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Feature - Wilderness unplugged

Another perspective, from Callaghan Country’s backcountry lodge

By G.D. Maxwell

"Oh my goodness!"

The woman, of indeterminate middle-age but with an unmistakable Texas accent, had just regained a shred of dignity, having lost pretty much all of it in a comical, spiral, backwards, ass-over-teakettle fall part way down Burnt Stew Basin.

"Are ya hurt, Honey?" yelled her husband, huffing and puffing back uphill to tend to her.

Having wrestled herself into a sitting position, where she appeared to be settling in for an extended stay, she simply pointed toward something on the horizon. "Look," she said. "Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?"

Her gaze, having finally extended itself beyond the six feet of groomed trail in front of her, took in the vastness of the bowl she’d been skiing and drew her attention toward Fissile, Overlord Glacier, Decker, Blackcomb, 7 th Heaven and… well, certainly more mountain peaks than exist in the entire state of Texas.

I’m not sure if her husband saw what she saw – or cared – and, having fetched her skis, I didn’t wait around for his response.

That

, I thought to myself, is the fundamental flaw of downhill skiing.

The that to which I refer is downhill skiing’s great paradox. As a sport, skiing takes place in some of the most achingly beautiful settings on the planet. But rarely do skiers notice. When they’re skiing, their attention is riveted to a patch of ground in front of them smaller than a good flashlight will illuminate on a dark night. And when they’re riding back up, they’re looking uphill, the direction with the least expansive view, a bit like riding in a rear-facing seat in the family station wagon.

Among other reasons – fewer people, untracked powder, more exercise, solitude – escaping the paradox and reconnecting to the supernatural countryside is one of the best reasons to leave the resort behind. At least temporarily.

Ducking a boundary rope – know where you’re going before you even think of doing that – or skinning up in the near-backcountry of Oboe or Cowboy Ridge will get you away from people but leave you within earshot of the mechanical din Whistler generates 24/7.

But for the full-junkie mainlinin’ rush of powder, solitude and lost-in-the-expanse-of-B.C.-wilderness, it’s hard to beat what lies just down the road.

Ten minutes by auto, 35 more by snowmobile or an hour by snowcoach, the indifference of wilderness partners with the caring of civilization to bring you the best of both worlds. Untracked powder blankets 3,500 hectares of wilderness and down comforters blanket worn-out skiers at day’s end. A winter playground serves up a smorgasbord of outdoor activities and a talented chef serves up a groaning board of tasty treats. The silent solitude of winter warms your soul and a crackling fireplace warms your toes.

Do everything; do nothing. Such are the choices at Callaghan Country’s backcountry lodge.

Not to take anything away from what Whistler is, Callaghan is everything Whistler is not. It’s not crowded. In fact, you can rent the whole damn lodge if you really want to burrow in and keep the world out. It’s not noisy. On a midnight snowshoe stroll, you can hear the snow falling around you. It’s not plugged-in. Gaslights cast a warm glow and project gentle dancing shadows on the walls. There are no phones, no televisions, no computers, no video games, no chairlifts – wilderness unplugged.

And it’s not world-crass… er, class. The slopes around it are, to be sure. The kilometres of track-set cross-country trails are. The expanse of Coast Range mountains and old-growth forest are. But the lodge is, well, lovingly crafted, cozy, comfy, a bit Old World. It’s the kind of place any of us might have built in the wilderness before our minds got poisoned and our priorities got screwed around by HGTV, granite countertops, ensuite Jacuzzis and the thousand and one other must-haves that define our Generation of Swine. It is… simple.

Simply magnificent.

For a couple of days in January, after the rush of Christmas and before the rush of the rest of the ski season, I took advantage of a long-standing offer to spend a few days doing whatever made sense up at the Lodge. Let me rephrase that. I convinced myself – and editor Bob Barnett – that what made sense was to strap on backcountry gear and grunt our way uphill for a couple of days instead of taking chairlifts. Our perfect partners joined us to sample the cross-country skiing and other delights.

The Right Way… and the Max Way

Now, there are two approaches to backcountry skiing. There’s the right approach… and there’s the way we did it. The right approach means you have the right equipment: lightweight backcountry or telemark skis, bindings designed for uphill or downhill travel, boots that articulate at the heel or lock into place as stresses warrant. The right approach means your cardio-vascular system is so finely honed it really doesn’t give a hoot whether you’re going uphill or down.

The wrong approach, the make-do approach, is to grab your heavy, fat downhill skis, with your heavy, plated bindings, add a couple of pounds to each by fitting a pair of Alpine Trekkers so you can free your heels, buckle up your brutally-stiff downhill boots and then schlep the whole weighty kit uphill. Step after endless step. The wrong approach is to have a cardio-vascular system in name only.

