Rick Collier: A True Mountaineer

The first trip I did with Rick was back in April 1998, when five of us skied the classic Southern Caribous ski traverse from Lempriere Creek in the south to the Gilmour Glacier in the north. I actually can't remember much of this trip, but Rick has documented it fully on Bivouac. I do remember that Rick was by far the strongest member of our party both physically and technically, and he also, even more importantly, always had the balls to go first when the terrain got dodgy, which it does frequently on the Southern Caribous traverse.

A year later, Rick and I, plus my dog, Kumo, skied - or should I say walked and wallowed, from the winter gate on Highway 66 up the Little Elbow River and north to a 2200 metre pass between the Opal and Fisher Ranges, and finally out to Evan Thomas Creek. This trip I remember much better as, over the 50 km we traveled at least half involved walking, another third consisted of bottomless wallowing through facetted snow in thick brush, and for the final 1/8^th we actually had a packed trail. I know those numbers don't equal 100%, but neither does my memory anymore. My dog panted along with us, suffering fiercely in the facetted snow and, as our camps were cold, as only Rockies camps can be in February, I had to pull him - my dog that is, not Rick - into my sleeping bag so that the two of us did not die of frostbite overnight.

After this trip, having slept with the Old Goat - in a tent - you understand, I graduated to Old Goat status - still have the shirt. In those days, membership in the Old Goats club required spending at least one tent night with senior Goat.

Over the years, we did other trips with Rick, the most notable was hiking way into the "armpit" of Banff National Park as Rick called it to climb - supposedly a first ascent - Mount Huestis. Due to prior commitments, we could not do the entire trip with Rick so walked into to meet him near Mount Huestis. After two long days of hiking with heavy climbing packs - we even had a piton hammer with us - only a portion of which was actually on a trail, we grovelled our way up to an alpine meadow, where I could have sworn I saw Jesus sitting by a Whisperlite. It turned out to be Rick, who, at this time had long hair, a beard, and was given to wearing bandannas like a crown of thorns around his head. He was in excellent spirits after having spent four days solo in the wilderness climbing other peaks. The next day we climbed Mount Huestis and found, much to our communal chagrin, that the peak had been climbed about three times in the previous week. We spent another long day walking out. Doug and I had climbed over Quartzite Col to meet Rick and swore we would not do it again - the entire route was treacherous with about 30 cm of new snow - and Rick, happily conceded to take a longer route back, despite the fact that he had already covered serious ground on the trip. He was that kind of guy.

The last trip I did with Rick was an eight day ski traverse of the Maligne Range in Jasper during which we had beautiful sunny weather and rambled along at an easy pace spending the evenings listening to Rick tell mountain stories, of which he had many. I think at the time, that Rick must have been in his sixties, but he was still going strong and carried his own tent for the entire trip, while the rest of us shared tents and thus had lighter loads.

It's hard to believe he is gone. Like his beloved Rockies, one came to think that Rick would live on forever. Skiing and climbing with him was a privilege. 

Rick climbing Mount Huestis