260 Kilometres or The Great Delusion

June with it’s self-inflicted eight kilometres a day is over. Over the month, my total on foot (not counting bicycle or kayak) distance was 260 kilometres. Most of that was easy, although there were days when I had to go out late or very early to get the distance done. We finished up June with a couple of days sport climbing at Nowra – yep, short and weak against slimpers and power moves. As a climber who does not hang board, I will have to start training fingers in a more determined fashion. Well, there is always July.

The much anticipated US Presidential debate ran on Friday, and, as we were driving back from Nowra, Doug read me a few tweets from X summing up the debate. In Australia, the usual hysterics were claiming: “Its not just American democracy that is at risk in this presidential election, its life in earth.” [sic] This is, of course, TDS or Trump Derangement Syndrome. You don’t have to be a Trump detractor to realise this is ludicrous. But, when logic fails it is so tempting to turn to hyperbole. The mainstream media, which a few short days previously had claimed that the videos that continuously circulated like water circling a drain which reveal Biden staring open jawed and glassy eyed into the distance or babbling like a baby, were deep fakes, was left pantsless as Biden babbled.

No-one knows where this goes but, as is usual, the real issue is not that the USA has clearly been governed by a dementia patient for the last four years – although that is a profoundly disturbing issue – the really confronting thing is the lengths to which Democrat/Biden supporters will go to keep up the pretence that Biden is anything other than a human husk.¹ No sane person should do this, but, the “pandemic” has given an entire cohort of the world’s population great practice at NOT believing the evidence before their own senses. Believing one’s own observations is the basis of empiricism and empiricism is the basis of all science and all of mankind’s (get over it if you object to the use of the masculine pronoun) great advancements. Why for the sake of partisanship – tribalism is probably more appropriate – are we so happy to toss thousands of years of human progress into the dustbin of delusion?

1A quick scan of #debate on X will provide an endless stream of inventive and delusional explanations for Biden’s performance.

Back From The (Near) Dead

Here it is hump day if you are gainfully employed or the day before a climbing day if you are not. After my dismal, but luckily, mostly private disgrace on Friday, I skipped the Park Run on Saturday and strolled around the bushland near home. June is the month I decided, on a whim, as most of my decisions are, that I would walk (or run) at least eight kilometres every day. Barring death, taxes or hospitalisation, I needed to walk eight kilometres.

Feeling delightfully recovered on Sunday Doug and I went rock climbing and, on a whim, I tried “THE project,” a route I have tried off and on for a couple of years – mostly off in the last year – but in total I’ve probably tried it 30 times. At the second crux, I could hear Doug but as if in a tunnel, his voice seemed far off, and he seemed to be saying “you’re gonna do it!” And I did. Totally gobsmacked and not expecting that at all but one of those rare times in life when you really are in flow.

Monday, a kayaking friend organised a paddle. Doug and I paddled south from our home beach to meet the other three and we paddled around a couple of islands, out to sea for a while, into a beach, and then, while the others went back south, Doug and I booted home. As part of training for a paddling assessment, I’m using a flat blade now instead of a wing, which normally means I’m slower than Doug but working on speed and technique I managed to crank my speed up to 8 km/hour on the way back. Recovery is a wonderful thing.

PC: DB

Just four more days of my minimum eight kilometres a day and I’m thinking what July’s daft goal will be. I might make it climbing every day of the month, which would be fun, and possibly a little painful.

An Ignominious Failure

It was a simple idea as the best ideas are. Celebrate the winter solstice by seeing how far I could walk in the available daylight hours. Initially, I had thought I might do a “multi-sport” day: walk, paddle, boulder, perhaps bicycle although after riding Narooma mountain bike trails the day before my commitment to bicycling was limited by how tender my butt was. All the faffing involved in coming home to pick up bouldering pads and washing kayaking gear was enough to convince me that leaving home at dawn and returning at dusk and simply walking as far as I could was a much better and more elegant idea.

I left home at 6:30 am walked along the Headlands Track to Observation Point for the sunrise, so far so good, although my legs felt heavy and I had a tweaky knee. Heavy, as every endurance athlete knows is a euphemism for pretty shattered, and tweaks are those things that are best heeded unless you want some kind of tendon injury that will take forever to heal.

