long walk in the snow

It was on an odd whim that we set out on an unlikely walk in the snow. Tammy's idea. Let's dump a few things in the daypack and walk to Trinity Valley. Not a hot bath and lounge in front of the fireplace with a large glass of red wine.

We were spending a few months in a luxury condo at Silver Star Resort. One of the occasional weird perks of working on rich people's homes. It was Halloween and we'd just arrived back at the castle after a search and rescue training exercise. Weary and a little chilled.

Trinity Valley is our real home. A spottily inhabited gravel road through rolling, forested hills. Cut by creeks and rivers. Spotted with lakes. Typical B.C. paradise.

By road it's about 80 kilometres from Silver Star Village to the point on Trinity Valley Road where we hoped to stumble out of the bush. In a straight line through the trackless jungle it's about 12.

Not the evening I'd planned. Or the following day, for that matter. Better, though. In a less comfortable kind of way.

Tent, fire startin' kits, some extra clothes, bit o' food, sleeping bags. Compasses slung around our necks.

It took a while to get clear of the resort, cutting down and across the ski runs, stubble sticking through the start of snow.

From a few points on the Star you get a clear view of Bobbie Burns Mountain, the highest point of our home stomping grounds and, for the moment, a reliable beacon. So we took a compass bearing on the mountain, 72 degrees as I recall, and took note of it's position relative to the monster moon that was glowing brighter as the sky grew dark.

We'd follow these two moving targets through the black woods till we were too tired to take another step. And sleep wherever that was.

I say moving targets because moons orbit and because compass bearings only mean much if you keep yourself coming from the same direction. Between the two strategies, with a bit of seat o' pants calibrating, we managed to wade through ass-deep snow, over logs, up and down steep slopes for about eight dark hours that night in a remarkably straight line.

We hit a snowed-over trace of road early on, and it followed our route for a while. We continued following it for a while after it wandered astray. Finally facing facts, and plunging into the thick, black bush and ever-deepening snow.

And that was it for many hours through a perfect Halloween night. Which is to say bare branches against a cloud-whipped, moon-strobed sky were a perfect visual and as good if you closed your eyes. Moaning, creaking and the flapping, tall-ship wind. Fireworks in case we forgot. Just the distant popping. Lumby, Lavington, Coldstream? Just because you're heading in roughly the right direction doesn't mean you know where you are.

We stopped for the night at the bottom of yet another steep ravine. Slid and stumbled to a stop too exhausted to try to battle back up the other side. All the elbow room of the bottom of a V and that choked with snow and, of course, a creek.

Sought out a bit of flattish ground big enough for a two-person tent. And a fire, cause now that we're stopped, we're soaked and cold. Everything useful was numb and everything else was shivering. Tammy found a flat plank from the side of a hollow cedar stump and we built a fire on that or there would have been no fire. It would have sunk into the snow forever.

Everything was soaked. Hard hunt for wood that was close to dry. Try Vaseline-saturated cotton balls, shredded bits of inner tube and one of those dirt-cheap, bombproof Bic lighters. You will make shit burn.

So we warmed hands, feet and faces, made tea and rolled into the tent. Recently trained in wilderness survival, we had the comfort of knowing it was heat loss by conduction that kept us semi-conscious and shivering all night on the crunching snow.

We woke up as cold as we went to bed. Broke camp with the same fucked-up fingers with which we'd built it. And got climbin'. We got way too hot in no time. Way too steep and slippery, grasping at brambles and branches for a boost up the slippery slope or to keep from tumbling back. Finally topped out, expecting just more of the same. Expecting that scene from Alive.

Instead, a broad, white cutblock under a blue sky, seedlings poking through the snow. And the sun gleaming off the rock faces of Bobbie Burns Mountain. Dead ahead.

We're from here so we know something about cutblocks. Which would be that they have roads to 'em. Roads to towns with mills.

It was that infuriating kind of snow crust that holds you up just enough to keep you trying to stay there before it dumps your every footstep in up to your ass. That's slow, exhausting snow.

But this was a new day, the sun was shining and not much could piss us off. Very cool, to be up here.

We found the road pretty quick, and it wasn't buried. The local bubbas had already been up this far. The sun on their efforts had their wheel ruts down to gravel. Roads from cutblocks almost always go downhill, and we know what elevation loss does to gravelly ruts through deep snow. Turns 'em into gravelly roads without a lotta snow.

The morning moved along and it was a bright, blue day and only November 1, after all. So pretty soon it couldn't have been better. So we stopped where the wood was good and built a real fire and made huge hamburgers and coffee. Lazed in the sun.

Later we passed some firewood guys, expressed appreciation for some fine-looking camping spots, looked out over some magnificent views and generally experienced that quickening that attends the approach of an ending. Then one more downhill corner like so many and, boom, across the lower treetops. Power lines.

Trinity Valley Road.