Which was why Richard Haywood, our affable guide, only half jokingly inquired whether he should pick me up and carry me the rest of the way on our second ascent of the day, the one I had only half jokingly referred to as an insane, needless perfection of the concept of adding insult to injury.

"Just admiring the view," I gasped, trying to shove the lung I’d just coughed up back into my chest. Not to take anything away from the view across the valley toward Solitude Glacier but I’m not completely sure my gaze was focusing that far away at that particular moment.

The day had started innocently enough. A brisk, two-up snowmobile ride meandered past Alexander Falls, through old-growth forest and finally opened into a high-mountain valley ringed with snowy peaks.

Chef and lodge host, Mike Downey, met us at the door of the rambling cedar lodge with hot chocolate and fresh cranberry muffins. So far, so good. We unpacked gear – which largely seemed to consist of bottles of wine and scotch – and took a tour.

An addition to the lodge, completed last year, added a much expanded dining room and a cozy, but complete, commercial kitchen where Mike makes magic. Upstairs, a couple of suites increased the lodge’s capacity to 16 guests, although Brad Sills, one of the group of owners, had recently stuffed 45 or so in for his half-century birthday.

When Mike led me to the "Solitude" suite, I could understand where the extra people had camped. The suite included a living room with a fireplace, a bedroom with a luxurious queen bed I’d come to cherish by day’s end, a private bath and a loft, the contents of which I never discovered because before my stay was over, the ladder leading to it became more of a climb than I was up for.

The other accommodation, spread across the upper two floors, ranged from a more modest suite to private rooms with baths, to rooms with hand-crafted captains’ beds built into the dormers and shared baths. A large living/party room on the second floor contained inviting, over-stuffed furniture, games, books, a pool/ping pong table and the remnants of the lodge’s kitchen before the new addition upped the overall space to 5,000 square feet.

But the rest of the tour could wait; there was powder to be had. The masochists from Mars chose the Earn Yer Turns option while Venus sanely opted to explore the cross-country trails ranging from the lodge in three directions.

While just south of Whistler, the peaks in Callaghan Country manage to pick up a couple of extra feet of snow each season. More important than quantity though, the snow doesn’t get tracked out by a couple of thousand people skiing it each day.

Of course, to ski it ya gotta climb it.

Richard, an ACMG guide, had made certain we had all the basic backcountry equipment and ran us through a transceiver drill before we headed out. Safety first. It was all uphill from there.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

There is a Zen to skiing uphill, a state of grace you approach, partly from repetition, partly from exhaustion, partly from knowing your innards are about to supernova on you. The trick, as in distance running, is to find the balance point between pace, cadence and, in the case of uphill skiing, just the right amount of clothing. Too much and you sweat like a pig; not enough… well, you still sweat like a pig but the sweat freezes to your bare skin the moment you stop. I’m not certain there is a right balance of clothing and I’m suspecting it is just a cruel myth propagated by clothing manufacturers. Oh no, negativity breaking the Zen… get centred… get centred.

Okay, so maybe there is a Zen to uphill skiing and maybe there isn’t. What there is though is a serious payoff once you trek as high as you’re going, strip off your climbing skins, click into your bindings and point ’em downhill. Fifteen, maybe 20, glorious minutes – not counting, of course, the handful of times I had to dig myself out of a bottomless powder pillow – of trackless cruising through snow that never revealed a glimpse of skis, boots or the lower half of my legs.

The run through the trees back to within 50 metres of the valley floor was good enough to dispel the memory of going uphill. At least until we wolfed down Mike’s gourmet bag lunches and started back up.

On the second ascent, the leading edge of a storm started to blow in. Snow began to fall in earnest as we climbed. Visibility closed in. The snow beneath our skis, accumulated days earlier, settled and whoomphed noticeably, seismically. I scoured the uphill terrain for exposure. Where was the uphill terrain? I settled for Richard’s reassurances that a) he knew right were we were; and b) both the terrain and snow on this aspect was safe. Having watched his lead and talked terrain with him on most of the first trip up – and let’s face it, not really having a clue exactly where, other than down, the lodge had disappeared to in the storm – I was reassured.

As everything around us disappeared into an opaque pool of vertigo, we reached a ridge high enough to let us ski a line back toward the lodge, a line affording a modest trek back across the flats. With snow accumulating as fast as visibility was vanishing, we skied blindly – and comically – until trees began to reappear like buoys marking a tricky channel in unfamiliar waters.

It was getting late and snowing hard by the time we reached the valley. It was only Richard’s plaintive cries for mercy that persuaded me to give up on my call for one more run and settle for cocktails and lodge lounging instead. Well, that’s the way I remember it. But then, dyslexic I am.

Brad had arrived with emergency supplies of scotch and tall tales; Mike had prepared hearty snacks; our perfect partners had ping-ponged après skiing and the stage was set for a serious night of eating, drinking and tellin’ lies. Lodge life.