Five kilometres done by about 7:30 am when I swung by the house to change into shorts – I dislike walking in trousers. My back of the envelope calculation for the day was 40 kilometres so five kilometres was a mere sniffle in the context of the day ahead. The Headlands Track follows the coast south and goes up and over a series of small headlands separated by sandy beaches. There are lots of hills but none of them are significant, I’d call it an undulating track. I’ve been known to use the hills for sprint training.

The further I walked the more cramped my quadriceps became and the sharper the pain in my tweaky knee. I had a short stop at Garden Bay where a young lassie was drawing circles in the sand, decorating them with shells and stones and then dancing around them in some ancient fertility rite. This was modestly distracting but the climb out of Garden Bay – one of the few sections of the track which has not been upgraded with decent stairs was a bit ugly. My legs had cramped right up and I hobbled around the next headland, walking like a 90 year old in need of a bilateral hip replacement. At Malua Head I stumbled out the track to the lookout, on any normal day I’d be half an hour from the end of the track at McKenzies Beach but this was not a normal day.

Back on the main track, I stumbled down the stairs to Malua Bay and called Doug to come pick me up. An ignominious failure on par with the Erowal Bay affair in 2023 but I guess I can hang onto that old trope that trying and failing is better than not trying at all.

Missioning

This is old but still makes me laugh out loud; perhaps because I can remember when every trip, no matter how small and insignificant was described as a “mission.” There were “dawn patrol missions” and “stealth missions” to sneak in some ski runs in fresh powder before the crowds descended, and, of course, all those “climbing missions” which amounted to clip-ups belaying off the bumper of your car. Good times.

We were “missioning” yesterday, aka, enjoying some clip-ups at the local crag. Today was strength training day. I agree with all the people whose excuse for not strength training is that they like being outdoors even while I recognise that unless you are outdoors from dawn to dusk not strength training because you want to be outdoors is likely an excuse. But, I do understand because I would rather be off doing something fun – missioning if you will – on my bike, or my feet, or in my kayak, or even simply with my bouldering pad, but, everything you really want in life requires hard work and sacrifice, and, if it doesn’t maybe you want the wrong things.

There Is Always Knitting

It simply is not possible to best this article published – where else – but in The Guardian. For a moment, I thought it was parody because who would publish an article purporting to present a female point of view using a male expert named Tiplady, but then I remembered that it was The Guardian, a deeply unfunny media outlet that has never encountered a joke that is not offensive.

My friend, Jen deep in the Kokanee backcountry

Anyway, it’s all bullshit. Yes, bullshit. A horror story is not being called “sweetheart.” A horror story is living in Afghanistan under the Taliban or being stoned to death in a Muslim country. Having a dude ask you if you are going all the way to the summit is also not a horror story. I am tired of reading these ridiculous articles which are more condescending to women than being queried about map reading skills.

My friend Dany leading grade 20 at Smith Rock

The reality is, if you want to go climbing, or hill walking, or roll large cheese wheels down hills in England, you have to toughen the fuck up. I’ve been recreating in the outdoors with men for over 40 years and I have never had a problem because I am not a whiny woman who practices offense. I practice my skills, I work hard, I pull my weight, I laugh at jokes, hell I even make jokes, I get out there and do shit because I want to and nothing is going to stop me.

My friend, Alana kicking steps up Mount Bor

Women who worry about how they are going to go to the toilet or what people are going to say to them do not have cojones to “man up” and get up at o’dark o’clock and get shit done even if they are scared or tired or with an all male party. And that’s okay because there is always knitting.

Having Fun Trying Hard

The only paddlers I saw on Sunday were a couple of young folk gearing up to take their white-water boats out in the surf at Bingie Point. It was pumping. There was a line of half a dozen breakers and the bigger sets were cresting and crashing up to half a kilometre off-shore. The tops were blowing off the waves and, at just about exactly low tide, the bigger waves were running right up to the top of the beach. The youth were either young and talented or young and foolish, I don’t know which. At least they knew what a bouldering pad was and didn’t ask why I was carrying a box on my back.

I trotted down to the boulders on the north side of Bingie Point thinking I’d climb all the low tide boulders first. If you don’t count climbing on my home wall or bouldering at indoor gyms, I haven’t been bouldering since April and I had almost forgotten how much fun it is. After some warm-ups, I got on some overhanging and steep stuff. I like trying hard close to the ground and I was stoked to top out some boulders that were a bit scary for a solo boulderer with no spotter. Scary but not as scary as heading out into the Bingie surf with a gale warning and a 5 metre swell, but then I’m not young anymore.

