When Loneliness is the Only Option

Back in 2006 – hard to believe it is almost 20 years ago – I completed Avalanche Operations Level One. I had no problem with the prerequisites as I had been ski touring for a couple of decades and had a dozen or more multi-day and multi-week ski traverses under my belt, plus 80 to 100 ski days every year for the previous five years. But, it was an expensive course (about $1200 at the time – now it’s upwards of $6,000!), and I was determined not to fail. Consequently, I read all the course material plus all the extra course readings, I skied incessantly and dug pits everywhere, and I practised finding two buried beacons hundreds of times, often at night to make the task more difficult. I passed the course, which I enjoyed despite barely sleeping for a week (it was a hut based course and there were a few exceptionally loud snorers in the group), and had that profound feeling of relief when something you’ve worked hard at is successfully completed. It was a bit lonely at times, especially on days out skiing by myself or beacon searching on dark winters nights, but, many ski days I had company so it wasn’t a completely solo endeavour.

Yesterday, I was assessed for Paddle Australia’s Sea Guide qualification, and, although I did well on almost all the assessment activities, I flubbed one part which I will have to redo. Not unexpectedly, it was the rescues scenario where I struggled, and, that was the one area I felt unprepared. I trained for this certification almost exclusively solo. You don’t have to be a kayaker to realise that you need more than one person to practice rescues. There are quite a few local paddlers in my area but I could not get anyone interested in spending an afternoon, even on a nice hot day, practising with me, so it was go it alone or don’t go at all. I realised a long time ago that it can be exceptionally difficult to find anyone to journey with you so you may as well get used to being alone. Suck it up, princess, we used to say in the ‘90’s before everyone became a special snowflake.

When I started training, 6 or 8 weeks before my assessment date, I decided I would go out and practise something every second day, and, I pretty much kept to that schedule regardless of weather. I spent a lot of time in the surf, a lot of time rolling my kayak, and much of the rest of the time trying to come up with other ways to prepare that were possible as a solo paddler. The most similar thing to rescues I came up with was using buoys as rescue targets. My rescues might not be great but I could quickly and accurately approach my “victims.” I did my best solo, but without at least one or two other paddlers, my best was not good enough.

PC: DB

It was solitary and I knew at the time I felt alone, but, it’s only in hindsight that I realise just how lonely those two months were. Perhaps it’s because, in another month or so, I’ll go back and get assessed on the one thing I need to redo, and that means another month of solo training which, to be truthful, feels a bit pointless without at least one other paddler. Doug, my ever suffering partner who supports me in everything I do, has agreed to practice with me, but he is busy and can ill spare the time. I’ll do my best, again, and hope my best is good enough, and, I’ll do what I’ve done before suck it up, but I wish there was another option.

The Last Day

The summer crowds have departed and there is only one woman on the beach as I go down for my last day of roll practice. I got a new kayak seat, hoping to alleviate my chronic proximal hamstring tendinopathy (it helps) and, as a corollary, found that suddenly I could easily CtoC roll after trying off and on for a couple of years. Sometimes a small tweak like sitting higher in kayak (I have a short stubby torso) makes a huge difference. The weird thing is, CtoC rolls are so much easier than sweep rolls, by the time you set up you are part way up, then a pull with a flick and in a few seconds you are right side up. My off side still needs work.

PC: DB

On Tuesday, Nick B came out of a year long hibernation for an upwind-downwind run. It was like old times except none of us were in shape for such shenanigans but we did the seven or so kilometres back from North Head in about 40 minutes which isn’t too bad. I neglected to take water and, despite only being out for two hours, I was parched as a bird cage on a summer day by the time we got home and was even thinking about swilling some sea water around in my mouth. It’s amazing how Nick, who has been neck deep in a house renovation for several years, can still pull ahead both upwind and downwind. Every paddle stroke is just about perfect.

