Cold

Guide Doug Latimer approaches Elusive Pass

Skiing the “Six Passes” Traverse in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Let us get our skis ready, our minds set on a great adventure and travel through a mountain range with huge glaciers and snowfields, wonderful powder snow and long ski runs. Mind you, there are no overnight shelters and no place to buy food along the way. We have to carry everything on our backs. It is not as difficult and strange as it may seem.

—Hans Gmoser

Day 4

Elusive Pass is well-named. We’ve been skiing towards it for most of the afternoon, but it doesn’t get any closer. We have to stop for the night, but where? We’re above treeline. We’ve been skiing along the also-well-named Endless Chain ridge for days, a giant wall of rock and ice. As we stand around deciding what to do, we’re on not-quite-flat ground, but it’s exposed to the wind. Someone skis up the hill a bit further and we find an icy oasis, a mini-canyon of wind-carved snow. We immediately go to work, turning this little cleft into our home.

This is my first real winter camping trip. I’ve done lots of skiing in the Canadian Rockies, ten trips in the last twenty-seven years. But it’s always been day trips, lodge trips, or hut-to-hut. Camping is work, yes, but I’m slowly learning that the glory of it is that you can make home literally anywhere. There’s no other way to visit this world.

Graham and I dig out a little niche for our tent into the walls of snow. We stamp around on skis, making a flat place large enough for the tent and strong enough to hold our weight, once the snow refreezes. Freezing is never a problem. It almost feels warm out, but that’s because we’ve spent all these days adapting to temperatures I would have thought to be impossible. Even our guide didn’t tell us how cold it was those first few nights. We didn’t need to know.

We’re getting good at pitching the little tent, unpacking our precious sleeping bags and pads, crawling in the tiny tent and dealing with our problematic feet. My too-new boots crush the top of my little toe. After I take them off, and put on the slippery down booties, I live with episodes of excruciating pain for a few hours, as the mysterious inner workings of my feet decompress. Graham’s toes have been numb for more or less the entire trip.

Meanwhile our intrepid guides have dug a little kitchen in the snow, melting snow to make water, feeding us soup and dinner. We stand in the kitchen with our mugs and sporks and down booties and giant parkas, walking in place to stay warm. Warmth is everything. Hot water means life, especially the water bottle filled with boiling water and brought into the sleeping bag at night, the fire from within that makes all the difference.

We have indeed made a home in our little trench. We look up and see the walls of snow above us, and a slice of the night sky. A world of snow and stars, more stars than I can imagine, the Milky Way a colder white than even the snow surrounding us. This is a moment I will remember forever. This is why I am here.

Day 1

 It all began at a bakery; the Bear Paw bakery in Jasper, Alberta. Even getting started was complicated. We had to set up a significant car shuttle, as we were an hour from the start and an hour from the finish. We had to distribute food and gear for nine people: tents and stoves and fuel bottles and big bags of food and the day’s lunch. We had to fill out waivers, of course. The amount of stuff I had to stuff into my backpack was becoming alarming. And one final complication—I couldn’t even leave my little rental car in Jasper, as there is no long-term public parking. I’d be driving to the trailhead alone. I am prone to worrying. And there was much to worry about: feet, cold, weight, health…

Finally I’m driving up to Maligne Lake, watching the thermometer in my car drop. –10°C, –11°C... I think it settled down at –15°C / +5°F at the lake. Little did I know that I would soon be longing for such warmth. We get our gear out of the cars, and get ready to go.

Ready to go.

The gang gets ready

The pack is breathtakingly heavy. As we start up the fire road to Bald Hills, I wonder how my legs will hold up. My hips are tiring after only a few minutes. I have to learn everyone’s name again. The familiar faces from the bakery were hidden behind sunglasses and hats and hoods. On ski trips you truly know your companions by their skis, which you spend too many hours looking at as the line of people goes up the hill...

After a few hours, we’ve gained some elevation. Descending day skiers tell us it’s cold up high. I thought it was cold down here! But as the trees thin out, we start to see Maligne Lake below us. What a sight!

The end of the trees

Big packs

Looking down to Maligne Lake

We get above the trees, and eventually have to go down. We ski because we love going downhill. But we don’t usually have a 20kg pack trying to fling us into the snow. The skins come off, we lock our heels, and down we go. I’m so afraid of the heavy pack and crusty snow I just traverse and kick-turn. Even that feels awkward, and a whole winter’s worth of confidence in my skiing dissipates in a few minutes.