When I’m too tired to try hard, I always think, I’ll do some easy cool down boulders but, in the moment, that seems a bit boring, so I quit after a few hours and walked back to drink tea overlooking the beach. The youth were gone and there were no broken bodies or bits of boats on the shore. I hope they had fun trying hard. Like anything else if you keep practicing sooner or later trying hard becomes indistinguishable from having fun.

Winning with Visualisation

This is not the best podcast in the world – the guest says “like” too much – but, if you can get past that, there is some interesting stuff on the use of visualisation in climbing. Hodgin’s reports that, as part of her training for Necronomicon, she visualised herself climbing the route every night before she went to sleep. There is some pretty reasonable evidence that visualisation actually produces physical changes. I’ve dabbled with visualising before. Specifically, I did exactly what Hodgin’s did which was visualise myself climbing various routes before I went to sleep. Problem was, I was visualising so well that my body was rigid with body tension and I couldn’t fall asleep. You could have bounced a penny off my belly my abdomen was that tight.

After listening to the podcast, I tried it again, this time, concentrating on keeping my body loose while I visualised the climbs. I could fall asleep which was nice, but how well would this actually work? As usual, I don’t have conclusive evidence – and we should all remember: “nothing is proven in biology” (Peter Attia) – but, I can say, visualising helped me – a terminally nervous lead climber – feel much more relaxed when leading. This is one of those things that costs nothing to try so you have nothing to lose.

The Viagra (Strong and Vigorous) Cold Front: Durras Mountain Circuit

In the car I had a very light Patagucci windbreak (ripped from bushwacking) and an $8 op-shop synthetic puff jacket. It was a toss up which would come but in the end, I took the $8 op-shop puff jacket. The ocean was calm, glassy calm with almost no swell at all – the Batemans Bay wave buoy was at 0.4 metres. You could have landed a kayak literally anywhere.

Trotting around the headland to the new lookout at Snapper Point, the track was a bit wet and soggy and I was almost thinking I should have thrown in a tee-shirt it felt so warm. At the new Murramarang South Coast walk sign, some macropods were lounging in the shelter. The tide was already rising so instead of doing the hill climb up Durras Mountain first, I jogged along the coastal track. The route follows the beach until you pass O’Hara Island – easy to wade out to today – and then runs up and down into gullies and over little headlands to Clear Point where the Durras Mountain track ascends in an easy grade to the top of Durras Mountain at 285 metres.

When I got glimpses out to sea I noted a large dark cloud looming to the south but mostly the track was so deep into the bush that I could not see much. As I started up the track to Durras Mountain my phone pinged. Doug sending me a text to say that the weather was wild at the house with strong winds and driving rain. “I’m part way up Durras Mountain” I texted back, “not much I can do about it.” But I did find a couple of small ziplock bags in my pack and tucked my phone and camera into those and put them in the pack pocket that lies against my back.

Not long after, there was a roar in the trees, much like the sound of a jet airplane taking off and the cold front hit. With wind speeds near 40 knots, the rain was soon driving down and I shrugged into my puff jacket and beanie, put my head down and kept going. The biggest safety issue is, of course, getting clocked on the head by a falling branch or tree. Eucalpytus trees are famous for dropping branches which are heavier than lead. I briefly entertained the idea of retreating to the coastal track and jogging the couple of kilometres into Pebbly Beach where I could shelter near the toilet block, but, the coastal track is narrower and overhung by more dead trees than the more open track over Durras Mountain, so I kept going.

I was pretty happy to jog past the old trig station on Durras Mountain because I knew it was only five kilometres to Pretty Beach and I run that distance in half an hour every week at the Park Run. The view from Durras Mountain was pretty obscured but I did catch a glimpse of a now seething ocean to my right as I jogged down the track. By the time I got to the eroded path that leaves the old fire trail, the rain had stopped, but I was chilly and damp so I kept my spare clothes on.

Down at Pretty Beach, the sun was out but the wind was cold and brisk. I jogged on past Snapper Point lookout, the ocean much different to earlier in the morning and along to Merry Beach where I found a handy boulder to sit on to eat and drink. In the sun, out of the wind, it was almost warm, but the ocean was a mess of white-caps and the swell was rising. By evening, the Batemans Bay wave buoy was at four metres and rising!

