Meeting Place
One summer in the 1960s, I was working on a mining exploration crew about 500 miles north of Vancouver. On a hot summer’s day, I found myself out in a heavily-wooded area where I came upon an antler that had been shed by a moose. The antlers drop off after mating to conserve energy for winter, then re-grow in the spring (it takes 3-5 months for them to grow back). The spot where I found the antler was well-shaded by large trees and, as I took a closer look at my surroundings, I saw another antler, then another. They were everywhere! I counted more than 50 of them in a small area. It was strange, and a bit spooky. Why so many in one place? Did all of the bull moose in the area feel that that was the best place to shed their antlers? Did some kind of knowledge or instinct spread among them to go there when their time had come?
Conference
In October of 1968, while I was a geology student at the University of British Columbia, there arose an opportunity to attend a student conference in Banff, Alberta. It was called the Western Inter-University Geology Conference, and sounded like a good excuse to have some fun and maybe learn something in the process. I don’t remember much about the conference itself, other than professors from different universities gave presentations on a variety of subjects. What I do remember, though, was the bus trip to Banff. Geologists do without a lot of creature comforts when they are out in the field, so it’s not surprising that they like to have a good time when they’re in town.
The UBC group had chartered a Greyhound bus for the trip. We all boarded on campus in the afternoon, and one of the first things to happen is that we took up a cash collection for our driver. It was nothing short of a generous bribe, necessary because we knew his patience would be truly tested on the 600-mile drive. We hadn’t gone but a few miles before we had him pull over at a liquor store. A couple of the older guys who were of legal age (most of us weren’t) went in with our cash and a shopping list, and later emerged with all manner of beer and hard liquor. We were all set.
The drinking began in earnest, and before we had left the Fraser Valley, all of us were pretty much three sheets to the wind. By the time we reached Boston Bar for a bathroom break at a diner, it had been dark for some time. Quite a few ordered food to go, then we resumed our journey. On we went into the night, a truly raucous bunch. Booze flowed like water, and good luck if you actually wanted to sleep. A few highlights stand out in my mind. One was that a few of the guys somehow climbed up into the overhead luggage racks and spent the night there. My other strong memory is that whenever we would travel uphill, all the empty beer bottles on the floor would roll to the back of the bus. When the bus went downhill, they would roll to the front. The driver simply asked that those sitting in front try to not let them roll down into the stairwell where they might break and pose a hazard (this was before beer came in cans).
By the time we rolled into Banff at daybreak, we were the most bleary-eyed bunch you ever saw. The driver wasn’t quite sure how to get to the Banff School of Fine Arts where the conference was to be held. I was pretty familiar with the town and sat up front for a bit to guide him in. Once our group got all checked in and were settled in to our rooms, it seemed a good idea to have more beer for breakfast (you know, the hair of the dog and all that). We used the toilet tanks as a place to keep the beer cold. Like I said earlier, I don’t remember much of what I attended on Saturday and Sunday (little wonder!) The all-night return trip to the coast was somewhat more subdued, but still pretty raucous by most standards. In the panoply of saints, if there is space for bus drivers, our guy must be there.
Ghost Horses
One winter’s day back in 1986, I had stealthed my way to the top of a peak at over 8,000 feet and had tagged the summit in the last of the fading light. Now all I had to do was make my way a few miles across a wooded plateau in the dark, then find the spot where I’d drop off of the plateau and drop down about 2,000 feet to try and find my vehicle. This was before any of us had a GPS, which would have made my task so much easier.
A strange thing occurred as I walked west along the plateau in the dark. It was snowing hard and visibility was near zero. It was pitch black and I couldn’t see much at all. I heard a strange sound approaching, muffled by the falling snow. It scared me as it approached, then all of a sudden it was upon me. A group of horses, maybe six of them (it was hard to be certain in the dark) ran up to me at high speed, then parted to pass around me on both sides. It was all over in a few seconds, but it scared the crap out of me. Obviously, they could see better in the dark than I. Once past me, they kept right on going at full gallop into the night. By the time I got back to my car, it was well after midnight.
Night Rappel
It was way past the time we should have been off the mountain. Sunset had caught us too far above safety, and by the time we had lost the last of the light, we were still a couple of pitches above where we’d have liked to bivy. Andy was comfortable with rappelling in the dark, but not me. We turned on our headlamps, to at least give some clue as to what we were lowering ourselves into, but still ended up going right through a bunch of cactus. Hands full of the fine stickers from prickly pear made for an uncomfortable continuation into the inky abyss. Sure, we made it down okay in the end, but it hadn’t been my idea of fun. The next day, we dropped thousands of feet down and off the mountain to where we had parked. A group of people had spent the night there in a campground, and when we arrived they asked where we had been. When we pointed up at the mountain, a woman said “I knew it, I wasn’t imagining things after all! I could see 2 lights up there in the dark, moving around, winking in and out.” I told her we had come down the last part in the dark and she had been seeing our headlamps. Her mystery was solved.
