March 10-11, 2007 - Pemberton Valley (Skiing and and Camping) report

March 11, 2007. The first outdoors overnight trip of the year has been complete. I was waiting for it since the fall. Back then I’ve started throwing the ideas around among friends at work and outside and the responses were quite promising. Co-workers have mentioned a few interesting places and some friends have shared the enthusiasm as well. No one was expecting that this would be that soon.

The most enthusiastic reply to this idea was the response of Alex K., who’ve have also considering winter camping himself. That was the time when I’ve smelt the approach of the trip and we started planning. We’ve decided to cross country ski in Pemberton Valley and ideally reach either Meager Hot Springs or another nearest natural hot springs location on Lillouet River around sixty kilometers from Pemberton. Thinking about it again, we have not been really planning too much, but for some reason we’ve shared the confidence in the success of our trip.

Alex have been there before a few times during the summer and once in winter. Last year his car got stuck there in snow. Also, from his stories, he lost two tires due to the holes and sharp stones on the logging road. I think he was just a mad man holding a wheel. Nevertheless, his optimism about the whole trip made me convinced that he’s the right person to go with.

The idea was to ski for about 20k depending on where we’ll be able to leave the car. If there was not too much snow, we would have driven up to the springs and ski around the area for fun. On the other hand, if the snow and weather conditions would not be supportive, we’ve decided that we can just ski as far as we want and camp out in the woods.

The plan has been passed to friends. No one wanted to join. We did not insist as we understood that it’s not a resort we are going to.

We left Vancouver past 6 am and reached Pemberton at around 9. Soon, we were on the logging road with warning sign informing that the access is closed past 39^th km, where the hot springs were located. The road itself was quite bumpy. Comparing to the road I took my car on in September in Vancouver Island, I think this one was worse by a factor of 1.5. Who cares. The adventures were waiting for us!

After 9km, we’ve reached the parking lot. There were a few pickup trucks. The sound of snowmobiles at distance suggested that we were not completely alone in the area. Past the parking lot the road split up: one branch going towards the springs and another one up the mountain, where the noises of engines were coming from. The road was obviously not accessible from this point. We took our gear, jumped on the skis and began our trip.

It has been over ten years since I last put on cross country skis, which made me worry a bit at the beginning, considering the distance we had to cover and the weight we are carrying with us. However, the last ten years of downhill skiing have proved to be useful. We were picking up the speed with each hour.

After a few kilometers we saw a fresh meatless skull of a fox lying on the road with no other body parts visible. From a distance it looked as a McDonald’s burger bag – colored red and pale yellow. We’ve looked at each other, almost questioning how are we doing, then cracked some motivational jokes and kept going.

The road was covered with thousands of animal tracks. Most of them were huge imprints of cougar paws. They were all over the place, sometimes mixing with a few smaller ones. Also, several times we saw deeper than half a meter holes in the snow from something bigger and heavier – probably a deer, moose or similar.

This area is supposed to have a higher than in other places concentration of grizzly bears. That’s what I’ve heard at least. We were not expecting them to be up yet, but who knows? The weather has been rather warm over the last few months, plus the snow was melting on our eyes, suggesting that we should be careful.

I bought a bear spray two days before the trip from MEC store, which was rated for 5.5 meters with 8 seconds of working time. I’ve done 6 steps approximating 6 meters and realized how close this is! If a bear stands 5-6 meters away from you, you better not drop that spray! Many times throughout the day in my head I was rewinding the situation of how, in case the furry animal jumps out of the forest, I would grab the can hanging on my chest on one of the backpack’s straps like a smoke grenade on the SWAT team’s member, slide the protective plastic and press the “trigger”! Quickly removing skis and the backpack itself seemed almost unreal. It’s either fast or never. A sharp Finnish knife was hanging on my hip, but then again, I was just aware of it just in case. The first goal was not to get into the situation that would require using it. So… I was using seemingly the most ridiculous weapon against animals – a bell from a Canadian Tire store. I attached it to the wrist loop of the ski pole and was hoping for the best.

For the first five to seven kilometers the majority of tree population of the forest was leaf trees. Then pines and cedars pushed out the foliage-less due to the time of the year community and replaced the surroundings with a green and cozier atmosphere. By that time we have already got used the weight of the backpacks on our backs and increased the speed.

A small rain began an hour or so after our departure. It was about one to three degrees Celsius, but felt way over ten when we skied and way below zero when we’ve stopped. We had to take off all of our outer layers leaving just a hoodie or a wind breaker. Ten minutes of not moving almost guaranteed the numbness of the toes and the loss of flexibility in other fingers due to cold wetness.

Making a few short stops along the way and one sandwich party we have approached the twenty kilometers mark in six hours. I should mention that Alex’s sandwiches were a blast! He really put a lot of effort “assembling” them from high energy “parts”. One sandwich filled you up. Two could have been considered pigging out. Three – possibly death… from animals after they figure out that you’ve became immovable, yet happy. Happy, by the way, is a good state before the “meat” dies. Less toxins in the flesh, you know. Animals do.

It was four in the afternoon when we’ve decided to stop for the day. The springs were another ten to fifteen kilometers away, while the sunset – about three hours. We spotted a “nice” place in the cedar forest and decided to camp out there. “Nice” in this context means some protection from direct rain, even though the water was still mercilessly dripping through tree branches and soaking everything around with the same constant intensity as it would have without the trees.

