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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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