Author: Nowell Senior
General area: Red Mountain
Trip start date: 2004-03-13
Number of nights: 1
In March 2004, Mitch, Ric and me, snow-shoed to the cabin at Red Mountain. We crossed the Fraser on the ice-bridge at Penny, caught a ride with Tom Richardson to the Post Office, and headed up the trail from there.
Everything went smoothly for 10km, with about one and a half kilometers remaining to reach the cabin, which none of us had been to before. With no trail to follow, snow getting deeper, and with no flagging or signs to guide us, it became more difficult to make our way. After we struggled for an hour, the G.P.S. indicated that we were 500 metres from the cabin. Being so close, I thought we could leave the spine of the ridge, angle down and take a “sort of short-cut”. We reached Red Mountain Creek at the bottom of the gully, but found no cabin, and were still 500 metres from the G.P.S. line the cabin lay on.
Once again, I insisted, “500 metres more” – but now, up the creek. This time, Ric marked and counted off each metre with every stride he broke the trail with – he did not believe what I said anymore, and who could blame him! He brought us to a halt at the 500th metre at which point we had snow-shoed for nine hours. Exhaustion and darkness were closing in on us. I was disoriented with fatigue, and could not make sense of what the map and G.P.S. were telling me.
Just when I was beginning to feel absolutely lost and helpless, Mitch encouraged me to take a break, have a snack, relax and re-group. It worked; I got my bearings and confidently pointed back to the ridge we had come down from earlier, and up we went. The snow at this point seemed intent on finishing us off, for even with snowshoes we sank to our now rather tenderloins, and could not lift our legs high enough to clear the surface; we pushed through, zigzagging, weary and worried – then we saw a large mound of snow barely visible in the twilight: It was the cabin.
It took us an hour to dig into the cabin, and to locate the chimney, which I installed rather insecurely, into position on the roof. We settled in, it felt like the Ritz: a roaring fire, hot tea, Dubbonet, and fresh beef stew while buried in the snow made things seem somehow extra cozy; it was especially comforting to have escaped having to spend what could have been a most uncomfortable night in the snow without proper preparation for doing so.
As we sat and sipped our wine and swapped stories around the stove, the wind howled and the snow blew, and I resolved never to go into the mountains again in winter unless ready and able to build a snow-shelter.
Next morning at 6:30 I got up and went outside; I gazed in awe at the splendid wilderness so still and quiet before me, and my soul was soothed. Something caused me to look over my shoulder, and my soothed soul fled; the roof of the cabin was in flames!
It’s strange what runs through your mind in emergency situations; I’m thinking “Fire!”, and I’m thinking “Water?”, and I know intuitively it’s at my fingertips – water that is, but panic had me momentarily frozen – until it dawned on me that there’s fifteen – feet of snow for as far as you can see – and snow is water right? So I jumped onto the roof and started flinging snow onto the fire.
As I fought the fire, another thought occurred to me: why has this cabin waited until I arrived before venturing into the realms of spontaneous combustion? These thoughts occupied only seconds (mind like a steel trap!), then something else dawned on me: I should share my discovery with my companions still sleeping inside the burning cabin. However, finding words appropriate to fit the situation are sometimes elusive, and the best words come to me long after the opportunity for using them has passed by, but this time I had a sort of epiphany: one word will do the job – “Fire!”
I heard Mitch and Ric stirring, preparing for the first stage of fire fighting; waking up. Then, into the second stage, which in this case involved squirting water at the flames licking the log wall inside the cabin.
In short: we put the fire out, wrote a warning to future cabin users, double and triple checked for smouldering logs and stray sparks, drank up, locked-up, and went home.
I can’t end with such a brusque dismissal. For a couple of days we were in a winter-wonderland too beautiful to describe with mere words. However, just like in the Garden of Eden, there is always a Serpent, and an apple with a worm in it.
I wonder what form the Serpent will take next time I am out at Red Mountain. I suppose this is all part of the hope, joy and woe of going out to these beautifully wild and wintry Garden of Eden that beckon to us.
So much for philosophy. A more concrete aspect to this little adventure is that although I got myself and my companions lost, exhausted, frozen and almost burnt alive – Mitch and Ric still love me, and want to continue going out with me. What more could a Rambler wish for? It is heart-warming…
Adieu, with a handshake in thought.
Nowell