The Great Bear Hunt

In March of 1965, the university I was attending decided to have a proper spring break for the first time. A whole week off! My room-mate Don talked me into going hunting with him. We hitchhiked from Vancouver to Mission, to my mother’s home. After a hot meal, I collected the .270 Winchester rifle complete with scope that had belonged to my father, along with a bunch of shells for it. Don had his shotgun. My mother was terrified that her 17-year-old son, who had never even held a gun of any type in his life, was heading off into the boondocks with his crazy room-mate. Imagine if you will, two teenagers trying to hitch a ride with guns over their shoulders. It took forever, but some trusting soul finally picked us up and dropped us off a few miles later near Dewdney.

We walked north a few miles along Sylvester Road, then decided that if we were really going to hunt something, it was time to head up into the mountains. An old logging road climbed east out of Hatzic Prairie and up north of Dewdney Peak. We probably only climbed a thousand feet up into very snowy country before calling a halt. Don said we should probably take a few practice shots with the rifle, meaning me, seeing as how I’d never shot a gun before. We set up some sort of target on a stump and fired away. Well, the gun was terribly loud, so much so that after Don had coached me through a few shots, I declared that I didn’t want to fire it any more – it scared the shit out of me! Then it dawned on us brainiacs that since it was still winter and the land was deep in snow, all the bears were still probably hibernating anyway. We re-traced our steps back down the mountain and half walked, half hitched our way back to Mission. A home-cooked meal and a warm bed for the night perfectly capped off the only hunting trip of my life. I left the gun there, and the next day the 2 of us hitched back to Vancouver, where we resumed our roles as the biggest slackers you’d ever meet.

Orphan Ocelot

Have you been to Cancún, Mexico? I never have, but long ago I visited the place where Cancún now sits. Fifty years ago, I rode a bus from Mérida, through Valladolid, to where Highway 180 ended on the shores of the Caribbean. There was a tiny village by the name of Puerto Juarez. In later years, the Mexican government decided to develop the area into a tourist resort, and Cancún was born. Now a city of a million people, Cancún has engulfed the sleepy village. I caught a ferry from Puerto Juarez and went a few miles east to Isla Mujeres. Perhaps ferry is too good a word – it was just a small open boat that a fisherman used to run the odd tourist and a few locals back and forth. I spent several idyllic days on the island, mostly lazing in a hammock between a couple of palm trees. Only a small population lived on the island, and there wasn’t much there – one or two places to eat a simple meal, that was about it. Here is what the north end of the island looked like.

Have a look at this next photo – you are looking west to what was Puerto Juarez. Nowadays, the city of Cancún sits there, and would fill the horizon with all of its development, less than 4 miles away.

When I left the island, I took the boat back to the mainland where I’d catch the bus to Mérida. While waiting for it to arrive, I saw among the other tourists a young man. He was Canadian, from New Brunswick, and was proudly showing off the ocelot kitten he had bought from a local. I was flabbergasted – the kitten was beautiful, but how was he going to care for it? It was well-known that in that area, locals would sometimes take the kittens from their mother but not before killing her first, all for the purpose of selling them to tourists. They normally spend 2 years with their mother before going out on their own. He said he paid a mere 20 dollars to buy it, but obviously had given no forethought to what would happen after that. It was illegal to transport one of these across the US and to have one in Canada. He was facing a journey of 4,000 miles to get this poor creature to his home. He had a tiny cage for the kitten, but it broke my heart to imagine the misery it would be put through, only to meet an uncertain and probably-untimely end.

Belly Thaw

It was the dead of winter. The sun had set and night had fallen. Three of us on a climb were occupying the same tent. It had been a long day of deep snow and, sometimes, crampons. Jim said he had felt cold all day, and now he had no sensation in the soles of his feet. He was concerned, and we couldn’t blame him. All three of us had heard of the old trick of placing frozen feet on someone’s stomach to restore feeling. It was worth a try, right? I opened up my clothes and, right away, could feel how cold it was inside the tent. One foot at a time was about all I had room for. Putting his foot on my belly made me yelp – damn, that was cold! After a while, he felt like a bit of sensation was coming back. Bill’s turn – he offered his bare midriff for a continuation of the same treatment, and in a while Jim said he felt that his foot, after becoming tingly, felt pretty normal once again. While we performed the same treatment on his other foot, Jim kept massaging his first foot to keep up the circulation. All of this took quite a while, but in the end his feet were better. Pairs of dry woolen socks on his feet, tucked inside his sleeping bag, kept his feet warm through the night, and he was right as rain.