Tree Aid
As a boy, I loved to climb trees. Right next to a house we lived in when I was 12 years old were 3 oak trees, and I climbed them often. I’d go all the way up to where the branches became too small to support my weight, and I think I had every branch memorized by the time we moved away after living there for 3 years. That love stayed with me throughout my life, and I put it to good use when climbing mountains many years later. Allow me to illustrate.
In the late 1980s, I was coming down from an icefield in British Columbia and nearing tree-line. I had to pass through a substantial belt of forest to get back to civilization but there was one small problem – a long band of cliffs stood in my way, cliffs that I couldn’t find a way to climb down. I found a spot where some tall trees were growing right up against the cliff. After examining several candidates, I picked one that looked fairly friendly. The full pack I was wearing complicated things somewhat. My thought was this – I would jump off the cliff into the tree – crazy, right? It wasn’t far, maybe only 5 feet, tops. A short run gave me the momentum I needed to make the leap, and I did a full-body slam against the tree trunk, wrapping my arms and legs around the trunk at the same time. The spot I had picked was free of branches – yes, I lost some skin and a bit of blood, but I made it. I was then able to climb down the 30 or so feet to the ground. Problem solved – take that, cliffs!
Tree-climbing played a part on another climb. Paul and I discovered that the highest point of our peak was a huge granitic boulder, but we couldn’t see any way up its smooth sides. Growing right beside it was a tree, tall enough that it might help us out. Paul had never climbed a tree in his life, so it was with some apprehension that he agreed to give it a try. I went first. The branches were well-placed, allowing us to get up 10 feet or so. At that point, one of the sturdier branches leaned over the boulder just enough that we could use it to step out and on to the steep upper part of the rock. From there, it was an easy scramble to the top. We reversed the process to come back down. So there you have it – organic aid climbing.
Freeze To Death
Back in the 1960s, I was climbing a big peak in the dead of winter. At about 10,000 feet on an icy slope, my partner and I stopped for a rest. We lay down and closed our eyes, and even though it was really cold, it felt so good to be not moving and to just lie there in the sun. After several minutes, we realized that we had to get up and keep going. There was no doubt in our minds that it would have been so easy to just fall asleep, and that could have proved fatal. We saw first-hand that freezing to death would actually be a fairly pleasant way to die, and I’ve heard that from other sources as well.
Close Call
A helicopter has a large rotor overhead which spins horizontally, but it also has a small tail rotor which spins in a vertical direction. Without the tail rotor, the helicopter would spin uncontrollably and couldn’t fly – it serves to stabilize the machine.
Our chopper had just landed on a bit of a slope along a creek bed. The pilot left it running when he walked over to chat with us a short distance away. While we talked, we looked back and saw, to our horror, that the tail boom of the chopper was slowly dropping down. It was obvious that it wasn’t well-balanced. The creek bed was filled with rocks and boulders, and if the tail had continued to drop, the tail rotor would have surely hit them. If it had, it would self-destruct and the chopper would have spun out of control. The main rotor would have smashed into the rocky creek bed and violently flown apart. Being as close as we were, chances were pretty good we would have been struck by flying debris and hurt or killed. The pilot ran over to the chopper, jumped in and corrected the way it was sitting, then shut it down. Close call!!!
Tent Explosion
It was 9,000 vertical feet from the summit back down to base camp, which is where I now found myself. Two guys from one of the teams camped there invited me to have supper with them, and I gladly accepted. I was too tired to cook for myself, and their fare seemed better than mine in any case. The 3 of us were in their large tent, and they had their stove going. It sputtered, and they decided the fuel canister was almost empty. They had another fuel container to use in its place. I don’t remember the exact details, but somehow the dying flame from the old fuel container ignited the fuel in the new one as the guy was holding it in his hand. There was an explosion and a huge fireball filled the tent. It burned itself out in a second or two, thankfully, but in the chaos, the pot of food spilled on to the dirt floor. The guy who was handling the fuel had singed hair and eyebrows, but was otherwise okay. That was too much drama for me – I thanked them for their offer and headed out to find a place to pitch my own tent, deciding that I was too tired to cook a meal and it was worth it to just go to bed hungry.