Summit East Post in the Bugaboos

Kain Creekplants at high altitudeOn top of the East PostAfter descending Boundary peak, I drove to Lake Louise and met Chris C who had just arrived from Toronto. Chris C was euphoric, totally enjoyed seeing the endless rocky mountains on his way from Calgary airport. We rested at Castle Mountain youth hostle that night, the closest junction to our trip to the Bugaboos.

The next day we drove to the Bugaboos, bought more food enroute. The 50km dirt road off the highway to the Buagboos parking lot took me about 2 hours to finish. In the parking lot, we wrapped chicken wires around our rented car to prevent pocupines from eating the tires and fuel lines.

It took us 5 hours and 15 minutes to reach the Kain Hut. We were both not conditioned hikers and simply had brought too much stuff. We could have combined our gear to leave some extra gear in the car. We coud have used one 2-person tent instead of 2 1-person tents. We coud have brought more dry food and less fresh food or cokked food, which contains much water.

The main floor of the hut consisted of kitchen and dinning area. The 2nd & 3rd floors were sleeping area. I was told to never turn on the lights in the sleeping area as I walked upstairs. There, in nearly total darkness, under faint twilight from a window, I saw sleeping bag wrapped body lying side by side on two rows of long and wide "shelves" at knee level. The sight instantly reminded me of the sleeping arrangement in concentration camps. I thought that these mountaineers were a rare breed, coming here from all over North America to sleep in such condition, just so they could get up early before dawn to summit a peak before noon.

The following morning Chris and I carried out stuff for another 2.5 hours to reach the Applebee Dome camp site. I showed Chris how to set up his tent. This was his first trip outside the GTA area since he came to Canada from Poland five years previous. He came because he loved rock climbing.

With the amount of time we had for the rest of the day, we decided to summit the East Post spire. The route is mostly 4th class scrambling with "a 5.4 climbe to the summit", a guide at the hut had told me. As we scrambled up, we both felt the insecurity of not being roped or anchored. We could easily slip and fall to our death. But there truly was no need for a rope as the likelyhood of falling is relatively small unless one trips or faints.

Chris C wanted to put down the rope he was carrying at one spot and to pick it up late when we descended. Since both he and I felt confident that we could solo the last 5.4 stretch, I agreed. We came to a section that looked like 5.4. I climbed up and found out that it wasn't the summit. I waited for him to come up. He didn't for a long time.

"Chris, if you need help, I can use my webbings to belay you." I yelled. I couldn't see him, as I was staying a few meter back from the exposed edge.
"I'm okay," he replied.
Then I heard some loose rock falling from where he was. I stayed quiet, not wanting to distract him.
Finally his helmet emerged at the edge, and climbed to safety.
It turned out that we had gotten off route, as pointed out by a young couple who had just passed above us on the right route on ridge of the mountain. They had watched Chris' scare moment and also said nothing for fear of distracting him.

Chris was happy to be alive! This rough terrain was difficult to read, full of loose rocks - small and huge - that seemed solid. We both agreed that alpine rock climbing is much more challenging than climbing at Mount Nemo. From the parking lot, we had been taking much more time than estimated in the guide book for every stretch of path we had hiked, scrambled or climbed.

At the camp site, my stove refused to work. I had emptied its feul and washed it with detergent in Toronto, so that I could fly it over to Calgary. Now there seemed to be too much moisture in the system. A neighbouring camper from Otterwa offered to use her stove if I couldn't get it going in another 20 minutes. I burned a bounch of matches on the stove help vaporize the moisture. Some blue flame came out, then died.

Chris sounded upset. "If I can't have hot oatmeal in the morning, I can't climb." He had tried my one-minute hot oatmeal at the hostle for the first time and liked it. "Let's go back to Caslte Mountain and climb there."

"I can survive on trailmix and other stuff here. I don't have a guide book on Caslte Mountain and I am not ready to go there to develop new routes," I said. "If you must have hot meals, we can borrow other people's stove. They have already offered to let us use their stove."

Chris didn't like the idea of bothering others all the time, for the rest of 3-4 days. I suggested that he could stay at the Kain Hut, where many climbers stayed. He didn't like the extra time he had to hike to approach the spires. But all the climbers stayed in the hut didn't mind and actually the hut was closer to certain climbs than the camp site. "If we were to climb the Bugaboo Spire, the safe descending route is closer to the hut than here," I said. Chris just wanted to pack up and go to the hustle or Canmore -- somewhere more civilized. I finally have had enough. "You're 22. I'm not going to babysit you. Go yourself. Get a ride from people descending to the parking lot. Many of them every day. Then take a bus to the airport."

A guy from Montreal offered his stove for me to cook our evening meal. As I went to a stream to wash the cooking ware, he stayed to persuade Chris to stay with the options I had mentioned.

The next morning, the stove worked! As Chris and I silently put on our climbing gears, I wanted to address the awkwardness between us. I asked Chris for talk. I wanted to know what was going on. He said that he would never climb with me again after this trip. I said that I didn't want to be enslaved by climbing and I wouldn't force myself to climb with him when I didn't feel comfortable climbing with him. He said that we were too different. I could rough it out without hot meal while he needed certain comfort to enjoy climbing. I said that it's okay that we don't have to like each other. But in order for us to climb together in this rough terrain, we must have a workable relationship. If we can work out a workable relationship, we can climb today. Chris didn't want to work on a relationship. He believed in relationship that naturally clicked. At the end, we both agreed that climbing was more about the relationship between climbers than the task of climbing.

We took out tents down. It took us 1 hour to get to the Kain Hut and another 3 hours to the parking lot. I dropped him off at the Calgary airport at about 10pm. The next morning (Aug. 21st) I drove back to the parking lot. With a little less weight than the previous ascend, I made to the Kain Hut in 3 hours. I became conditioned. On my way to the Applebee Dome, it rained and hailed. I hid myself in a narrow space between big rocks. The once stunningly beautiful Snowpatch Spire in front of me looked dangerously threathening in thick mist with ocassional flashy lightening. In 10-15 minutes or so, it was sunny again.