We settled – we dissolved – into the deep chairs and, being a backcountry lodge in the middle of nowhere, with a raging blizzard outside, began to tell avalanche stories.

Here’s a tip. Never swap avalanche stories with a mountain guide and a founding member of Search and Rescue. You’ll lose.

But you’ll hear some great stories. Here’s the winner. Brad told it… so you know it’s true.

Home of the Whopper

"It happened in the spring, a couple of years ago. A logging company, which shall remain nameless, was anxious to open up their operation high in the Ashloo River. They dispatched a sizable grader to clear the logging road up into their license area.

"There was still a deep snowpack left from the winter’s accumulation and the activity of the grader was sufficient to propagate a huge slab release. A wall of snow swept the grader and driver down the logging slash for a considerable distance.

"The slide was reported to the logging camp and the crew worked the site for several hours before they concluded they were going to need extra resources to locate their driver. There was no sign of him or the Cat and there was a debris field several hundred metres wide ending in a deposition zone of unknown depth.

"Herb Bleuer, a local Swiss mountain guide, and a number of other volunteers from the Whistler area responded. When we got to the scene, the logging crew had been searching with long probes at the lower end of the deposition zone, with no success. Remember, this was a very large bulldozer they were looking for.

"We began to set up a probe line but they weren’t too impressed. ‘We’ve called for Old Joe,’ or whatever his name was, they said. Well, not too much later, this old, grizzled diesel mechanic showed up and he begins to work the area like a dog, right down on the snow, sniffin’ the entire area.

"We’re looking at each other wondering what we’d stumbled into but after a short time, Old Joe stands up and pointing to the ground at his feet, says ‘Dig here.’ The logging crew gets to work and starts digging. At about 10 feet, they dig a platform so one of them can stand there and throw out the snow the lower diggers and throwing up.

"Not too much longer, the digging crew breaks through to a tunnel the Cat driver had been digging upwards with his hard hat. There are whoops and hollers and the next thing you know, the driver pops out of the hole, lunchpail in hand. The first words out of the guy’s mouth, God’s honest truth, are, ‘Is it quittin’ time?’ Old Joe had been able to smell the diesel through the snow."

Like I said, Brad wouldn’t dare make up a story like that.

Snow fell throughout the evening. It fell during the delicate salad of mixed greens and avocado, it fell during the leg of lamb with root vegetables, it fell during a plate-lickin’ apple-spice delight with brandied caramel sauce, and fell through several bottles of wine, digestifs, games of pool, more apocryphal stories and final, whispered ‘G’nights.’

It continued to fall all night and was still coming down when, much to Richard’s surprise, I ambulated down the stairs with neither a belay nor a noticeable limp. "Sixty-three centimetres," he said. "Since seven o’clock last night," he added for good measure.

Pleading with me not to make him break trail in so much new snow – and pointing out we’d end up double-poling all the way down anyway – I was moved to mercy. Given an almost complete lack of ability to move under my own power, every muscle doing its own marathon of spasm, I cut the poor guy some slack. We took a vote and made him break trail for a long snowshoe hike instead.

Even with Richard leading on his tele skis, and wearing the biggest snowshoes in the lodge’s arsenal, Bob sunk above his knees in the storm’s accumulation. The three of us at the back had it pretty easy and whipped the leaders like borrowed mules through forest, across creeks and up towards Ring Lake where we met up with Brad grooming and resetting the buried cross-country trails.

It all ended too soon. We thanked Mike for making sure that even in the face of extreme amounts of exercise we wouldn’t possibly emaciate. We left Brad recreating a semblance of trails. We left the snowmobiles at the staging area and headed back for the hustle of Whistler, blissfully unaware the highway had been closed much of the day.

It’s there for the taking. In the shadow of the throb of the throngs of tourists and activity that make Whistler tick, tranquility is there for the taking. Callaghan Country offers everything from day trips to private weeks to pretty much any wilderness lodge fantasy you can dream up. From gruelling uphill climbs to lolling in the lounge with a fat paperback, from cross-country jaunts to meditative strolls among ancient cedars, from endless powder to… oh, come on now. What else do you want?

Sidebar:

A range of options

What’s your backcountry pleasure? From single days for solo travelers to multi-night whole lodge rentals, Callaghan Country can put together a package to meet your desires. Guides, gear, instruction and even a helicopter to make the uphill part easier can be arranged. www.callaghancountry.com to whet your appetite; 604-938-0616 to book your excursion.

Callaghan Country has teamed up with Gray Monk Estate Winery to offer a gourmet weekend of B.C. wine and B.C. cuisine in the Coast Mountains. The Best of B.C.’s Bounty takes place April 17-18.



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