We followed an old mining track and the next two days were uneventful -- grey, windy and cold with occasional rain. We were passing through a dense scrub forest, rugged, rocky and mountainous, following a sidehill just below timberline. Occasionally we climbed high enough to see a valley and a chain of lakes far below. It seemed the plan was to hike parallel to this range of mountains, then up over a high pass and back out along the far side of the range. The snow level was not very far above us. There was ample and varied feed for the llamas with the vivid, magenta-flowered fireweed as the main groundcover, augmented with a variety of other grasses, shrubs and wildflowers.
On the third day, we reached a narrow, slow-moving water crossing spanned by
an old rotted bridge. I was in the lead at this point and the bridge looked
too risky to support a llama. I could tiptoe across the rotted timbers and save
having to take my boots off if Willy would follow alongside in the water. It
was no good, though -- Willy wanted to cross on the bridge behind me. I stopped,
unlaced my boots, strapped on my sandals, and led Willy through the waist-deep,
icy water. I tied him and went back for Geordie so Barry could cross on the
bridge. There's no point in us both freezing and I, with my female layer of
subcutaneous fat (becoming more generous each year), suffer less from the icy
water than Barry. I crossed again and was tying Geordie when I looked back,
suddenly knowing exactly what was about to happen and powerless to stop it.
Ernie stepped casually onto the bridge and Sam hopped up onto the old timbers
behind him. Two steps and Sam crashed through the rotten wood, sunk to his belly
and jammed solid. Because I was already thoroughly wet, I went back into the
frigid water to start unloading Sam’s packs. I wondered at the weight
-- ours were carrying 75 pounds including saddle and pad, but I could barely
lift this pannier. These were seasoned packers however, and I reasoned that
perhaps they could handle more. Barry and Ernie leaned down from the bridge
to take the panniers as I reached under the surface of the water (thankfully
shallow there) and tried to make sense of the tangle of legs. I prayed no bones
were broken. Sam seemed stunned and shocked.
I sorted out one hind leg and repositioned it so that Sam would have some leverage
to push against. One front foot had traction and Barry lifted out the other
and pulled it ahead a little. I stroked Sam's neck briefly and then took his
lead and asked him to scramble free, into the water with me. He gave one mighty
lunge, then another, and he was in the water beside me, trembling. I let him
stand for a moment and rubbed his back.
Hans reached out to help Sam up the steep and slippery bank, and as he limped
out of the water, I saw no open wounds, but he appeared to have a sprained hock.
Because I couldn’t get any colder or wetter, I went back for Ernie's other
two llamas.
After Ernie repacked Sam and I ducked into the bushes to change into dry clothes,
we were once again on our way. Although the air was cold, hiking kept us comfortably
warm.
The next morning Sam was stiff and very lame, but he loosened up a little as
we traveled. My heart ached for him. He seemed such a gentle and willing fellow.
At one point during the day, though, he lowered his head and one shoulder, did
a funny little skittering buck and some fancy footwork, and to my astonishment,
his entire load was on the ground in front of him, intact: Saddle with panniers
still loaded; breast strap, front and back cinches still done up.
I had a crazy urge to applaud.
That evening, one of Ernie's other llamas slipped his tether and headed off
down the backtrail at a trot. Ernie went back after Junior and found him with
his rope tangled in a bush about a half-mile back.
The next day we left the track and entered some truly beautiful country as we
gradually left the forest behind. The vast sweep of rolling tundra sprinkled
with wildflowers reached up to distant snowy peaks. Caribou country! The silence
was crisp and intense.
Carpets of tiny sky-blue forget-me-nots underfoot blended with the delicate
and fragile pink petals of the ground-hugging mountain laurel. Exotic perfume
from the creamy white spikes of bog orchid drifted up from low-lying pockets
of snowmelt, and the rich midnight blue and indigo monkshood was striking against
the pastel mauves and lilacs of the lupine. The whole was accented by the expert
finishing touch of a master decorator -- splotches of vivid orange paintbrush
scattered randomly across the landscape.
Monique is a city girl and this was not what she expected: The long cold wet
days, the mud, the icy water crossings, dehydrated food and freezing cold nights.
This was the reality of the "luxurious holiday" described in such
glowing terms in the travel brochure. But the scenery buoyed her spirits, and
she was a pleasant traveling companion.
