The Mountain Does Not Care About Your Schedule

“The mountain doesn't care whether we're here or not.”

David Breashears
 

Planned Itineraries and Trail Realities 

 

For most of the past four years, distance has been something we have tried to manage. We look at the map, calculate how far we hope to travel, check where water and food might be available, estimate how long the route should take and then try to trek the day accordingly. Sometimes this works surprisingly well. If we lose an hour on a rail trail or concession road, we can often make some of it back by walking a little faster, shortening a break or continuing farther into the evening. If a town is ten kilometres away, there is usually some confidence that ten kilometres will behave more or less like ten kilometres.  While terrain, weather and exhaustion complicate the calculation, after more than 10,000 kilometres on the Trans Canada Trail we have become reasonably good at estimating what our bodies can cover in a day.

 

Kananaskis is making that confidence feel considerably less useful – and definitely less certain.  Since leaving Calgary and entering the foothills of the Rocky Mountains (yes, I know we have done that twice), the character of the journey has changed almost completely. For months this year we have been walking roads, concessions, rail trails and urban pathways where the basic problem is usually one of horizontal distance. Here the map may show only a modest number of kilometres between two places, but those kilometres can contain steep climbing, loose rock, muddy descents, exposed ridges, and rapidly changing weather conditions.  As a result, there are definitely sections here where the pace is determined less by what we want to accomplish than by what the landscape will allow. The distance is still there on the map, but it is no longer the most important measurement. If anything, today's climb over Cox Hill made that particularly clear.

 

At the trailhead we had two choices. One route followed the Powderface Trail through the valley, while the other climbed over Cox Hill, rising roughly 750 metres over about six kilometres to an elevation of more than 2,200 metres. The hill looked daunting from below, but the possibility of spectacular views and taking on the more challenging route was difficult to resist. We checked the forecast on the Garmin InReach because there was no cell service. It suggested only a modest chance of a very small amount of rain through the afternoon, and the skies seemed to be clearing. The temperature was cool and comfortable. On paper and in our own estimation, there seemed little reason not to go.

 

The ascent was slow but beautiful, and the trail rose steeply through spruce and pine, with breaks in the trees revealing larger and larger views across the surrounding mountains. We stopped regularly, partly because our packs were heavy and partly because there was so much to look at. At one point the towers of Calgary were visible far in the distance, a strange reminder of the city we had only recently left. Red Crossbills worked at pinecones near the trail, sunlight moved across the forest below, and for a while the day seemed to be going more or less as we had imagined.

 

Then, about a kilometre below the summit, the weather changed – very quickly.  A dark cloud began spilling over the mountain behind us. Fingers of mist followed, then stronger wind. Within a very short time the sunshine disappeared, rain began to fall, and then it too turned to hail. The temperature dropped sharply, lightning began to light up the skies, and thunder echoed across the slopes. The forecast had not exactly been wrong; there was indeed precipitation in the area. What we had failed to appreciate was how differently a small percentage on a weather report might behave once mountain topography became involved.

 

There was no way to change the situation while standing on the summit of Cox Hill.  We sheltered beneath spruce trees until the worst appeared to pass and then continued on. The trail was now covered in ice pellets and running water, and the route away from the summit crossed an exposed rocky meadow with very little protection. Despite the conditions, there is no denying that the views were as remarkable as we had hoped, but standing exposed on a mountaintop in an active storm makes it difficult to care very much about achieving the scenic reward you had imagined earlier.

 

From there the descent became an entirely different journey. Rain continued as we crossed open meadows and hurried toward the trees. Thick fog moved through the forest below. The trail dropped steeply over loose rock and mud, and the wet conditions made every step slower, requiring more focus. Sean had become extremely cold and uncomfortable and eventually stopped talking or taking photographs, concentrating almost entirely on continuing forward. I became increasingly concerned as he began stumbling on the descent. The map might have shown only a couple of kilometres remaining, but kilometres had ceased to be a useful way of describing what was happening.

 

Then the trail climbed again. That was perhaps the clearest reminder that the mountain had no interest in our assumptions. We had mentally reached the point where the descent should mean the difficult part was behind us, only to find ourselves climbing another steep hill through deep ruts and slippery ground. Eventually we crossed another exposed section and began descending once more, finally reaching the valley floor and the Powderface Trail road after a long, wet and exhausting day.

 

By then, the question was no longer how far we had planned to walk. The question was what made sense from where we actually stood.  We took a long break beside a mountain stream, stripped off our sodden rain jackets, changed our soaked clothes, then filtered water, ate something and spread our wet gear in the sunshine when it finally appeared.

 

The maps suggested that the Lusk Pass campground was somewhere ahead, but even they disagreed about how far away it was. The trail leading toward it was wet, muddy and overgrown, and after everything that had already happened, we no longer felt much interest in proving that we could reach the place originally intended for the night. Sean walked ahead for a short distance, found no clear evidence of the campground, and we decided to stop where we were. It was a very different decision from those we might once have made.

 

Earlier in the journey, particularly on roads and rail trails, arriving short of a planned destination could easily feel like falling behind – even failing. There was always a temptation to recover the kilometres, to walk another hour, to reach the place written in the notes because that was where the day was supposed to end. In the mountains, that way of thinking begins to feel strangely irrelevant. The campsite does not move closer because we are determined. The light does not last longer because we are behind schedule. A wet descent does not become safer because we want to finish another five kilometres, and an exposed ridge is entirely indifferent to what the weather forecast suggested when we left the trailhead.

 

Perhaps this is the largest shift in thinking we are making as we move deeper into the Rockies. Slow travel has often been something we have chosen. We stop for birds and landscapes because we want to experience or photograph the places we are moving through rather than simply cover them. Here, moving slowly is sometimes no longer a philosophy or preference. Terrain, slopes, weather, and the energy required to cross them make slow travel the reality of hiking on.  In this way, the landscape has become an active participant in the itinerary.

 

I do not mean that (at least not at the moment) in any romantic sense.  Mountains are not deliberately teaching us anything, and they certainly do not care whether we arrive safely, reach the correct campground or keep to the schedule written in our notes.  Perhaps that indifference is precisely the point. For much of modern life we become accustomed to shaping the world around our intentions. Roads are built to shorten distances. Weather can be escaped by going indoors. Darkness disappears with the flip of a switch. Schedules organize the day, and technology allows us to calculate exactly how long something should take. Out here, those conveniences lose a lot of their authority.

 

A kilometre is still a kilometre, but it may take twenty minutes or an hour. A forecast can inform a decision without controlling the outcome. A campsite may exist on the map but prove impractical on the ground.  A morning that begins beneath blue sky can end in hail. Plans remain useful, but standing here in the Rocky Mountain range, they seem more like proposals than instructions.

 

Tonight our tent is pitched beside a mountain stream rather than where we thought it would be this morning. We stopped because we had water, a reasonably flat place to sleep, enough daylight to set up camp and very little reason to continue simply for the satisfaction of matching the itinerary.  Our day on the Trans Canada Trail has been – almost entirely – determined by the mountains and Cox Hill, not us.  Perhaps the sensible response is not to resent that loss of control, but to recognize that control was never really ours to begin with.

 

Tomorrow we will make another plan. Then we will see what the mountains allow us to do with it.

 

See you on the trail.