Lessons From Klaus

I found out a few days ago that Klaus was gone. He was 80 years old and my friend Robin Tivy has written a wonderful obituary. In some ways, it almost feels as if the end of an era has come and gone as Klaus was very much what is now known as “old school.” I only did one trip with Klaus and that was to be a trip of firsts where lessons were learnt that I carried with me across dozens of trips and even across to a new continent.

Klaus showing us how to get water when 

there are 3 metres of snow on the ground

Klaus came from the generation of climbers and skiers who navigated with paper maps and compasses. When we skied into Elaho Mountain, we were pioneering a new route into the area as the old route in was no longer possible due to road closures. Klaus led the navigation on that trip with a black and white photocopy of the topographic map. I am not even sure if he had a compass. Nevertheless, we were on that trip six days and when we skied back out to the top of the cutblock (logged area) above where we had left our cars, we were only three metres to one side of where we had left the cutblock. The paper photocopy was looking a little ragged but Klaus looked as fresh as ever.

Klaus track setting on the way to Elaho Mountain

It was the first of many Coast mountain ski traverses that we would go on to complete over the years and I was 20 years younger than Klaus – who would have been around 60 at the time – and yet I struggled to keep up. I remember the first day out, my pack felt desperately heavy (to be fair my pack was almost 50% of my body weight) and I had drunk all my water by afternoon and was thinking I might die if I had to ski any further that day. Klaus would have skied much higher before making camp but went easy on the skiers who had come from parts further east and had yet to be broken into the elevation gain that defines Coast mountain ski trips.

That pack

Klaus was skiing in a tiny pair of running shorts which, at first glance looked ludicrous as he had long skinny legs and was wearing double plastic AT (alpine touring) ski boots, but as I sweated and strained in my full-on winter ski kit I came to appreciate this as sensible attire at this time of year. On all my traverses after that, while I did not wear running shorts, I wore light coloured thin ski pants and short sleeved shirts. Never again did I run out of water from sweating too much.

Those nice hot thick black ski pants

There was one big descent on that trip of about 600 metres when we finally, after three days of travel, reached the Elaho Glacier and the start of the route up Mount Elaho. Klaus was the only person on the trip with AT ski gear, the rest of us (Robin, Betsy, myself and Doug) were all using telemark ski gear – also known as Misery Sticks. And it was misery. It was tough skiing with a big pack at the end of three long days with not so great ski conditions. Klaus was down at camp with his tent up by the time the rest of us had crashed and kick turned and, occasionally even linked a couple of telemark turns, down to the flat glacier below. After that trip, I switched to AT skis and literally never looked back. There is a simple wisdom in using the right tool for the job.

I think this is the Clendinning Range 

but I could be wrong after all this time

Over the course of that trip we climbed a number of unnamed peaks that lie along the glaciated terrain leading to Elaho Mountain. In fact, the picture on my Bivouac author page is taken on one of those peaks. You can see I am wearing a nice pair of thick black pants. As we climbed each peak, Klaus would make a note in his “little black book” where he recorded times and notes of each stage of our journey which would later be curated into an extremely accurate trip report. In modern times, the idea of making a note in a paper book with pencil rather than tracking the entire trip on GPS/Strava/CallMeAHero/TikTok (choose the latest “pimp yourself app”) seems quaintly outdated. But there are no batteries to die and no electronics to suddenly go “buggar up.”  For years after that traverse, I too carried a little note book.  I am not quite sure when or even why I dropped the habit.

Klaus in a rare moment wearing long trousers

Klaus, of course, was from the pre-social media era and how refreshing to meet a man as accomplished in the mountains as Klaus and yet who did not need to prop up his ego with selfies and exaggerated stories of daring-do. We could all take a lesson there.