, was based.
My 'Intro to Alpine Ice' course started off on Monday morning at the Columbia Icefield
Campground, which would be our base for the week. We began with an introduction round for the
twelve 'clients' and three guides. As was the case for my climbing trip back in New Zealand,
it again turned out to be a pretty eclectic mix of people and characters.
There was Big Wave Dave, not a surfer as his name might wrongly suggest, but a distinctly
non-Texan-looking Texan with a PhD in chemistry; Bart, a US air force pilot; Bob, another
PhD running a biotech company in Colorado; Coughing Claude, my tent-mate from Montreal who
was recovering from a bout of whatever it was that caused all that coughing; Victoria, an
emergency ward physician from Toronto (always good to have one around, I guess); Phil, managing
director of a UK IT firm who had spent eleven years in Hong Kong (small world, isn't it?); and
a bunch of other characters mostly from North America.
The guides were a good lot too: Barry Blanchard (second from left), climber extraordinaire with an unrivaled sense of
humor and a thorough knowledge of totally useful and useless facts; Ken Wiley (first from left), another cheerful and
professional guide with a particular fondness for Mike Meyer's Austin Powers; and Paul Rogers (first from right),
a Brit with corresponding humor, a liking for Danish girls (or any girls for that matter, I
guess), beer and my car. I had no doubt we would get along well.
As its title suggests, the course was obviously designed to teach various ice climbing skills
as well as other important techniques such as crevasse rescue. The latter we practiced
frequently on the Athabasca glacier (some of it, to the amusement of bewildered Japanese tourists,
right alongside the 'Snocoach' track, which is used by big-wheeled buses to ferry tons
of tourists up onto the glacier.)
But the highlight of the course - apart from the many 'human interest stories' - were certainly
the actual climbing days. We climbed two peaks during that week: Our first objective on
Tuesday was A2 (as in the second peak of the Athabasca range - not to be mistaken with
the slightly higher K2 in Pakistan). We started off around 6:00 am in mixed weather
conditions, walking up a long moraine until we reached the tongue of the glacier, which
we followed up in two ropes and in crampons. This brought us to a col where we had a bite
to eat and a pee (hope you enjoy reading all the details...). Thereafter, the weather closed in
on us and we continued in often close to whiteout conditions. Since I obviously wasn't leading
any of this, it simply meant putting your foot into the previous guy's steps and keep going
and going and going... We eventually reached the bottom of the summit pyramid, which essentially
was a pile of loose scree. An awkward scramble finally led to the peak, which was guarded by
a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle at 3050m!
Another group attempted the same summit next day, but not without Big Wave Dave falling
head-deep into a crevasse - all that practicing certainly came handy for him!
After another day of 'skill drills' we set our sight on Mt Athabasca (great name!), which, at
3481 m is an impressive piece of ice and rock. We woke up to an Alpine Start (02:30 AM),
munched down a Muesli breakfast and set out from 2040 m with headlights on a starlit night.
The weather was obviously going to be fantastic and the break of dawn and sunrise across the
mountains was spectacular. The climb was had work, however. After a long and steep moraine
hike we trudged through endless snow and glacier fields until we finally reached the
base of the North Face.
Here we split into three groups: the first going up to the right on the Silverhorn ridge; the
second going for the hard and steep North Face direct route to the summit; and the third, mine,
heading left for the North Shoulder and North Ridge. Our route consisted of a steep section
of zigzagging up onto the ridge. Once there, we encountered a mix of snow and rock climbing
until we ended up at the bottom of a steep gully of snow and ice. Our group actually consisted
of two ropes, lead by Barry and Gareth (a Kiwi guide who had joined us for the day), and
obviously they had to become entangled at the most difficult part of the pitch right atop
of this gully. With some acrobatic skills I finally managed an awkward jump over the other
rope (which I'm sure the guides messed up for the fun of it!). And thus we gained the knife-edged
summit ridge, which was heavily corniced and dropped off rather steeply on both sides. But I
really enjoyed the final walk along this ridge to the summit: blue sky above and mountains as
far as the eye could see. To quote Barry, as we reached the summit: "Gentlemen, I can take
you no higher". Indeed he couldn't, neither physically nor spiritually (for the moment at
least).
