Tantalust, Part II: Dreams and Reality
< Tantalust, Part I: my little Everest *pop* I screamed out in pain and shock as I looked down and watched my left ankle collapse and roll underneath me. I heard an odd popping sound come from my ankle and felt a weird crunching sensation. I dropped to my knees… Thoughts from the events of a year ago were circling through my mind. Pain, it seems, is the bodies way of reminding the head of that which it hopes to forget. My ankle was twinging from the weight of my heavy backpack that was burdened with food and equipment for 8 days of Mountaineering. I propped my hiking pole in my side, below my rib cage, and put my weight on it to give my ankle a rest. The aching began to subside and I exhaled. As I did a lone wasp landed above my sore ankle on my shin and stung me. Through gritted teeth I swatted it away, but it had done it’s damage. The ache from my ankle had now been replaced with a piercing throb from this sting. “Why don’t you want me here? “ I heard myself irrationally ask inside my mind. Who was I asking? The Mountains of this Range? It’s not unusual for people to anthropomorphise places and things, but I usually don’t. My history with the Tantalus Range had skewed my usual high tolerance to apophenia however. I’ve written about this history before (see: Tantalized by the Tantalus) and I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t played at least a small part in my decision to turn around when attempting to push into the heart of the Tantalus Range from the North this Spring (see: When Sisyphus met Zeno: Tantalus Digressions). Curiously, I’ve never written a post about the events of last year though, about my injury and the ramifications of it. I suppose that is telling. Anyway, this history of trying to push into the Tantalus Range and feeling as though it is constantly trying to push back was wearing on me. As I continued to hike, I tried to reason with myself. My ankle was weaker than usual and causing me more pain as, the previous weekend, I had run in the Squamish50 trail race, completing the 23km variation of the course (see: Running the Arc’teryx Squamish 50 23k). Wasps were everywhere this year, so getting stung was not unusual at all. The Tantalus Range is known for being difficult to access and for having complicated terrain, the weather here is also known for being gnarly at the best of times. I remembered a quote, by a...
Tantalust, Part I: my little Everest
To say I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the Mountains would be an understatement. While other mountaineers likely dream about far off high places in the Andes or the Karakoram, I spend most of my time thinking about those right on my doorstep here in British Columbia, Canada. You see, I’ve lost the taste for commuting. I imagine I will travel to other mountain ranges in the future to test my mettle but for now I just don’t want to invest my time in Planes, Trains and “those aren’t pillows!”. Coming from Ireland, a quaint Island on the edge of Europe, going anywhere new usually required hopping on Planes and wasting hours of my life in Airports. It seems self-evident now, but a quote I read many moons after leaving Ireland eloquently describes the epiphany I had that fateful day when I decided to leave, for good, the home I had grown up in: “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” ― Seth Godin I was living and working somewhere that I couldn’t wait to escape from for a few weeks of every year. Time was ticking by and I was about to enter that financial quicksand that is the 30’s grind of getting a mortgage, having some kids and getting into a lot of debt and then trying to work my way back out of it. There had to be another way. So, “why not go on a permanent vacation?” I told myself. Why not live in the kind of place that I’d like to escape to? It’s seems straightforward enough but it’s surprising how many people I meet that pine over a vacation location they hated having to leave who have never investigated if they could move there. The idea of a “Holiday” now seems so strange to me. I’ve been in Canada for 3.5 years now and apart from a few days just over the border in the US to visit some mountains I haven’t been to any other countries, and apart from one work related flight I haven’t been in any Airports either. For me now, the summits of Mountains have become the Capitals that I wish to visit, and the Ranges they lie within the Countries whose borders I wish to cross. One such Range abuts the very town that I live in. It stands like a medieval fortress, flanked by a wide treacherous moat, with high, dark Watchtowers on all sides. The Tantalus Range. I had been making plans to travel East to visit some Peaks...