PC: DB

Sunday was probably windier than Tuesday but the paddle was a short one out to Tollgate Islands to remember a dear friend. It was a happy/sad time. So many people in so many different communities touched by one gentle but strong willed woman. Loss is sad but friends gathering together to remember is happy.

PC: DB

In the middle of the North American summer climbing season in 2024, Will Gadd wrote about the “normalisation of deviance” in Explore magazine, over three years after I wrote about my own experience with the phenomenon. It’s not deliberate, people are just unaware as our society has become more industrialised, more convenient, less connected to the natural world. Our politicians don’t help, pandering to the most anxious among us in the mistaken apprehension that this builds resilience. Resilience is built on doing difficult things and there are no government policies that prioritise doing hard things. Policy is always about making things easier. Building resilience in the modern world requires an initial step of defiance which is deciding to swim upstream against all modern dictums. Eat meat, lift heavy objects, engage in risky behaviours, be the only person on the trails with an analogue mountain bike, learn to relax into challenges, and on and on.

PC: MT

The Democrats are realising the fruits of anti-resilience now. For years, the far left has pilloried toxic masculinity while promoting micro-aggressions, hurty feelings and toxic empathy. Virtue signalling took the place of actual action and “skin in the game” became a forgotten concept. Now, as Trump rages through the Deep State like a scythe through a cane field, the far left is struggling to motivate its base to fight back, but, there is no fight among a group of people who have founded their identities as perpetual victims who demand safe spaces from ideas and words that might cause discomfit. Petulant over-emotionalism will never win against people who understand that feelings are transient and that no-one can make you a victim without your consent.

Two Things

Why am I listening to this excoriating podcast with a host who sounds as if she just came off a bender and a coach doing his best to answer questions sensibly but not getting any sensible questions to answer? Perhaps it’s because I am out running, and I don’t want to interrupt my flow to change the podcast. There are two parts to this story; the first is that I am following a Garmin training plan, the second that both coaches keep repeating that inane and insufferable “truism” that you have to love every minute of your training and no coach should ever ask you to do things you don’t like.

You might not love everything, PC: DB

If you have a coach, which seems frightfully common these days even though most of us are mediocre, any coach that is always trying to find exercises or training that you’ll do because you love it should be sacked. If you love doing something, chances are, you’ve maxed out on that particular thing and need to bring up your weaknesses rather than reinforcing your strengths. I’m not sure when society decided that people who were training (or in fact any person at all) should never have to do anything they do not like. Clearly, however, no-one succeeds with this philosophy. If you are going to do anything worthwhile, you’ll have to do many things that you don’t like, and the idea that an endurance athlete, who is going to have lots and lots and lots of low points during long races will love everything they do is an endurance athlete unprepared to actually perform. You are what you do and the more you do things you dislike the better you get at not merely tolerating life but winning at life.

Not loving this pack, PC: DB

I got the idea of using a Garmin training program from my brother who has been dabbling with becoming a runner and has been using Garmin training programs to prepare for events. Generally, I programme my own training which is always difficult because I have so many sports I regularly participate in, and, I’m trying to maintain life as a functional human. Somewhat randomly, I selected a half marathon heart rate based training programme for beginners. This training programme is 16 weeks long and is a little strange but not weird or wacky enough for me to abandon it. In fact, I like that this aspect of training is a plug and go. Three days a week I do some kind of run training and all I have to do is follow the instructions. Perfect. Today was a 40 minute run at Zone 3. According to my Garmin statistics, I spent 30 of those 40 minutes in zone 4 or 5 which is clearly nonsense as I was quite comfortable the whole time. Either my heart rate zones are calculated wrong (I have literally no idea what the algorithm is) or my watch is wrong, or both.

Bush, bugs, swamp and big packs, PC: DB

None of this really matters, what matters is showing up consistently and training consistently and doing things you don’t like consistently because at some point in life you will have to get through something difficult that you don’t like and you need to be tough enough to persevere.

The Best of the Best or The Dullest of the Dull

The typical person is more risk averse than opportunity hungry. Jordan Peterson.