Dragon Slaying

Our old house in the southern suburbs of Sydney had a small creek – which we called a “ditch” – that ran along the fence line at the back of our property. The ditch ran behind all the houses in the street until it reached the main road where it disappeared under asphalt and underground. It was possible to follow the ditch north if you were willing to push through scrubby brush and crawl under fences. Wild chokos grew in profusion along the ditch and the avocado shaped fruit was plentiful in season. As a child, it felt incredibly adventurous to explore the ditch, and, in a child’s version of reality, if you were simply following the creek you were really still in the backyard according to rules you thought your Mum would enforce. But, as a child who read The Hobbit multiple times, adventuring along the backyard ditch was akin to Bilbo Baggins crossing the known world to the Lonely Mountain.

I’ve just finished reading The Hobbit for the fourth or fifth time. If you have never read The Hobbit, you must, as the movies are no substitute for the book. The Hobbit is, of course, an allegoric novel. Bilbo, the unlikely hero is everyman (everywoman, every person - insert your own PC interpretation) who walks out of his door one morning (if you’ve read the book you’ll know that Bilbo actually runs out his door in the morning) to embark on a grand quest and, after a series of adventures, surprises both himself and his companions by his courage and fortitude.

There are so many lessons for life in The Hobbit, from the most simple – keep going even if you are scared - to the more ethereal – do what you believe is moral without regard to the behaviour of your others. Even the multiple passages in the story where Bilbo and the dwarves “tighten their belts” and walk for days without food is a lesson for the modern world (and might be one of the best ways to prevent cancer).

Doug and I still have the ingrained habit of going out and doing something if the sun is shining. Yesterday was sunny so we went rock climbing. It was a high gravity day for Doug; every rock climber knows what I mean, but, he battled his way up a scary lead, and I do mean battled, refusing to quit because, as he shouted down to me “you just don’t let yourself quit.” Which is just what Bilbo Baggins said to himself when he entered the tunnel and confronted Smaug the dragon.

The Sunday Paddles: Just Jump

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.  George S. Patton

As my Mum got weaker and weaker (a problem with many causes, some rectifiable), I took to pushing her in a wheelchair along the broad foot-paths around the assisted living facility where she now resides. Apart from the fact that the wheelchair I was able to procure from the facility was such a POS (piece of shit) that the foot braces consistently fell off, it was, at least to me, preferable to sitting indoors with my Mum as she dozed off to sleep again. It seemed to me a win-win. My Mum would get some much needed fresh air and possibly some naturally acquired Vitamin D, and I would not go stir crazy sitting for hours after I had already sat for hours driving up to visit her.

In reality, each journey was plagued with more issues than just the POS wheelchair. Within a block – about 50 to 100 metres – from the facility my Mum would ask to go back. I’d jolly her along for another block, and then she’d ask to go back again. The further we got the more desperately she wanted to go back and the more fearful she became. My Mum was never a dare devil but I once took her on a six day sea kayak trip off the coast of British Columbia and we spent weeks hiking in the Canadian mountains, often off-trail, and camping out. After one visit, I came home and told Doug about the wheelchair expeditions and he muttered something about the irony of being so fearful of death that you stopped living at the point where most of your life was behind you and you had comparatively little to lose.

Young menYoung men and to a lesser extent young women (biology trumps gender ideology) engage in risky behaviour when they have the most to lose and, as they age, with less and less to lose, risk taking slowly (or rapidly) drops away until not taking the latest booster shot begins to seem risky. If you think about it, this is perverse, much like having more time and money when you are too old and sick to enjoy such things. It would make more sense to risk more when you have less life span to lose and risk less when your entire life is ahead of you.

Sunday is paddle day. One day a week I paddle, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. The idea is to keep my paddle fitness ticking over, fairly effortlessly so that if I want to do something bigger I can. Today I had a couple of mates to paddle with, and, as it does, conversation wandered, widely. We talked about adventures and movies, and heart rate monitors, and paddling and training, and death and illness. I was struck again by how subjective and ultimately irrationally we assess risk and how the older we get the more risk averse we become even though we have less to lose.

Risk aversion is really just fear, and a life lived in fear is a half a life. The other half of life is taking some calculated risks, challenging yourself and, most importantly putting aside the endless list of all the things that might possibly go wrong and jumping anyway.