Animal House II: The Tenquille Invasion
“Are you guys all from Whistler?” I asked. He finished chugging another Pilsner and shouted out: “Yeah buddy, how’d you know?” I smiled as a reply and kept walking, past the Canadian Tire Queen sized inflatable mattress floating in the lake with somebody passed out on top of it, the shotgun and shells, the brewery worth of beer cans, the frenzied pack of dogs, the bleary eyed girlfriends wearing swimsuits that might have originally fit them some time back around ‘95, the Brahs tomahawking hatchets at the nearest tree trunk as if training for Z-Day, wearing board shorts, 5 dollar shades and baseball caps with comedy sized flat brims (still nonplussed by the sticker) Yes, yes, we had arrived, along with approximately 60 other people, 3 babies, 10 dogs and 8 mountain bikes at the Tenquille Lake Recreation Site to bask in the glorious death throes of Summer, long may she rest in peace. Getting here had been no mean feat for our 2WD jalopy. It had developed a mean cough in its muffler somewhere along the 4WD section of the Birkenhead River-Tenquille Creek Branch FSR. As we crawled through the water bars, giving the belly of our steed a good scratch I thought the lady doth protest too much. Eventually though we realized that she was hobbling along slower than we could actually walk this road, so we parked about 3km’s back from the Trailhead. Indeed, we walked at the same speed or faster than other 4WD vehicles on the road, overtaking them at the waterbars. Do yourself a favour, bike the road. Unless your truck is seriously jacked, you will be crawling it. A bike would be faster on the way in, and way faster and more fun on the way out. We made short order of the trail itself. It looks like somebody is trying to reroute the old trail away from all the muddy sections that have become hilariously braided. This rerouting is creating a bit of chaos as there are now branches off the main trail everywhere. We talked to some guys who had tried to hike in the previous night, took a wrong branch, and ended up back at their trucks via a different trail a few hours later, wherein they decided to camp instead for the night. Another aside, cross to the other side of the lake outflow on the way in for the shorter and easier trail to the cabin. Over the weekend we summited Tenquille, Finch Ridge, Copper Mound and McLeod. All nice, hands in pockets, rambles in the Class 2 range. Views were pleasant. Some MTB’rs got heli-dropped onto...
Tszil Mountain & Mount Taylor: Photo Essay
“Halo, Halo! At a place called Vertigo!” It seemed apropos that being a U2 fan (comment if you got the reference), being high in the mountains and being completely awestruck by the Sun Halo above me that that variation on those lyrics would come into my head as we ascended an airy, narrow moraine to gain a col. between Tszil Mountain and Mount Taylor. Myself, Spring and Ben had plans to explore some peaks in Joffre Lakes Provincial Park and did just that. If conditions were in we planned to also visit Slalok Mountain as well. Ultimately we ascended only the peaks mentioned in the title of this post but will be back to visit Slalok Mountain under drier conditions. This Park is justifiable so. It’s simply amazing and photos and words cannot do it enough justice. However, if I had to choose, photos do a better job than words in my opinion so I’ll let them do the talking. Have you been to Joffre Lakes? Which picture below is your...
Athelney Pass: The Park that never was
“Why isn’t this place a park?” I uttered those words as myself and Spring had just found a large rock that would be comfortable to sit on as we unpacked our lunches. We where sitting atop “The Elephant”, an unofficially named volcanic plug of rotten rock. A few kilometers away we could just about hear the whoops! of elation as 4 of our friends were reaching the summit of Ochre Mountain. We shouted out to them, not sure if they could hear us, and settled in to spend a few minutes soaking in the views before heading on to our next peak of the day. “Athelney Pass” I said to myself “… what a place!” The previous day myself, Spring and 5 other friends had spent 8 hours with heavy packs on our backs hauling our camping gear 15km’s up Salal Creek. For the most part you can walk on river rocks to follow the course of the creek, at other times you need to deke into the forest to avoid where the creek abuts the shore. It had been a hard approach hike. On paper it looks relatively easy by our standards with only 800m’s of elevation being gained over those 15km’s. We’d previously camped on Panorama Ridge in Garibaldi Provincial Park which was a 15km hike one way but with double that elevation gain and we had found that to be a breeze. This approach hike was a different kind of hard though. It was mentally fatiguing. On most trails we can just turn our brains to autopilot, but for walking on these polished river rocks we had to always be vigilant in our foot placements. Stepping on the wrong rock could mean a rolled ankle or worse. We could never really let our minds rest, we had to always be paying attention about our next foot placements. We eventually reached our campsite, beside a dilapidated mining cabin, and pitched our tents. The valley had lost the sun by the time we finally arrived and the mosquitoes had come out in their droves to feed. Nevertheless, we couldn’t help but feel like we’d arrived somewhere special. We looked out towards the large Ethelweard Glacier across from us, and turned in for the night. The next morning a few different objectives for the day were discussed. Myself and Springs plans didn’t really match up with anyone elses so just the two of us set out together. Everyone had decided to stay on the West side of Athelney Pass. The peaks on the East side of the Pass look considerably more intense and would likely require glacier travel gear....