In 2005, when my Mum was 73, we walked up the Kaslo Lake trail to the comfortable Kokanee Glacier Hut on the shore of Kaslo Lake at an altitude of about 2000 metres. The trail, which is about 9 or 10 kilometres long starts down at Gibson Lake at an altitude of about 1560 metres and wanders up through switchbacks, some steep scree and boulder patches, and eventually some lovely alpine flower filled meadows to Kokanee Pass where it trends gradually downhill past a series of small lakes and tarns to Kaslo Lake. We stayed in the hut for two nights, walking to Sapphire Lakes and Glory Basin on the second day. While Mum rested at the cabin after each days walk, I’d head out and sprint up one of the surrounding ridges before returning to have afternoon tea with Mum who I had left sitting comfortably in the cabin with a book and some snacks.

Skiers on Kalso Lake in Winter

My Mum loved the alpine country of Canada and was, on this trip, made much of by the other hikers in the hut because they could not believe that my Mum, 50 years their senior, had walked in to the cabin carrying her own gear in a backpack on her back. I’m not cruel, I carried most of the load and my Mum carried just her usual day pack. But, Mum was still over 70 and had a number of years earlier had a laminectomy and spinal fusion due to vertebral collapse secondary to osteoporosis. And, she has bad osteoporosis, her spine has literally crumbled.

Sapphire Lakes area in winter

Five years later, in 2010, Doug and I had a week climbing in the Melville Group in the Selkirk Mountains of BC, with a rag-tag bunch of other climbers (I was the sole female). Half of us flew directly to a camp by a glacial lake at the base of the Houston Glacier while the other half were dropped off at a place colloquially known as Noranda Flats (the site of some old mining exploration) an alpine area at the head of Butters Creek and just below Pequod Pass. The second half of our group traversed from Noranda Flats to our Houston Lake camp via the Pequod Glacier after a couple of days climbing peaks accessible from Noranda Flats.

Climbing Mount Ahab out of Noranda Flats, PC: DB

This entailed crossing the Pequod Glacier which we had actually done the year before as Doug, myself and another climbing buddy had spent a week climbing out of Noranda Flats in 2009. The Pequod Glacier is a hideously crevassed and steep glacier that descends sharply from 9,000 feet to 7,000 feet in under a kilometre. Navigating it is no easy feat and involves crossing dodgy snow-bridges and weaving around bottomless crevasses while carrying full backpacks with food, camping and climbing gear. The Noranda Flats party was made up of three guys, including 76 year old Bert, who, a day or two after crossing the Pequod Glacier led the rock pitches (Ewbank 14) up Escalade Peak, which itself was the day after a grand slam day climbing Redburn, White Jacket, Proteus and Harpoon (yes, four peaks).

Climbing Harpoon, PC: DB

But what is the point of both of these stories, well, they are pretty average, ordinary stories. I wrote both of the Melville climbing trips up for Bivouac.com. The first, from 2009, got three recommendations, the second, from 2010, got one. The trip with my Mum to the Kaslo Lake hut was too ordinary to write up anywhere, so the only way I know what year it was is because it is in our personal trip database. I’ve got some photos, and some scant memories of the climbing, but not even much memory of the exact climbing routes as I climbed to the summits of hundreds of mountains when I lived in Canada. The stories are – to be honest – mediocre. And there’s nothing wrong with that. For most of us, our lives are a series of mediocre interludes interspersed with the average life events that happen to all of us. I’ve even written a piece in praise of mediocrity.

Doug on one of our new routes, PC: H.Mutch

What I don’t understand about mediocrity is why it interests anyone? A friend sent me a video the other day of some bloke in a too big hat on a ALL CAPITALS – SOLO REMOTE BIKE AND HIKE. It’s a 30 plus minute video which I didn’t watch because it’s boring and mediocre, and, if that’s not enough, the REMOTE place is a couple of hours easy walk from the parking lot. I think it’s great that this bloke in the big hat loves where he lives and goes out into nature, but I’m inspired by radical stuff not mediocrity. I’ve got a truck load of my own mediocrity.