It was 10:15 AM and thus a fairly speedy ascent (the other teams would only reach the summit
at around 12:30 PM and 2:00 PM respectively for the North Face climbers. Getting off the
mountain was comparatively easy since we could slide down a good part on our bums. At about
2:30 PM were back at camp where I opened the roof of my Mustang and settled myself in the
passenger seat for a nap in the sun...
The rest of the course was mostly more skills training, but it was the many personal stories
that provided most of the entertainment. Big Wave Dave, for one, had all these Texan 'concealed
hand gun' anecdotes, which make you wonder why anybody would choose to live in that state. Dave
promised to send me one of their bumper stickers which reads "Keep honking, I'm reloading"!!!
Phil, with whom I could share a host of good old Hong Kong stories, had another bag full
of tales to tell. He used to work as a bicycle courier in New York, where he was the only
white guy among blacks. In his words: "I knew I made it when they started to call me Nigger"!
In one of life's weird twists, he actually tried to buy a ticket on that fateful PanAm flight
which blew up over Lockerbie - but it was fully booked. He went on to California where at one
point he ended up in jail with a guy called 'Two Feathers' - hilarious story! Phil came to
Hong Kong with 25 cents left in his pockets and left eleven years later on business class
with a wife and kid and a job as managing director - that's Hong Kong!
And to round things off, Paul had these Kiwi tales of a guy called Zippy the Pin Head (love the name!)
who dug out a 200 year old, 4 meter cactus of hallucinating quality from somebody's front yard
to brew some sort of drug cocktail. There is no way I can reproduce the entire story here but you can
imagine it was hilarious. Ask Paul for the details if you see him...
Barry, our guide, was another source of jokes, climbing tales and other curios (such as how
to fold a C$ 20 bill to make a Sad Queen - Happy Queen). If you ever think that mountain guides
are obsessed, self important, single-minded men of the hills - you're right. No, of course
you're not - and by the way, do you know the difference between God and a mountain guide? God
doesn't think he's a mountain guide!
Back in Canmore we finished the week off with a dinner at Zona's (highly recommended -
great food and ambience), drinks at The Grizzly's Paw (excellent microbrewery with pleasant
outdoor seating) and more drinks at The Drake (a pub and life music place). On the short
ride home to my motel that night incident #3 of my trip happened as I got pulled over by
the police after having u-turned twice on the same road (apparently an offence according
to local law). Despite my state of drunkenness I put on a sober face and handed the officer
my Hong Kong drivers license. Probably not wanting to cause an international incident with
China so late at night, he let me go with a warning...
And thus ended my first week in the Rockies, giving me one day off to re-charge my batteries
for a week of private guiding.
Week two of my trip started off at Yamnuska's office in Canmore where I met up with my guide
for the week - Aaron Beardmore. We loaded our packs with the clothes, gear and food for the
week and jumped into the Mustang heading for the Bugaboos. The 'Bugs', as they are fondly
referred to, are a favorite climbing area near the border of British Columbia and Alberta.
They offer a wide variety or rugged peaks for mostly rock and some alpine climbing. Our
home for the week would be the Kane Hut (named after Conrad Kane, famous climber of the
early 20th century). To get there, you have to drive in on 40 kms of rough and unpaved
road (not exactly Mustang territory), where incident #4 happened - a punctured tire.
However, such minor accidents would pose no problems for seasoned adventurers like
us and, after a short delay, we were cruising again on our spare tire.
At the end of the road you had to park your car and protect it with an improvised wire
fence construction, to fend off some small kind of animal keen on eating the guts of your
vehicle. This made the entire parking lot look like some strange war zone - the North Korean
Parking Lot, I'd call it.
Now came the 2 ½ hrs walk-in to the Kane Hut, which was quite an ordeal by itself. My backpack
was never as packed before (and trust me, I was only carrying the utmost minimal). Although
the scenery was quite stunning, I was sure I would collapse dead under the weight of my pack.