Ernie does not pack a stove, so our evenings were spent rustling firewood. With
the long wet spell, cooking fires were smoky and slow. As nonpaying guests,
we did what we could to help. Sally and I did some of the cooking and all the
clean-up, leaving Ernie free to entertain Hans. It is always interesting to
see how other packers handle the details, and we examined each other's outfits,
commenting on the differences. I admire Ernie’s "kitchen kit,"
a slick zip-up nylon bag of many compartments that unfolds to hang near the
fire, all kitchen utensils and spices near to hand. Ernie cast sidelong glances
at our "bucket-system" of organizing our supplies, with the buckets
doubling as camp chairs and water pails when we stopped. Ernie uses a soft-pack
system; we used one soft-pack and one sawbuck saddle on this trip.
On day six, we stopped in the early evening and pitched our tents on a lichen-carpeted
bench above a deep-blue tarn with its surface riffled by the relentless tundra
winds. This country brought back childhood memories of my beloved Yukon -- remote,
desolate, piercingly lonely and harshly beautiful. I would not have been surprised
to see a herd of muskoxen come thundering over the hill.
The following day was grey and chilly. It was a planned rest day so we could
relax and explore, and we took advantage of the break to wander around with
our cameras. The tundra was dotted with marmot burrows and piercing whistles
shattered the silence as we invaded the territory of these furry little rodents.
Marmots, ptarmigan, and a few water birds were all that moved. In places, mosses
and lichens have been stripped off to expose the rocky and shallow tundra soil.
Caribou have passed this way.
Stooping to fill a water pail in the lake, I saw a dead young robin frozen in
the ice near the water's edge. When I knocked the ice free to move it back from
the water, it seemed weightless and had no doubt starved to death during the
all-too-brief tundra summer. I admired the pattern of juvenile spots on the
soft buffy-orange breast, sadly put it aside and moved some distance away to
fill the pail.
Ptarmigan buzzed our camp, flying low and letting us know with their peculiar
harsh chittering that we were unwelcome intruders in their feeding grounds.
These chunky, attractive feather-footed members of the grouse family were already
changing to winter plumage.
That afternoon it started to snow. By nightfall it was snowing hard and Ernie’s
cooking shelter tarp was sagging under the weight. The only warm place was in
bed. Our guide made an effort for his guests that night and with Barry’s
help, he served us all a hot bowl of spaghetti in our tents. I was going to
have a handful of cold trail mix and that spaghetti tasted like heaven.
We woke
at intervals through the night to shake heavy snow off our collapsing tent.
Melted snow started puddling in one corner of the tent -- the fly has such a
heavy load of snow that it no longer covers the inner shelter. We had to get
up anyway to answer nature's calls, so we figured we might as well fix the tent
and check on the llamas as well.
We crawled out of warm sleeping bags and reached for our boots, soaked after
hours in the wet snow yesterday and now frozen solid. We stuffed our damp sock
feet into the unappealing footwear, muttering as we picked through the tangle
of frozen laces by the thin cold beam of the flashlight.
Barry took a plastic lid from one of our food buckets and started shoveling
snow away from the base of the tent. In the dark and blowing snow, we wondered
how the others were faring. A brisk wind has come up during the night, so I
took the flashlight and struggled through the snow to check the llamas.
We had picketed our two on the downwind side of a dense clump of stunted alpine
fir. Huddled close against the wall of shrubs and lying with their feet tucked
under them and necks stretched out flat on the ground to conserve heat, the
llamas seemed, if not happy, at least sheltered in their little snow nests.
I reassured them with a pat and a few llama cookies from my pocket. The date
was August 1st, 2002.
Now to find the others. I picked my way down the steep slope in the cold and
the dark, slipping and sliding, assuring myself the llamas would let me know
if there is a grizzly within a mile and cursing my overactive imagination.
I find Ernie’s three llamas tethered out in the full force of the wind
and Sam is shivering violently. I wonder at the wisdom of interfering with our
guide’s llamas, but compassion wins out; I would be grateful if he were
to do the same for ours. I move them one at a time into widely separated clumps
of trees. This is open tundra here and shelter is scarce. It seems to take forever,
struggling up and down the steep slippery slope in the black night to find shelter
for three llamas. I was cold and tired and my legs were aching. I was thinking,
“This is about as bad as it gets.” Little did I know what was yet
to come.
Our situation was sobering. We had foolishly come on this trip with no knowledge
of the country, no maps of our own, and a great deal of trust in a man we barely
knew — and we were responsible for conducting our llamas safely through
this land.
I returned to the tent and Barry had it all in order: Snow cleared away, the
fly repositioned and the puddle mopped up. Nothing else we could do but crawl
back into bed, and I was grateful for his comforting warmth.
In the thin grey light of dawn on our eighth day, it was still snowing hard.
Barry and I made a hot cup of cocoa on our tiny propane stove, ate a handful
of trail mix, and started shoveling snow to uncover a few sparse mouthfuls of
forage for the llamas. It was just too cold to stand around and the exercise
quickly warmed us. We looked around to see three almost-collapsed tents and
a mound of snow where the kitchen was. There was no sign of our guide.