One of Hamish's routes, PC: DB

Sometimes I wonder if it is the end stage of DEI where we celebrate diversity and identity and downplay actually trying hard and being good at something. Which is not to say you have to be anything other than mediocre because 99% of us are mediocre, but I sure would like to see society elevate the best of the best rather than the dullest of the dull.

Grace

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break. William Shakespeare.

I walked along the MunjipTrack this morning. It was windy and storm clouds were scudding across the horizon, but, out on the Tollgate Islands, a beam of bright sunlight shone down upon the wave strewn ocean, a message, to even to the most pragmatic and least spiritual among us, that hope always returns to human hearts.

Some people have words for the year, some mantras to keep going in dark and difficult times; when loss comes, as it does to all humans, I think about what that one person taught me across their life. Grace is a hard word to define and means so many things to so many different people. Grace is the ability to sit with who we are in stillness and silence without the need to distract ourselves from dark moments or equally joyful moments. Grace allows us to forgive ourselves, but more importantly others as we each conceive of ourselves as centres of the universe whilst in reality we are so many small and transient creatures spinning around glued by gravity to this strange and beautiful blue green planet beneath a twinkling night sky.

Go with grace.

The Significance of Ten

I don’t know that ten really means anything except as a base for the decimal system, but there’s something compelling about things that come in ten. On the tenth of January, I took the kayak down to the beach – empty thanks to the steady rain – and paddled south to practice some surf landings. Ten surf landings, of course. On my first run into the beach, I thought the swell is too small to count, but as I sat in the whitewater zone looking for a break to paddle back out, I saw that the waves were over my head and so qualify as “surf to 1.0 metre.”

It has been tough training for an assessment alone. I have no-one to run scenarios or act as a crash test dummie for rescues, so I’ve been doing my best running scenarios in my head and working on my own paddle skills. On January 5^th, half of ten, Doug and I went paddling, just paddling, out to North Head into a northerly wind and then the sprint to come back catching runners. I caught lots of runners. It’s the tenth of January and I’ve got eight days to go – providing the conditions cooperate.

A Story of Three Paddles

A wing, a stick (Greenland) and a Euro went out for a paddle, who was fastest? If you consider only forwards paddling, the wing should beat the Euro which should beat the stick. In practice, the Euro beat the stick which beat the wing. I am most assuredly not an expert on paddles or even the basic forward stroke, but, my observations lead me to think that many folks paddling with a wing blade would be far better off with a Euro blade. Certainly, if you aren’t fast with a wing, you probably aren’t getting the benefits of the wing.

A friend of mine, with a good forward stroke, has done some comparative tests between wing and Euro blades, she is perhaps 10% (it’s hard to quantify) faster with a wing blade. That’s all good, and, if I capsize, I would really like to have a wing blade in my hands because the sweep roll is so easy with a wing as the paddle just seems to automatically have a nice climbing angle and give lots of support. My flat blade dives if I don’t have it in exactly the right angle and I end up muscling up the roll. The sad truth, however is, that like most kayakers, the most obvious place for me to capsize is in the surf and I never use a wing blade in the surf. Wing blades, despite what the aficionados of wing blades say, are not much good for anything but forward paddling. It’s desperately hard to rudder with a wing or brace into a wave; both of those things are pretty much mandatory in the surf.

For the next little while, I’ve put my wing blade away and am paddling with a Euro blade. It was awkward at first and I felt really slow, especially in wind, but, the more hours you accumulate, the better you get (within in reason, you can’t just reinforce a shit stroke), and I’m finally at the stage of being comfortable with the Euro blade even in head winds and sprinting to catch runners. Sure, both of those things would be easier with the wing blade, and, at some point I’ll go back, but for now, the Euro is my paddle of choice.