But I didn't, and we eventually reached the hut, a large and comfortable place for up to 40 people,
with electricity, running water and - of all things - a microwave. We cooked D1 (Dinner Day 1;
Yamnuska uses a highly sophisticated food labeling system designed to tell idiots like myself
when to eat what: B3, L2, S2, E4, A1, D5 - you figure it out...) and settled for an early
night sleep.
The objective for Day Two was to climb the Hound's Tooth, a 2819 m rock outcrop, which, after
an early start, we reached at 9:00 AM. This left us with plenty of time to wander around the
glaciers and check out the conditions on some other possible objectives for the week.
Somewhere on the way we bumped into a Korean 'Bugaboo Expedition' whose members were looking
for water on top of a glacier - very weird! Back at the hut we cooked and ate D2 and went to
bed.
On Day Three - August 1, Swiss National Day - we climbed Eastpost Spire (2697 m), which was
a reasonably easy rock climbing peak that would, however, provide a taste of the challenges
yet to come. D3 was horrible - dehydrated shrimp something - and provided the culinary low
point of the entire two weeks in the mountains.
Day Four would be a BIG DAY. We got up at 4:30 AM with the aim to climb the Kane Route on
Bugaboo Spire (3176 m), something of a classic. This undertaking would involve an arduous
2 ½ hrs glacier approach followed by an - according to my standards - pretty wild rock climb.
The rock part started off pretty harmless and I figured this would be an easy hike in the
hills. How wrong I was. After a while, the route got steeper and more exposed. When I say
exposed I mean very exposed! Essentially, I was clinging to a piece of rock on top of a 700
m drop-off down the face of the mountain. "Don't look down", I told myself, "don't look up,
either", since there was only vertical rock. Although realistically I was never in grave
danger since I was being belayed by my guide (i.e. being at the lower end of the rope), I was
seriously shitting my pants (pardon my French!). In particular, a very exposed section around
an outcrop called 'The Gendarme' had my hyperventilating like mad. The adrenalin rush was
immense. It was in places like this that I gained the most respect for guides like Aaron
(who was three years my junior) who would climb such pitches without the comfort of a belay
from top.
After much hardship on my part (mostly mentally) we reached the summit at 10:15 AM. What
a relief, but I couldn't help wondering how on earth we would get off this mountain. My worries
were unfounded, however, since going down was much easier - and more fun - than coming up:
We rappelled down the worst bits in a commando-style abseil. The entire round trip took us
nine hours and we celebrated our survival at an impromptu hut party where large quantities of
gin suddenly appeared out of nowhere - and vanished with equal speed. This would be our last
night in the hut - and gladly so, since that evening someone arrived with two four-months old
children for a few days - making a quiet night virtually impossible.
Our final day was spent talking the 'Donkey's Ears', another fairly difficult rock climb. After
that, we packed up and descended from the Bugaboos. The walkout was much easier since 1) we had
obviously eaten all the food and 2) it was mostly downhill. Boy, was I glad to be back in the
comfort of my Mustang, where all physical exercise required was to gently push the gas paddle
with my foot. Open top and enjoying the warm sunshine, we cruised back to civilization in
Canmore. After this week of toiling, two beers were sufficient that night to knock me out
and I slept like a stone.
My final day in Canada was pure enjoyment, Colani style: I would drive my 'rig' back to
Vancouver for over 1,000 kms on a carefully selected scenic route (not exactly the shortest
one). I left Canmore at 8:00 AM, following the Icefield Parkway to Jasper, which I reached
at 11:00 AM, briefly glanced at Mt Robson (highest peak in the Canadian Rockies) at 11:45 AM,
gained one hour in time difference by crossing back into British Columbia, arrived at Kamloops
by 16:00, enjoyed the cowboy-style landscape towards Cache Creek, followed the steep and
winding Route 99 to Whistler (an extremely phony-looking but nevertheless popular, winter ski
resort), which I reached at 19:30 and back to Vancouver where I arrived just in time for a
fireworks display at 22:00. By the time I got to the airport at 23:30, I had filled up the tank of the Mustang three times in a single day!
All in all I had clocked up over 3,000 kms in
two weeks, despite the fact that the car was standing idly by when I was climbing. Canada
is a big country, you know...