We reach the valley bottom, and it’s time to camp. And yes, it’s cold. As I've mentioned, I haven’t really camped in the winter before. We stamp out a platform for the tent, and slowly figure out how to put it together. It’s hard to do various chores while wearing skis, and harder to move around without them. But we figure it out, eat dinner, and go to bed as early as possible—it’s too cold to be outside our sleeping bags. No one would tell us how cold. Apparently it was –26°C at bedtime, and just got colder after that.

The first night’s camp

Taking down the tent

Snow kitchen

It was a bad night. Getting up to pee was a physical and social ordeal, knowing you were waking up your tentmate. And being out of the sleeping bag felt dangerous; that only safe place so small and so fragile. Stress and fear kept me awake, or in some sort of feverish state, a half-waking nightmare. I was convinced I was having persistent nosebleeds, although it turned out not to be true. And the night never seemed to end, the endless night before the Endless Chain ridge. We might have been in the tent for fourteen hours or more—it’s hard to leave the sleeping bag when it’s so cold. We did not get an early start the next day; I don’t think we were actually traveling before noon.

Cold

Day 2

It was the second day where I met my nemesis: the Engleman Spruce. We were skiing the “Six Passes” route, but sort of by definition there were valleys between the passes. And valleys contain trees. And sometimes the trees are close together. And sometimes you have to more or less thrash through the trees, with skins and free heels and big packs, and you get too far forward and your pack pummels you into the snow, or get too far back and your pack yanks you backwards into the snow. I’d skied a bunch in training with the big pack, but always up or down, and not across and through divots and breakable crusts and whoop-de-doos and the faceted, rotten snow that extended periods of cold create.

I wasn’t very good at it. It was frustrating. My eternal gratitude goes to Sarah, who would help me back up after every crash with seemingly infinite patience.

But suddenly we’re out of the trees, and the sun is shining, and the sky is blue, and the scenery is magnificent, and our toes are warm, and we are reminded of the glory of the the Canadian Rockies wilderness.

Maligne Lake

Graham

Sarah

But that night felt even colder. Was it truly –32°C / –25°F?

What it takes to stay warm in camp. Photo by Doug Latimer. 

Day 3

Heading towards Endless Chain Ridge

Brett

Sarah goes off to take our photo

Approaching a pass

Heidi and Graham

Doug’s pack tilted alarmingly for much of the trip

The scariest moment of the day: taking off the boots

Day 4

Camp 3 was nestled in the trees

Remodeling the kitchen

Approaching Pass #5?

Turns!

The last camp

Gretchen works on her skis

Home sweet home

Cooks at work

Photo by Doug Latimer

Day 5

Happiness. Photo by ??. 

Is it really six months later I'm writing this? The details of those middle days are fading. I remember the campsites, the lovely open valley of the second night, being tucked behind trees on a high hillside the third night. I remember sleeping better, if not well, after that first nightmare of a night. I will always remember the cold, the second night maybe even colder than the first, unimaginable cold. I remember what a great group this was, warm and funny and supportive. I remember the joys of crossing another pass. There is nothing in the world more beautiful than being above treeline in the Canadian Rockies in Winter, far from everyone and everything.

Doug and Sarah

Approaching Elusive Pass

Almost there

Looking back

Doug approaching Elusive Pass

Almost there…

I will never forget the last day.

After we’d camped beneath the stars, in the trench short of Elusive Pass, we packed up for the last time, the home stretch. Was it truly warm and sunny? That's what I remember. We eventually reached the Elusive Pass, and saw the way home, an enormous valley with a big right turn far away, where we would finally outflank Endless Chain Ridge and descend to the Icefields Parkway. It looked a long ways away. It was.

But first there was the small matter of descending our last pass. We had to bootpack up the left side of the pass, and traverse through a short but very steep section before finding a safer and more amenable grade down to the valley. Of course I was a bit nervous about such things, but it was all fine. There were even some turns to be had, before gliding down the valley, surrounded by huge mountains, feeling a sense of accomplishment at all we had done.

The traverse

The descent

Elusive Pass

Ashley making it look easy

And then we had one of my favorite kinds of skiing, just standing on your skis and gliding down, with no worries and plenty of time to look around. But then the angle lessened a bit, and one had to stride. Putting a bit of kick wax on my skis really helped.

I think we stopped for lunch as we reached treeline. Spirits were still high.

