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Feature - Seeking refuge

Building the Jim Haberl Hut

When I die, forget about my body. Leave the carcass to be carrion. Build me a hut on a ridge I have loved to shelter mountainfreaks year-round. And they’ll whisper my name as they trace a route on a map. That will be honour enough.

Deaths in mountain towns and mountaineering communities can rock a place like the shifting of seismic plates. Many a local watering hole has hosted a wake, a memorial service – packed to the gills with the people left behind, wordless and wondering how to make it more meaningful. Or at least make some sense out of it.

Sometimes, as with Dave Sheets, a hat is passed around, to raise money for acute head trauma care at the clinic. A forthcoming fundraiser will raise money in Dave’s name for the CAA. Kelty Dennehy’s parents chose to start a foundation to research teenage depression-related suicide. Neil Falkner’s mates have applied to have an unnamed peak bear his name. Ultimately, we’re striving to keep a name alive. Trying to turn our grief into something beyond that numbing paralysis.

"Life is like a train, just rolling along. And something like that happens, the sudden death of someone you love, it’s like, wham, you’re off the train. Everyone else is rolling by, but you can’t seem to pick up any steam. You’re just watching them all go by," says local guide and outdoor educator, Sue Oakey. Sue would know.

Sue Oakey became a widow at age 34. Her husband, local mountaineer, Jim Haberl was climbing with two fellow-guides on an unnamed peak in Alaska. A slow-moving slab avalanche released and swept Jim past his colleagues, off a 400 metre cliff, to his death. Four years ago, this week. He was 41. Jim and Sue had married only two years earlier. Just finished building a home in Whistler together. The future suddenly becoming clear to them. And wham! Sue is watching the train rolling by, realizing she’s not going anywhere at all.

The last decade of Jim Haberl’s life reads like the itinerary of a whirlwind trip where the aim is to squeeze as many continents into days as physically possible. He became a fully certified international mountain guide, successfully ascended the planet’s second highest peak, K2, with partner Dan Culver, becoming the first Canadians to do so, self-published two best-selling books, became a motivational speaker, freelanced as a photojournalist, ran his own guiding business, examined for the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides and instructed for the Canadian Avalanche Association.

His second book, Risking Adventure, recounts journeys undertaken across the globe, from K2, to the Himalayas, to South America, to Africa. His passport was bleeding stamps from exotic locales. But it was his first book that packed the real punch. Such a punch that, although self-published, it became a national bestseller.

In K2: Dreams and Reality, Haberl recounts the story of the ascent that garnered him Canada’s Meritorious Service medal. Haberl and Dan Culver had made a pact to summit K2 together – not something one does lightly in regard to the world’s deadliest peak, the "mountain of mountains" according to Austrian climbing legend, Reinhold Messner. Fifteen breaths for every step for 13 hours. The altitude sickness that had plagued Haberl’s K2 journey had taken mercy, and he was feeling good. He waited below the summit’s lip for Dan to catch up so they could take their final steps to the summit together. The two friends celebrated, snapped photos, let the winds whip at banners for the Clayoquot Sound and the Tatshenshini they had carried with them, and then began the torturously slow descent.

Only one man came home.

Dan Culver was killed as he descended from K2, cartwheeling past Jim in an uncontrolled fall.

Jim Haberl returned home alone, making a journey from the highest point on earth to a personal rock-bottom. An unexpected catharsis came at the first slide show Haberl gave on his return. Recounting the story of his K2 climb and Dan’s death to a packed and supportive crowd provided a needed release. Inspired by the reception to write a book, K2: Dreams and Reality was self-published by his newly formed company Tantalus Publishing. Promoting the books saw Jim do cross-country tours and morph into something of a motivational speaker. In a short space of time, he touched a lot of people. People he had never met before, who had suffered some kind of loss, felt a connection to his suffering. Like a benevolent virus, contact with Jim Haberl was infectious. People emerged feeling inspired. Said Sue: "It was unbelievable how many different people came up to me at the memorial and said, ‘You know, Jim was my best friend.’"

The mountains defined Jim Haberl’s life – from his late teens climbing in the Coast Mountains, to partaking in the youngest ascent of Canada’s highest mountain at age 22 with his three brothers, and going on to climb North America’s highest peak, Denali, two years later, again with two of his brothers. The Haberl boys settled into more conventional grown-up lives. Except for Jim. Jim stayed in the mountains. It would cause his premature death. But, as Sue Oakey said, "The times we shared in the mountains were different. When you’re out there, it opens your heart in a way. And I don’t regret what we did."