Hans was first to emerge, shivering cold and pale. He had packed up all his
gear because, he said, Ernie told him last night that we were leaving in the
morning. Barry looks at me in surprise. We would be crazy to head out in this!
Surely our guide would change his mind when he got up. Our only route out, unless
we backtracked for five days, would be over a high pass.
Sally struggled out of the tent she shared with Monique, and said Monique was
as cold and hungry as the rest of us, but feeling a little better. They were
afraid the tent would collapse on them during the night, and apparently had
the good sense to giggle at our predicament rather than swearing, which is how
I felt.
The llamas were hungry, but didn’t seem to know to paw through the snow,
as horses do. We spent the morning uncovering feed for them and they cleaned
up the skimpy forage as fast as we could shovel. It was tiring work on the cold,
steep and windy slope, but at least we stayed warm. Digging in the right place
was just guesswork as the groundcover consisted mainly of mosses and lichens
with grass only in scattered patches.
At noon, Sally remarked that no one had eaten yet. She offered to help prepare
a meal, so we shook out and re-strung the snow-covered tarp, and dug the kitchen
gear out from under the snow. I tried to get a fire going with a scant handful
of dripping wet, green wood while Sally rummaged through Ernie's remaining supplies.
She mixed up a batch of bannock. After using two cubes of Ernie's fire starter,
I gave up and fetched our little one-burner propane stove. I made a big pot
of thick soup from our combined supplies and we took turns cooking over the
tiny stove to keep our fingers from freezing. The wind and snow were howling
through the flapping shelter, and our knuckles were red and raw -- we couldn’t
cook with our bulky mitts on. Our companion, a 15-year-old girl, was silent
and uncomplaining.
When -- finally -- the bannock was browned and the soup was heated, Sally offered
to deliver it to the tents. I dished up the soup in big mugs and she placed
a wedge of bannock on top of each mug to keep the heat in. Smart kid.
I don't remember much of the remainder of that day, except that when our guide
finally crawled out of his tent in the mid-afternoon, he had a Ziploc-type chamber
pot clutched in one hand, and that was the last straw for me. I was furious!
While we were battling the snowstorm to care for his llamas and his guests,
he was too lazy or too cold or too frightened to even crawl out of his tent
to pee. I stifled the urge to grab the bag and empty its contents over his head.
The snow
eased off during the night, and the next morning dawned clear and sunny with
the snow melting fast. Ernie took off by himself to check out the route over
the pass. He returned some time later, bouncing, bright-eyed, excited and laughing,
and said the pass would be easy. He had surprised a big grey wolf, he said,
loping through the snow across the tundra.
The sparkling tundra morning was truly glorious. The sunshine was welcome and
thankfully warm, the landscape pristine and white beneath a cobalt sky, and
all bordered by rugged mountains. It was a travel brochure landscape -- breathtaking,
awe-inspiring; a photographer's delight. As our cavalcade wound its way up the
mountain slope towards the pass on this enchanted morning, I found myself thinking,
"This could be a cover shot from National Geographic, on the Andean
altiplano."
The pass proved
anything but easy, especially for the llamas. We struggled to get them over
the top, and as I looked down at the intimidating jumble of big, icy, razor-sharp
rocks below, it finally dawned on me with sickening certainty that our guide
had never been there before. Ernie admitted it when I ask him point-blank. A
man he works with had been over this pass in a snowmobile one winter and told
him he could "probably" get through with llamas ... and on this casual
remark he risked the success of the venture and the safety of our llamas.
We stood at the summit surveying the wild country below. The terrain below the
pass is covered with brush and scrub timber. An easy winter run by snowmobile
up the valley bottom following a frozen chain of marshy lakes and watercourses
on an eight-foot snow pack, at the beginning of August and on foot, it was a
totally different proposition. I was sick with worry for the llamas. We were
running low on food and we had no idea how long it would take to fight our way
through the dense tangle of vegetation below. Getting lost was not a concern
-- from our vantage point, landmarks were clearly visible and we took compass
bearings in case the weather deteriorated again. It wasn’t all that far
to the road, but getting through — that was another matter.
Without the llamas, this would have been a challenging hike. With them, it became
more serious by the moment. The endless, tumbled and broken slopes of huge boulders
provided treacherous footing and deep narrow crevices that trapped the llamas’
legs. I could hardly take a step without using my hiking staff for balance,
let alone help Willy, whose fright caused him to stiffen and lose flexibility.
We couldn't go back, and the horrible realization dawned on me as Geordie's
long legs scrambled for purchase on the icy rocks -- the llamas might not make
it.