Of Inuit and Epidurals

Is this not the ugliest bird you’ve ever seen. Make mine a tofurky thanks!

The day dawned dark, as days are wont to do this far north, this far into November. It was the kind of morning for lazing about in bed, but I had a sweeping statement that needed to be set right and I had a promise to keep.

Just last week , Nat said of me ” I wouldn’t even bother asking if she wants to go, you know she won’t go outside when it’s raining”. Now this is entirely unfair. I don’t mind the rain, in fact it’s still kind of a novelty after so many years of living in drought. What I do object to is the cold that so often accompanies it. Since I tend to object often, and loudly, about this, I won’t repeat myself now. Suffice to say, Nat’s reverse psychology trick worked, and I insisted that we were going hiking on Remembrance Day, rain, hail or shine. Well, we got two out of three. Nat conveniently discovered she was on call, which left just Trudy and me. Trudy had had a very bad complication at work the day before, the kind of complication that you really don’t want a rainy day inside to think about, so I couldn’t possibly back out.

After much consultation of guidebooks and the internet we settled on Mount Seymour. It’s only about half an hour out of Vancouver but on a clear day has amazing views over the lower mainland. It also comes with multiple warnings. “This is a wilderness area”. “Be prepared for sudden changes in weather conditions” “People get lost here every year, and they are not always found”. Perfect.

Swathed in gore-tex, we launched ourselves out of the car and over to the first shelter. According to the guidebook there were maps here that you could take with you. Perhaps in the summer. At this time of year, there was nothing but another sombre warning about it being wilderness, and to avoid getting lost. We decided that since the weather couldn’t actually get any worse than it already was, we would at least follow the road up the hill; perhaps we would see some signs further up.

It didn’t really feel much like wilderness at this point anyway. There were plenty of people, and their dogs, walking around. We continued up the hill, keeping the ski lifts on our right, or was it our left, oh let’s just follow him, he looks like he knows where he’s going. We had to keep stopping as we kept catching up to the solo walker ahead of us. I felt very proud of my innate fitness until we reached the summit and stopped to chat to him. He was in training for an Aconcagua attempt in January and was climbing up and down, up and down this ski hill carrying fifty pounds of weights in his backpack. I was carrying my lunch.

He helpfully pointed us in the right direction, halfway back down the hill we’d come up, and along an unmarked track which veered off to the right. The track markers are orange, and probably quite clear in the summer. In the fog though, not so clear, and any which were low to the ground were covered by the snow. Though there were still a few people around, they were thinning out and I could understand how people lose their way. Mostly, we navigated by following other people’s footprints in the snow. Trudy had a compass, but without a map, it wasn’t particularly useful. Nevertheless, after a couple of hours of walking we found ourselves on the summit. Scrambling to the top we were rewarded of glorious views of….. nothing. Yep that’s right nothing, except the fog rolling in. We could see about 50 metres ahead of us. No Vancouver Island, no Mount Baker, nothing… We took a photo to prove we’d been there, then scrambled back down the way we had come.

Or not. Somehow, we had managed to come off the summit in a slightly different direction. We went hither and thither for a few minutes, trying to find our original path, walked for ten minutes in one direction, then turned and walked back again. With only snow and sombre fir trees, it was hard to recognise landmarks. I was thinking about snow caves, Trudy was wondering how we would ration the single muesli bar, both of us were thinking about the embarrassment of having to be rescued on our first non-fair weather walk. We did have the summit as a landmark, so knew that we could climb up there again to find our way down, but after several hours of walking, we really didn’t want to have to do that.

After walking for some time, seeing nothing we recognised, no orange markers, and no people to give us directions, we stopped. Trudy was fairly certain we were walking through familiar territory but still had some doubts. I’d seen nothing I definitely recognised. Despite pointing out my general lack of observance she felt less rather than more reassured. We decided to set a time limit, walking for another ten minutes, and if we were still unsure we would go back to the summit. By now, both of us were aware that it would be getting dark in the next couple of hours, and while it was warm enough when we were walking, it very quickly became cold if we were standing still.

Stomp, stomp, stomp through the snow. We walked without talking, neither of us wanting to share nervous thoughts. But our walk wasn’t completely silent, over the heaving of my chest I could hear the swishing of my waterproofs and the ever present caw of crows. The constant rain had rendered the track more slush than snow. At one point we seemed to be climbing up a waterfall, so constant was the stream of water downhill. And vaguely, for the first time since we’d left the summit it looked a little familiar. As we rounded a corner, a profusion of orange markers sprang up like a fungus, on rocks, on trees, everywhere. Not two minutes after that, definite proof. On my way up, I’d stumbled in the snow, and as we passed by I could see where my hand landed, a curve of five finger sized holes in the snow by the track. Happily we walked the last few kilometres back to the shelter, both agreeing that it had been a marvellous day. In fact so much so, that since the weather is going to be cold but clear tomorrow, we think we’ll probably do it again.

Big thanks to Trudy and her waterproof camera for the photos.

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