There are many, I'm certain, who would argue that dragging one's girlfriend out into the middle of nowhere on a 13.6 km torture-test up the side of a mountain carrying roughly one third her own weight on her back is an act which is ill-conceived to strengthen the relationship. And, admittedly, there probably is some validity to that viewpoint.
April and I decided, since bear activity was at a minimum, the weather was nice, and we had a weekend free, to hit the Kananaskis lakes. The minor catch at the outset was that this wasn't just a matter of pulling the car into the campsite, dragging the tent out of the trunk, setting it up, and calling it camping. I mean, seriously, every once in a while, I see these advertisements on TV for various technological nicknacks that you can buy at Canadian Tire. One of these portrays a couple in the middle of nowhere, watching a DVD in a TV mounted in the back of their car. Maybe it's just me, but it seems as if that sorta misses the whole point. If you're bringing all the luxuries of home with you when you go out, what's the point in leaving home in the first place?
But I digress. This was not that kind of camping. Nope. This was the down-and-dirty, sleep-on-the-ground, carry-what-you-can-on-your-back, true-middle-of-nowhere backcountry camping.
The campsite we (or, more accurately, I) chose was Three Isle Lake. The distance from our starting point to the campsite is approximately 13.6 km. I'd done this as one of my first-ever backpacking trips, and thought that it would be a nice, easy trail for April's first time out.
Dumb, droo. Really, really dumb.
Nine of those 13.6 kilometers were relatively uneventful, if you ignore the fact that I inexplicably (but perhaps appropriately) had the song "I'm gonna be (500 miles)" by the Proclaimers stuck in my head just about all the way up to Forks campground. We hiked along the coast of the lake (quite possibly one of the most beautiful places in Alberta), then pushed deep into the woods. We made good time; arriving at Forks campground (a distance just shy of 10 km) in just over three hours. The campsite gets its name from the fact that two major trails branch off from there. One heads north to Turbine canyon (a trip that I would like to do sometime in the future), the other heads west to Three Isle Lake, a distance of roughly 4 km.
We started west, and this is about where everything started to go wrong all at once.
First, we got lost. Well, not lost lost. We just lost the trail for a bit. We were just very suddenly surrounded on all sides by woods and we had no marked trial in sight. It was only because April played a hunch that we managed to bush-whack our way back onto the trail. On our way back down, I found the place where I took a wrong turn, and I can't say I really blame me. The route I took looked a lot more like an actual trail than the actual trail did.
We got back to the trail (which, incidentally, was a lot easier to walk along than the route we were taking) and began what we knew to be the final push to our campsite.
I mentioned earlier that the distance from the Forks to Three Isle Lake is roughly 4 km. What I'd forgotten since the last time I'd hiked this trail (or repressed, depending on which explanation you find to be more believable) was the fact that one of those kilometers is measured vertically. As luck would have it, it would be the last one. The trail winds through the woods at the bottom of the valley, then climbs straight up the face of Mt. Putnik.
And when I say "straight up" I mean it. I've seen walls which stood less vertical than this. April and I found ourselves switch-backing endlessly up this mountain; pushing for a campsite that we knew had to be just around the next bend (but never was; in fact the "next bend" almost invariably revealed three more "next bends"). It was a little unnerving, too, since the trail, in some places, is just over a foot wide, and it's an awful long way down if you fall in the wrong direction. But we kept pushing, steadily upwards, carrying about 50 lbs on our backs; which doesn't sound like much, but believe me, it's a lot.
Murphy's law stepped in at this point, and it started raining. Hard. I wasn't terribly worried about this, since the forecast had predicted between 5 and 10 mm of rain, and I figured, since we'd had practically no precipitation up to that point, that this was it.
The forecast, however, didn't say a damned thing about hail.
As it started pelting down on us, we literally ran up the trail to a point where it widened (but not much), took off our packs and hunkered down in an attempt to wait it out. We spent a good ten minutes perched (quite precariously, in fact) on the side of a mountain, as we could see ice piling up all over us, and all over the trail around us.
For future reference, granite gets really fricking slippery when it's wet, and I've already mentioned how narrow the trail was.