Things went bad gradually. The snow was rotten. On breaks when I would take off a ski to sit down, if I tried to put my foot on the snow I would sink to my crotch. There were just enough slight upgrades that having slippery skis was a bitch, but skins were far too slow on the downhills. My kingdom for a tube of klister, or whatever the heck wax you use for rotten faceted snow.

We followed the stream for a long time, but it pinched out and we had to bypass a canyon. A steep little uphill was nearly impassible, Doug had to take off his skis and trench his way up a fifty-foot rise. Routefinding got a little… sporty. And the day just wore on and on, and we weren’t getting any closer to the end.

Graham

Eventually we find the summer trail, and are all slogging downhill with skins on, skiing through the crappiest snow ever, trailbreaking an ordeal. Everyone takes turns, as Doug and Sam and Sarah are pretty cooked by this time.

I’m exhausted, and my feet hurt a lot, and the miserable skiing gets to me. And, to my continuing shame, I totally lose it. I've been terrified or exhausted or both many times in the mountains. I sometimes get frustrated with myself when I don’t ski well, or crash amonst the diabolical Englemann Spruces. But I’ve never had a meltdown like this, where I end up crying on skis, pretty much unable to talk to anyone or think clearly.

But there’s nothing to be done but keep going. The trail just doesn’t end. I wonder if we are going to run out of daylight. We finally reach a trail junction, and what I thought was going to be a mile or two turns out to be six more kilometers. At the rate we’re going, we will never make it out.

And the sun drops below the ridge, and still we march on. After an eternity, we start seeing other trails, signs of civilization. It hardly matters, there is only putting one ski in front of the other. A quarter mile from the end, Sarah comes to me and asks me to give her the tent strapped to the top of my pack. This may be the kindest gesture I’ve ever experienced.

And just as it gets too dark to ski, it's over. We are at Pobokton Creek trailhead, the cars we shuttled an eternity ago are waiting for us. I shrug off my pack, not caring that it crashes on the ground. All I can think about is taking off my boots. I put on my booties, climb into the back seat of the car, and wait for the excrucating pains as my feet decompresses. It’s the worst yet, but it doesn’t matter. It is done.

Reaching the trailhead in the dark

That was the second-hardest ski day of my life.

* * *

There's still lots of driving. We get to Jasper, get glorious, glorious snacks at a gas station, and then keep driving back to Maligne lake. I don't think we get there until 10PM? And then it's sudden goodbyes, and back in that rental car, and the slippery drive back to Jasper, where most of the restaurants are closed. I check into a hotel on main street, even though I reserved a room in Canmore. Then it's a burger in a random bar with Heidi, who's the only person I find in Jasper. The end is all so sudden.

And then I'm in the shower, aghast at what my feet and body look like, gear strewn about the room, my head buzzing from everything. I don't remember if I slept at all.

Aftermath

I ran into Graham in the bakery the next morning, which was lovely. I hope the feeling in his toes came back!

I drove to Canmore in a daze, and did nothing else that day.

Friday I put my ski boots back on, and rode the lifts and took a lesson at Lake Louise, which was really helpful. I even skied the moguls in Paradise Bowl!

Paraside Bowl, Lake Louise

On Saturday I went ice climbing, and to my surprise and delight climbed Louise Falls! Stepping from the alcove behind the falls, halfway up, onto the vertical headwall is like nothing I’d done before.
Sunday I flew back home, where it had snowed 70 inches in 8 days in Southern Vermont.

Brad Cooke readying for the crux pitch

Brad Cooke leads the last pitch of Louise Falls

Louise Falls

Looking back

Three months later I lost both big toenails.

And I’ve thought about this trip every day for six months. Through all the suffering, through all of the things I did poorly, all I have thought about is going back, doing more, doing better. Even when I was still in Banff I bought a couple of the 500ml Nalgenes that Doug favors. I have lots of ideas for training next winter.

Let us get our skis ready, our minds set on a great adventure and travel through a mountain range with huge glaciers and snowfields, wonderful powder snow and long ski runs. Mind you, there are no overnight shelters and no place to buy food along the way. We have to carry everything on our backs. It is not as difficult and strange as it may seem.

Yes, it is difficult. Yes, it is strange. Yes, let’s do it again, soon.

Photo by Doug Latimer

My heartfelt thanks to Doug, Sam, Sarah, Ashley, Brett, Graham, Gretchen, and Heidi. I couldn’t imagine a better group of people to ski with. And thanks to the Alpine Club of Canada for organizing the trip, and for doing so much to preserve and celebrate these mountains.