The Dunny, The Paper and The Big Spring Storm

My goal for June is to walk or run at least eight kilometres every day. It’s taken a bit of wangling; for example, when I drove to Sydney recently, I had a short break on the way there and walked four kilometres, and then did the remaining four kilometres at dusk, which was the only other time I had. I certainly did not feel like going out today in heavy rain and strong wind, in fact, as I got prepared to go with rain jacket and rain pants and woolly hat, Doug commented that it would be like that time at Clemencaeu Icefield going to the outhouse. I’d forgotten all about the storm, the dunny, and the toilet paper, but, on a rainy day perhaps it’s worth recounting.

The Outhouse at the edge of the universe

As a generally friendly chap and the only dentist in the small mountain town of Golden, BC, our mate Jeff knew everyone for kilometres around. Part of the everyone Jeff numbered among his acquaintances was a bloke who had recently bought a Beaver. Not the sort of beaver with a thick pelt and big teeth that chews down trees and dams streams, but a Beaver single engine aircraft. This Beaver was equipped with snow skis for landing on glaciers and the bloke who owned it was a keen pilot and offered to fly us into the Clemenceau Icefield one spring for a week long ski mountaineering trip.

The Beaver

We were a small group, about six I think, but it’s a while ago and one young lass on the trip I never saw again. But the group included Jeff and his wife Joan, our mate Marvin, an Alberta farm boy born and bred, strong as a moose from a youth spent tossing hay bales on trucks, Doug and myself.

Marvin rocking two backpacks

One sunny spring day we loaded up the Beaver with people and gear and flew into the Columbia Mountains. We had hoped to be put down on the Cummins Glacier near the Laurence Grassi Hut which was at the head of the precipitous Cummins River valley, but the Beaver pilot was not confident to land there so he dropped us off some 10 or 12 kilometres away at the acme of the Clemenceau Icefield. It being a sunny day, a rare occurrence in that part of the world, and, the hut only a short distance away – and all down hill we thought – we were in no rush to move our gear down to the hut. Instead, we went skiing, summitting a couple of the nearby peaks, likely Mount Morrison and Mount Sharp but it’s a long time ago now and I can’t quite remember. I do remember it was gloriously sunny and warm, and Marvin, a pale red-head, was even skiing with his shirt off.

MEC only sold red at the time

Anyway, eventually, it seemed like time to ski down to the hut with all our gear. Doug and I had packed sparingly and had just one large backpack each, but Marvin had brought a sled and a backpack. We were all on very rudimentary ski equipment, that being the only thing available at the time, so we had lightweight skis with throw bindings and we were all telemarkers. Lightweight alpine touring gear was still a decade or more away.

Marvin with his sled

It turned out to be challenging skiing down to the hut because it had been a hot day and the slushy snow had now frozen solid. The hut, a one roomed affair, was very hard to find in the gathering dusk as it was not only completely buried by snow but our only navigation devices were a topographic map and a compass. Such were the times. It was the proverbial hunt for a needle in a haystack but in this case we were hunting for a suspicious hump in the snow.

The hut as we found it

Somehow, after a lot of struggle, including a dodgy climb up an eroding moraine we found the hut and set about digging out the windows and doors. Almost the entire hut was buried so this took a long time. Marvin, who was strong as a moose in rutting season, was somewhere back on the glacier struggling with the sled on side-hills, while the rest of us dug and dug and dug. Eventually, I went back to find Marvin as it was near pitch dark and I found him cursing, swearing and even sweating in the cold as he fought with his rudimentary sled on the moraine.

Arriving at the hut

I took the sled while Marvin continued with the pack and somehow we wrangled every thing to the hut and collapsed inside where there was a small fire going and some home dried dinner ready to be served. Both Marvin and I were starved having worked up quite an appetite wrangling the sled about, but the dinner was chewy to say the least. Home dried food with inadequate rehydration time can be a bit chewy. Marvin who was as tired as I had ever seen him made the classic remark that we never let him forget “I chew and I chew and I chew and nothing happens.”

Somewhere overlooking some mountain from some col

The next few days were spent skiing and having adventures until the night before the big storm. This was a small hut in a deep snow area so both windows and doors were well below the level of the height of snow. In other words, we had to descend down steps made of snow about two metres to get into the hut. The incoming storm with blowing snow and strong winds would blow so much snow into the two metre tunnel that led to the door that we would never be able to open the door from the inside (the door opened out). We would literally be buried alive. Marvin’s brilliant idea was to prop the door open but cover the entrance way with a tarp. Some snow might come inside but at least we would not all suffocate to death and die.