Sue is an integral part of the Jim Haberl Hut Project. She admits it is something those involved are doing for themselves as much as anything. "I mean, it’s not as if Jim needs a hut for himself. The best memorial for me is just to live your life. I just think he would want us to heal, and if building a hut works…."

After a death, an obituary is written, a memorial held, a casket covered in earth. The grass grows over, but the personal acts of grieving and recovering continue. In some cases, and here in the Coast Mountains, people have turned their grief into a lasting legacy. The Keith Flavelle Hut at Cerise Creek remembers a 22-year-old who died on the East Ridge of Mt. Logan. Every year, Keith Flavelle’s family and friends head up to the hut for a work party, to restock firewood, make repairs, clean up. It is a communal act of remembering and honouring.

The Wendy Thompson Hut at Marriot Basin was made possible because of funding provided in Thompson’s will. Thompson, who patrolled on Blackcomb for five years, was killed during an aerial ambulance mission, when the plane crashed into the sea, en route to the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Sue Oakey remembers the creation of the Jim Haberl Fund and the overwhelming desire of people to be part of some project to pay tribute to the memory of Jim and what he represented. She admits that initially she really wasn’t ready to be thinking about such things.

"We wanted to do something for Jim, but we didn’t know what. I wasn’t ready to meet or plan anything. A couple of meetings occurred over the spring after Jim died, but everyone was busy. We lost momentum. Then the Alpine Club phoned and said ‘We hear you’re thinking of building a hut in the Tantalus for Jim and we’d like to partner with you.’ And that provided the motor."

The partnership proved symbiotic. The Alpine Club had the replacement of the FJ Green Hut on its agenda. More affectionately known as the Red Tit, the hut was in serious disrepair. Rumour is it had been salvaged from an oval shaped hut in the Bugaboos that was damaged when a slide struck through the centre of it. The two surviving ends were patched together and relocated to the Tantalus range in 1968.

The location worked for Jim’s friends. He’d done a lot of climbing in the area, and had even named his publishing company for the region. In their house hangs a stunning photograph of Jim’s of the Tantalus Range. His first gift to Sue. Locating the hut in the col between Mounts Serratus and Dione in the Tantalus Range near Squamish was the perfect fit.

Liz Scremin, the chair of the Vancouver chapter of the Alpine Club of Canada notes that the Coast section hasn’t built as many huts as in the Rockies (many of which are named for lost members of the mountain community). In the Coast, a different attitude prevails. Here, the mountains are less accessible and the view is that they should stay that way, and not become too developed or gentrified. Keeping this local ethic in mind, the ACC "are trying to find a balance to enable a place that will be a great venue for training and courses, for families and people to be introduced to the mountains, but also to keep it a wilderness experience."

The Haberl Hut is a labour of love, in its truest sense. Because the fund-raising by the Jim Haberl Fund has provided more money than would have been available to the ACC otherwise to replace the Red Tit hut, the hut has morphed from a rudimentary emergency shelter to a place in memory of Jim. A climber’s hut in which people can gather and feel a sense of community. The effort has been done by volunteers, squeezed in between other life obligations. But the design is complete, providing for a 900 square foot cabin that will sleep 12-14 people.

Enough money is in the pot for building to commence. A volunteer engineer is reviewing the plans. A general contractor has stepped up to the plate and offered his services. The permit has been secured. "We have all this talent and all this motivation," said Sue. "Now all we need to do is get a building schedule together and GO."

The schedule, and construction being complete for winter 2003-4, depends now on one thing: a covered secured site close to the city for pre-fabrication. The window for on-site construction is narrow – snow covers the ground at the site throughout the year except for August and September. Once the cost estimates are completed and a list of materials prepared, volunteers will then hit the pavement soliciting donations of material and supplies.

Whether the hut is built this year, or next, it provides a unique contribution to the mountains. It also offers an opportunity for people to recognize a man who left an impression on their hearts like fingerprints in wet clay.

These huts not only create refuges and hubs for the mountain community, but act as a lasting memorial to some of Canada’s most important outdoors enthusiasts. Four years is a blink in time, and it seems Sue Oakey is still catching her breath. She still works in the outdoors, still guides an annual trip for the Alzheimer’s Society that she initially guided with Jim.

"I think mostly I learned to let the outdoors speak for themselves from Jim. There’s an awful lot of magic you hear just by listening. You don’t have to tell people everything. I learned patience from him. And believing in people. Jim was one of those people who thought the best of everybody and as a result they were their best. He believed in people."

Fitting, that a man who offered that safety, that refuge, to allow people to be their best, would be the spirit attached to a place in the mountains in which climbers and skiers and guides can find sanctuary from the storm.

For more information about the Jim Haberl Hut Project, contact

info@jimhaberlfund.org or phone/fax 604-905-4450.


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