At this point, I feel I should digress for a moment to make a brief comment on my hiking partner on this particular expedition. Now, granted, I can't be considered impartial on this matter, and therefore anything I say here has to be taken with a substantial grain of salt. But consider the fact that April had never done anything like this before. Here, we were in about as unpleasent a situation as I'd ever been in during the summer, and never once in all the time we were out there, did I hear her even suggest that we turn back. Which was good because, frankly, turning back was not an option. As tough as it was climbing up on wet, slippery granite, it would have been ten times as hard trying to climb back down on it. She managed to push herself along a really tough trail; a trail that I had trouble with (and I've got a lot more experience with this kind of thing than she does) and she never once suggested that we stop or turn back. That, people, is no small accomplishment.
The total distance traveled on saturday was 13.6 km. The first 12.6, we covered in just over four hours. The last one took us five. But we made it; and I've gotta say, that was a pretty incredible feeling.
The tent was set up without any trouble whatsoever. In five minutes, we went from having about a hundred square feet of real-estate to having a house built on it. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it was rather nice to see this home away from home take form.
Cooking in the middle of nowhere is actually a lot easier than it sounds. Largely because after hiking for the vast majority of the day, you could very likely serve up a steaming plate of cow manure and be left with very clean plates by the end of the meal. Dinner consisted of a nice Chicken-noodle soup, served with an apple and a cup of coffee. Okay, it's not exactly gourmet dining, I admit, but it disappeared awfully fast. Obnoxiously fast, I'd say; considering that I made enough soup to serve four, and we polished it off between the two of us. The coffee was, in a word, horrible, so I don't think that's something we'll be attempting to serve on future trips.
While I was busy cooking, April took it upon herself to cosy up the tent. By the time the food was done cooking, the sleeping bags were rolled out, and the packs had been tucked nicely to the side. Dinner was served and vanished, and the two of us crawled into our sleeping bags for what I hoped would be a pleasent, uneventful night's sleep.
Didn't quite pan out that way.
April shook me awake sometime during the night. She heard something moving around outside and it sounded pretty big. I'm not sure what, exactly, it was, but we'd seen a couple of fricking huge porcupines just before we'd turned in for the night and I think it may have been one of them. I think (s)he had allergies, too. (S)He kept sneezing. April thought she heard something growling, too; but it turns out that that was just someone in one of the nearby tents snoring.
Around midnight, the skies opened up. Again. No hail this time; or at least I don't think so. As hard as it was coming down, I wasn't exactly keen on stepping outside to find out. We stayed pretty dry huddled in our little tent, but we found that it was nearly impossible to sleep with rain pounding against it, so we stayed up talking until the rain died down to a faint sprinkle (that took the better part of two hours). Then we rolled over and went back to sleep.
Breakfast the next morning consisted of hot oatmeal. After the culinary disaster that had been the coffee from the previous night, we decided (sensibly, in my opinion) to forgo it that morning. I, again, did the cooking while April packed up the sleeping bags. There were some nice, low clouds hanging around the mountains that looked really pretty, actually, but as much as we would have liked to dwell for a while, it was time for us to go.
Our trip down the mountain was a lot less stressful than the trip up. No hail, to begin with. The trail was still a little wet, but it wasn't too bad; and we had an absolutely beautiful view of the valley as we descended into it. Whenever I do something like this, there's always a point when I'm asking myself why the hell I put myself through all this; voluntarily, no less. I end up tired, sore, cranky, my feet hurt my shoulders and back ache for days afterwards, my legs feel like Jello(tm).... So, inevitably, I end up asking myself what's the point. Then you come around a corner and see a view like we saw that morning and the one thought that goes through my mind is: "oh yeah, that's why." It's my belief that if you want proof of the existence of God (regardless of whether or not you personally happen to believe in him or her), that's where you look.
The trip down was a lot shorter, too. We spent five hours climbing up this mountain to reach the lake, it took us less than an hour to descend. From there, the trip back to the car was, both literally and figuratively, a walk in the park.
Right now, I'm still exhausted (in spite of the fact that I slept really well last night), I'm finding it hard to find any body parts that don't hurt like a sonuvabitch. Just about every muscle I have is aching right now. But in a weird, sado-massochistic sort of way, I haven't felt this good in a long, long time.
And yes, before anybody asks, April is still talking to me, and plans are already in the works for our next crazy excursion into the backcountry. Hopefully with a little less hail next time.