Night Noises

I got to thinking about noises I’ve heard during the night. More specifically, noises made by animals when I’ve been camping while on climbing trips. I’ve been awoken by cows mooing in the night, or walking past me. Horses whinnying in the dark, and also running past, have disturbed my slumbers. The same goes for wild donkeys braying, a sound I’ve often heard and enjoy. Perhaps my favorite sound is a chorus of coyotes, which I can hear frequently even from my home. The sound of elk bugling is another favorite. Black bears snuffling by my tent have awoken me. Once, a mountain lion walked around my tent in the night, leaving paw-prints in the snow to be found at first light. I camped one night in Elk Island National Park and awoke to find a buffalo lying on the corner of my tent. Both kangaroo rat and pack rat have woken me up as they scuffled around my stuff while I camped in the open on the ground in the desert. The antics of a beaver on Clearwater Lake startled me one night back in ’74. A raccoon woke me out of a sound sleep by messing with food scraps on my dishes while I camped by the shore of the Colorado River. Here in the desert, both fox and ring-tail cat have boldly walked into my camp-site and caused enough ruckus to wake me. One time, while sleeping in a cabin, a porcupine starting gnawing on the wood outside and kept me awake. Ditto for a skunk on another occasion. You can bet I left both of those critters alone. Pesky black-tailed jackrabbits have visited me at night and even they have awoken me. And birds, don’t even get me started! – any number of them seem to come alive at night.

One night, nigh on 20 years ago, Brian Rundle and I camped out in the open, high on the shoulder of a big desert peak. What a night that was! A meteor shower, coupled with a total eclipse of the moon, were entertainment enough, but what kept us awake was a strange noise made my some unknown animal high up on the cliffs above us. It didn’t sound like a bird, but neither did it sound like any creature either of us had ever heard. Its strange call pierced the stillness many times. It had to have been hundreds of feet away, but in the dark there was no way we ever caught a glimpse of it. We lay there, wide awake, wondering what the creature was, but to this day it remains a mystery.

Christchurch Snow

It was August 27th of 1992, the middle of winter in New Zealand. The train was an hour late when I boarded at Greymouth on the North Island. Almost 60 miles later, we stopped at Arthur’s Pass, having traveled from sea level to 2,425 feet elevation. We had entered a winter wonderland, deep in snow. From there, it was downhill all the way back down to sea level at Christchurch. It was expected that we would soon drop below the snow, but no, not today – it snowed all the way to the coast, quite unheard-of. Arriving at the Christchurch railway station, all of us passengers were at a loss as to what to do next. Deep snow lay on the streets. A man arrived, saying he was from a nearby backpacker’s hostel, and he had room for several of us. We followed him for a few blocks to his fine establishment where he let us stay the night practically for free.

The next morning, it was snowing hard. With much difficulty, the man drove us back to the train station and dropped us off. Before long, they announced that the snow was so bad in the entire region that no trains were running. No buses either. Even the international airport was closed! The city had ground to a halt. We called around to see if any of the backpacker’s hostels were open, but they all said that their shuttles weren’t running. No taxis were operating either, the snow was just too deep. Finally, I decided to head out and see what I could find, ending up at the Ambassador Hotel. The gentleman at the front desk actually apologized for their atrocious weather and offered me a single room practically for free. A couple of others from the train station, stranded travelers like myself, showed up and were treated with similar kindness. We enjoyed a huge, late breakfast in their dining room (again, practically for free), then spent the entire day playing pool, watching TV, doing laundry. The hotel felt so sorry for us that they gave us a free supper. The weather outside was foul, all day. I usually slept in my sleeping bag while staying in backpacker’s hostels in NZ, but that night I slept between sheets for the first time in a month.

It was still snowing the next morning when I slogged my way back to the train station. My train north left on time, and as traveled I saw downed power lines and broken poles. The kindness and generosity of the New Zealand people shown to me in Christchurch has left a strong impression on me to this day.

Underpants

There’s an old joke among climbers that if you’re out on a lengthy climbing trip or climbing a big mountain which takes weeks, you can save weight by recycling your underpants. Here’s what I mean. Wear them normally for the first week, then turn them so they’re backwards for the next week. Next, turn them inside-out for a week, and finally backwards again while still inside-out. There you have it – four times the use, and think of all the extra weight you didn’t have to carry!