As soon as we took off our skis and walked a few meters, both of us one after another got sunk up to our knees in the snow. It was wet, yet soft, which made walking much harder.

We’ve spent the first half an hour picking up branches and chopping up some larger logs, preparing the subammunition for the fire. It took us another hour and a half with the help of camp fuel and some camping paste to dry out the soaked and cold sticks and start the fire. It began suddenly, almost exploding from a bare glowing to meter high flame, bringing smiles to our faces and promising a better time in a warmer place. However, after removing the tarp with which we covered the firewood to prevent the rain from distinguishing the fire, it died in a matter of a few minutes. Glowing sticks melted the snow and fell into the hole. The wet ones on the top were still there annoyingly smoking. We were not able to resume the fire in the next little while. It even looked pointless at that point, because even if the fire was there, we would have been getting wetter and wetter with every minute anyway. We called it a day, threw the stuff we wanted to stay dry into the tent and sneaked in there ourselves, opening the pack of smoked sausages and the throat warmer – apple flavored Smirnoff.

With warm woolen grandma’s socks on our feet zipped up in the sleeping bags we were lying in the middle of forest somewhere 40 km North West of Pemberton with most likely not a single person around us in that range. We were lying with a flashlight hanging from the top of the two-person tent talking to each other, telling mostly anecdotes and some stories. After a while we’ve turned it off. The rain was hitting the tarp that we hanged over the roof of our waterproof shelter and the shelter itself making us appreciate their very existence and slowly hypnotizing us with the monotonous sound to sleep.

A few lessons have been learned that day. If one has a chance to take a shovel to winter camping, do so. It can prove itself useful when digging into the snow first – to protect the fire from the wind if there is any and, secondly, to prevent melting a huge hole that might steal the burning sticks. I bought the shovel from CT a week before, but left it in the trunk with the second axe and a saw that we considered a useless load.

The second thing we could have done here is to place the logs as the base for the fire and start heating up the branches above them. That would have prevented everything from falling down the melted snow hole. Live and learn guys. This was the second time I went for winter camping, but the conditions were a bit different. Before it was nice and sunny, even though -35C in February 2003. However, there was no freezing rain to “help” us learn from our mistakes.

That night we slept like babies from 8:30pm to 6:30am. I woke up a few times during the night, mostly because the absence of a pillow was a bit discomforting and the usual stack of extra clothing was not there to put under my head. Most of it was wet and left outside in a backpack, which I squeezed between the cedar and the tent under the tarp.

With the sunrise came the smile on my face. I think I was just glad to see the light and happy that our mission was half accomplished. When I was a kid, I was sometimes wondering why all the birds would wake up with the first rays of the sun. After the trip I knew that it was because they are just happy they are still alive after a pitch-black, cold and possibly wet night in the forest.

It was not that bad at all though. We were full of energy and our immediate clothing was not too wet. Looking around I’ve mentioned that some water somehow got inside our tent and collected at one of its corners. My winter gloves designed for snow were swimming under the water line, not understanding what is going on.

We opened up a zip locked bag of smoked sausages, swallowing a few along with more trail mix bars while lying in our warm sleeping bags. The rain was still going. It took us about thirty minutes before we got outside and started packing. Quarter to eight we were out of the forest on our skis with the backpacks on. Not surprisingly, they were heavier than before from the wet clothes that have had absorbed the water.

It took us five ours to get back – one hour faster than a day before. We were using the same tracks as we’ve made on Saturday. At some places, our tracks were stepped over by cougars. We haven’t seen any during these two days, but I am sure they saw us. Seeing the car around the corner of the forest on the same parking lot from which we began our trip yesterday was a great reward! Alex had a huge grin on his face. The feeling was amazing! We shook each other’s hands appreciating each other’s existence right there, right at that moment in the March’s rainy countryside of British Columbia somewhere 200km North of Vancouver.

Epilogue

On Monday, March 12, sitting in front of the monitor at work, my thoughts drifted back a day ago to the night I've spent in the forest with my friend. The reflection of a flash light from our wet jackets, constant evaluation of situation and asking your body and yourself how long more can you last outside in the freezing rain before you have to sneak inside the tent and wrap yourself around with a sleeping bag to preserve the heat.

Sitting on a nice cozy chair with a mug of hot tea beside you and mp3 player with Armin Van Burren playing his beats in the background now seems so different and almost unreal. The fact that I am being here now, enjoying all of these commodities made me almost shiver for a split of a second. Never before I went to the wilderness with just one more person in the team. I have done a few day hikes in the mountains by myself in July 2006 when I just came to Vancouver, but the feeling now was completely different. First of all, this was an overnight trip in winter season. And secondly, I haven’t had the chance to see so many fresh predator paw imprints around while being so far, relatively speaking, from the rest of the civilization. We were thirty kilometers away from the beginning of the logging road. We were thirty kilometers away from a cell phone signal or any sort of help. That kept our adrenaline level high and our minds clear. Moments like these remind you how used we are to the commodities we enjoy in our daily lives. Moments like these make you appreciate other people and their presence in your life.

This trip was definitely worth our time and effort. This one weekend can be compared to a dozen of others, but only if you sum all of them up! The experience, impressions, feelings, and memories all came together condensed into two days and impacted our lives. We grew mentally and emotionally. We saw each other and we saw ourselves. And what is out there to tell you what you can and what you cannot do, what you are and what you are not – when it’s you who defines your own path, when it’s you who defines the future.