We waded across the grassy meadow, eventually finding the faint shade of a path. Walking gamely toward the reflective triangle, the path became more pronounced, eventually becoming a respectable path, if little used. Winding thru the trees, we marvelled at the variety of trees, and the lush underbrush. A small stream chuckled off to our right, the bushes greener in that direction.
I looked down, and saw a rather sizeable pile of bear crap. Sure enough, there was some moss dug up a short way further, evidence of the bear digging for bug dinner. We started looking around rather nervously, and called repeatedly, yelling “YO BEAR!” in a carrying voice. The general theory being that a bear will do its best to avoid you if it kows you are about. Although we continued to see bear sign, we didn’t see any bears. We would pass a pile of poop on the trail, then half a km further on or less, we would see another. I became convinced that this was the bears way of defining its territory. I as always a little disheartened to find another pile of bear poop soon after, leading me to conclude we had passed into another bears territory.
After another climb up a steep hill, leving me panting and Justin waiting patiently for me to catch up (even tho he had the heavier bag, dammit) we wound our way down the flank of a hill and confronted a split rail fence. It was the first human thing we had seen in about 3 hours, so I was surprised. We crawled under it, and shortly thereafter found an alpine cabin couched in the high end of a valley,commanding a beautiful view. The cabin looked snug and dry, and very welcoming in the lowering sun. We could just see the stovepipe twinkling in the last rays of the sun. Such a welcoming sight to the traveller at the end of a 20km hike. Sadly, we had not made any arrangements to rent the cabin from the alpine club, so had no keys, and the cabin was destined to remain locked to us. We did set up camp in the round pen nearby, where they must keep their horses. It appeared no one had used the pen in a couple of years, the grass and weed mix being lush. It looked quite inviting, tho we did discover the greenery hid the slowly softening churned earth. No matter, we were in the pen, and Justin said we could put up the rails across the gate. I’m pretty sure he was humoring me, and my nerves, but I must say that it set my mind at ease to be behind a fence that night.
The mosquitoes were quite bad at dusk, as we were heating water for our dinner. We ended up putting on all our pants, our rain gear, toques, and face wraps. This discouraged the bugs, but Justin managed to clap mosquitoes out of the air while the water was on. By the time we ate, he had a significant pile of small bodies at his feet.
Justin dug a little circle of sod up, and we scavenged some deadfall (and soon-to-fall) wood to make a tidy little blaze. We roasted some bannock I had prepared, not really being sure if it would work. It did, rather well! We mixed a very small amount of water into the flour mixture I had packed, and managed to get it to wrap on green preheated sticks. Then we smeared some ghee on it. About the time we got the hang of it, we were out of dough. That was fine, as we were exhausted by this point, and dropped into bed with hardly a goodnight hug. The bugs had relented sometime during our fire, tho we did have to put a few out of our misery in the tent. Fire out, moquitoes executed, sleeping bags zipped tight, we fell asleep pretty darn quickly. There’s your remedy for tossing and turning: walk 20km in fear of bears with a 30 to 40 pound bag on your back,then fight mosquitoes for your dinner. I slept quite well.
Wherever you are, Be There 