Going somewhere

After a day of skiing, we sacrificed a snow bucket (we melted snow to get water) to use as a pee bucket overnight and rigged up the doorway so we could exit the next morning. The demoralisation of urinating in a bucket over night for a group of young healthy folk was intense, although these days I would probably embrace not having to go out on a dark and stormy night to visit the “pee tree.” Night fell, the storm moved in, but, in our hut buried in snow, we barely noticed except for visits to the pee bucket in the ante-room of the hut where the wind was noticeable.

After the storm

Morning came slowly in the hut as the windows wells had been filled with snow and barely any light entered. At the doorway, we managed to clamber out one by one digging our way over a big snow drift. The weather was still awful, low level cloud and wind driven snow, but we were healthy young folk with lots of energy so we set about digging out the door and window wells. Eventually, we turned our attention to the outhouse track, completely gone. The lads set about stamping in a track and someone – probably Marvin – suggested we install a handline to help folks get to the outhouse. If you are sitting at home in a warm house with a nearby toilet this might sound extreme but the outhouse was perched on the very edge of a precipitous slope and with poor visibility and strong winds it was easy to imagine that someone might wander out to the outhouse never to return.

Atop the hut

After a time, I needed the outhouse so kitted up for winter weather and clinging to the hand-line I trotted out to the dunny with my roll of bog paper. I was glad of the hand-line as the wind was blowing such that a mis-step might send you all the way down to a snow covered lake over 600 metres below and the stamped in outhouse track was gone already. Using the dunny was a scouring experience. Blowing snow was coming straight out of the loo and “air-brushing” the butt. But (pun), what doesn’t kill you right?

Cold weather after the storm

The problem arose with the use of toilet paper. The used bog paper went down the dunny and immediately blew back out of the dunny. Snatching the paper out of the air as it blew around my head, I stuffed the paper back down again, out blew the paper, cycling once again round my head, seizing the paper I stuffed it down the tunnel again, and, yet again, the paper blew out. This went on for some time until with a last frustrated scream I stuffed the bog paper down and slammed the lid shut.  There were more adventures over our ski week, most of which are only dimly remembered now, but the episode of the dunny, the paper and the big spring storm is one of those timeless stories that you never forget.

Success Breeds Success: Greasing The Groove

Almost a month ago I added “grease the groove” (GTG) training into my everyday activities. According to legend, GTG training came from Russia to the USA via Pavel Tsatsouline. Later, with Dan John, the concept was expanded into “Easy Strength” – there is a book of the same name published in 2011 and later updated by Dan John in 2022 into an entire training program. But you don’t need all that stuff to benefit from GTG training; all you need to understand is go easy, go frequent, go perfect.

I chose four key full body exercises I wanted to progress. Four would be the absolute maximum unless you dominate at recovery. It is also ideal to choose body weight exercises as these can be done anytime with very little equipment. A pull-up bar, a band or two, or some straps is pretty much all that is required. We have a home made pull-up bar, and I got three bands from Aldi for under $10 and a TRX clone for about the same price. It’s easy to make TRX clones if you don’t have a spare $10 and all sorts of things can substitute for a pull-up bar including a tree branch. If you can afford coffee and a muffin at a café, you can afford the equipment required to get strong.

My exercises are pistol squats, front lever, pull-ups, and push-ups. Starting with just two single repetitions separated by a good amount of time I do the exercises with as perfect form as I can. If I’m really tired from a big day out, I skip them. The idea is to be fresh each time you practice. I need assistance for pistol squats (there’s various ways to do this including bands on a squat rack, a TRX clone, or even a doorway or chair), and I am currently working a regression of the front lever. But, in just one month, the number of pull-ups and push-ups I can do has doubled (from an admittedly low base). That’s pretty significant after only three weeks of training.

If you are out there thinking, one day when everything is perfectly aligned, I’ll start strength training, GTG is a simple, easy, non-stressful, affordable way to strength train in your own space and requires virtually zero equipment. Success breeds success so put away your excuses and get started today.

The Bivouac Files: Apex Creek to Mountain Station

Most of my mountain trips from Canada are on Bivouac.com which is run by my wonderfully eccentric friend, Robin Tivy.  One day, Bivouac will disappear so I am gradually retrieving my trip reports and putting them up here.  

