Girls’ Night Out: Part 2
< Girls’ Night Out: Part 1 The words that follow are by Kelly Fowler: We made camp in an outcropping of two huge granite boulders sitting ninety degrees to each other, nudging the base of a pine tree. One boulder had a curious indent in its shadow, enough for three wanderers to sleep like sardines. Solid to our left and backs, the path ran from above, down to the right and onwards through the rocks and scrub. It felt safe to stop. We ate some trail mix, drank some water. Nobody was all that hungry. Our little area received minimal coverage from the pine tree, and the rain still fell. I collected the food and hung it several metres away, as high as I could string it in the tree. That bottle of wine looked very lonely. We spread out Marwa’s sleeping bag on the bottom of the indent and prepared for the night. Everyone was surprisingly calm. I wanted someone to lose their cool, to cry or shout. Then the other two would have a purpose to console, to rally. Instead, each of us was mature, practical and almost serene. The plan was to rest until daybreak, and we would gain our bearings and make a decision to move on or go home. The darkness thickened and we could barely see past our hastily assembled camp. The two of them settled, and I was the last to get in, pulling the three packs in close to my right. After all, I was the one out in the open with Jill practically gone under the rock and Marwa snug in the middle. That wall of synthetic backpack material and extra wool socks was my pseudo protection from evil leprechauns, prancing ponies or other mythical forest creatures that dispersed from Fairy Meadow when the sun went down. I covered us with my sleeping bag and then a garbage bag. Fully clothed. Boots still laced. Glasses on my face. Wine unopened, hanging far away in a tree. And it rained. Not exactly your dream weekend, but the potential for an amusing story around the water cooler should we survive. There’s nothing quite like the sweet sound of rain on the roof of a tent when you’re snug inside. The tippity-tap-tap of water soothes and comforts. For us, the rhythm was a hazy, sleep-deprived version under a dark green Glad garbage bag. Our makeshift plastic bag duvet cover was, at least, keeping us dry. The sounds of the forest had long stilled. Until I heard it. It was heavy and low to the ground. It moved with purpose and it was coming...
Girls’ Night Out: Part 1
Prologue: Recently, when we published our post “3 Types of Fun” we asked our readers to shoot us a message if they had any Type 3 fun stories they wanted to share. We heard from a few people, most who’d already posted their stories online, but we heard from one who had yet to tell the story of her adventure gone awry to the world. We enjoyed her story so much that we offered to post it as our first guest post on our blog. The words that follow are by Kelly Fowler: Jill, Marwa and I hiked five hours only to find ourselves huddled under one sleeping bag, three in a row, in the dark, in the drizzle. I didn’t know exactly where we were. I did know we weren’t at Fairy Meadow – no fire burning in the hearth, no chilled Chardonnay, no pasta. Beneath the towering pine, the granite boulder, the Glad garbage bag and my purple MEC sleeping bag, the whistling of a lone wind travelling up and through Marwa’s nostrils echoed in my left ear. My right ear, however, contended with the conflicting hammer of my desperately beating heart and the solid methodical gait of a massive beast approaching from behind. Jill was practically wedged beneath the boulder, Marwa in the middle, and me on the outside, flanked only by our packs. Hiking pole tightly gripped in my right hand. Oh yes. We got lost. And now we were about to be eaten by some ravenous beast of the Selkirks whose presence had been made quite clear to Jill and me as we had hiked into the backcountry earlier that day. After many stories and beer to match, our planned 0600 hrs start morphed quickly into a groggy shuffle towards the car by 1100 hrs. Armed with pasta and bottles of red wine, our weekend getaway was nothing short of a chick flick. While Jill and I had both hiked extensively throughout Banff National Park, Marwa was still a virgin to the backcountry. My beautiful Egyptian friend prefers city lights and international men to eating berries in the wilderness, but she has a stubborn streak and a defiant stare that challenges anyone to tell her she can’t do something. This would be her debut with Mother Nature close at hand, experiencing true camaraderie, peeing in the woods. Wanting more than a little hike up to the tea houses around Lake Louise, which were far too touristy for our liking, I proposed that we venture out from our favourite trails into uncharted territory. Destination? The Alpine hut at Fairy Meadow in British Columbia’s Adamant...