We didn't actually set out to ski from Apex Creek to Mountain Station in Nelson, instead we left Nelson at 6.30 am intending to circumnavigate Ymir Mountain. But, when our group of six started to skin up the Whitewater ski runs to gain the long west ridge of Ymir Mountain, we found ourselves engaged in an ongoing altercation with a snow-cat driver who pursued us from run to run. Somehow in the last fortnight, despite a 30 year history of co-existence between ski tourers (who get up early and cross the Whitewater runs into the backcountry beyond) and Whitewater owners, a ban, of dubious if not unfounded, legality (this is not the intent of the Controlled Recreation Area guidelines) had somehow been enacted.

Skiing through Hummingbird Pass

Annoyed, you could say pissed off, at the antics of petty tyrants with non-exclusive tenures who are becoming ever more emboldened, we drove down to the Apex Creek parking lot at kilometre 10 on the Whitewater Ski Hill Road and headed off through Hummingbird Pass. I suggested we consider skiing from Evening Ridge over to the defunct site of a tele-communications tower on the ridge above Selous Creek, and then descending the old logging road that runs down to Mountain Station in Nelson. Although we hadn't put a car at the other end, we knew we could walk to Roland's house along the old BNR railway grade and collect his truck. The others agreed with this plan, perhaps because they failed to consult a map, perhaps out of naïve trust.

Mount Beattie from Evening Ridge

But, such a day trip seemed too short, after all we had got up at 5.00am, so we decided to do a run up Mount Beattie first. Mount Beattie, a 2000 metre ridge north of White Queen (also unmarked) is unmarked on the 1:50,000 topographic map, yet offers good treed runs off it's west aspect (also off the north and east aspects, although these are shorter). We found a skin track up to the northern most peak, must have been Howie as he is about the only other Nelsonite to regularly trek up Mount Beattie, and skied to the top before stopping for our first snack. Unfortunately, the west facing runs in 5 Mile Creek were somewhat crusty from a couple of sunny days.

Skiing down Mount Beattie

Down in 5 Mile Creek we turned our attention to our next point along the way, the north end of Evening Ridge, which also offers good treed runs, these east facing. Roland happily built a road in a long switchback to the gentle north end of North Evening Ridge, where he graciously allowed me to break trail the remaining distance to the top. Here we partook of "elevenses" before skiing back down into 5 Mile Creek - no crust on this side.

Skiing off Evening Ridge

Skinning back up we worked our way into the pass northeast of Evening Ridge where we had a lunch (my lunch bag was beginning to look depressingly empty) and looked over the rest of the route out to Mountain Station. Some conversation among the group ensued, or should I say some grumbling, when I estimated that we still had about 10 km left to travel.

Ski Runs off Evening Ridge

We contoured through mature forest around the head of Selous Creek to gain the divide between Selous and Anderson Creeks. We had a 200 metre ski down, through thickening trees, to another pass at the head of Selous Creek, where we found a sturdy trappers cabin buried deep in the snow. Here we put our skins on and contoured east finally emerging at the site of the now missing communication tower.

Roland having a buffet lunch

I ate the penultimate snack in my lunch bag, and we buckled up our boots for a 1000 metre descent down a very narrow overgrown road. After the first 200 vertical metres where the road was not too steep and the snow soft and untracked, we came upon our old snowshoe track (put in on Wednesday) which gouged a deep track right in the middle of the narrow roadbed and the skiing became increasing challenging.

Roland skiing in the back seat

We all had our own techniques for descending. Roland pretty much pointed his skis straight and hung on - I know I came to a couple of sections where a creek bed had eroded all the snow and noted straight tracks before and after indicating that he had merely tucked and jumped. Aaron, on tele-skis, somehow managed to link the odd turn between snow-plows, Ken put his skins on, as did Maurice after a few particularly spectacular crashes where I swear I saw his cheeks flapping from the G-forces.

Evening Ridge

Eventually, one by one, we emerged at Mountain Station. Ken, Roland and Aaron popped out first, closely followed by me. As Doug and Maurice were some distance behind we sent Ken and Roland off to walk back to Roland's house along the railway track. I ate my apple, the last morsel in my lunch bag, and still felt hungry.

Summit Mount Beattie

Shortly, Roland appeared and we all piled in his truck. Back at Roland's house we found Ken happily ensconced inside, sitting up to the breakfast bar with a cup of tea and huge slab of cake with ice-cream and fresh fruit. Happily, he hadn't yet taken the first bite, and I quickly intercepted it and sent him off with Roland to pick up his vehicle from Apex Creek. There are distinct advantages to not being the designated driver.