A Passion for the Mountains - The Alpine Club of Canada

some Novembers. The shallow snowpack
had already contributed to two recent
avalanches, the fi rst of which took the lives
of seven guests from a ski touring lodge
not far away in the Selkirk Mountains.
Less than two weeks later, seven Calgary
high school students had lost their lives in
another avalanche only a few kilometres
from Wheeler Hut, as they skied up the
well-travelled Connaught Creek trail. Their
young smiling faces had fi lled the pages
of the Calgary newspapers every day since
and I was not surprised to fi nd the usually
crammed parking lot less than one-third
full.
My fi rst view of the hut startled me – the
windows were visible almost down to their
lowers sills. The hut seemed naked without
the usual monstrous snowbanks. For the
fi rst time ever in winter, I could still hear
the semis on the highway.
Inside though, I heard laughter and the
pleasing strumming of a guitar. In the living
room I recognized friends from Calgary. In
the kitchen I spoke with a woman cleaning
up her family’s dishes. Her son, playing
board games in the adjacent room, attended
the same high school as the avalanche
victims. He was coping well, she said, they
were a year older than him and he didn’t
know them well, but he was bummed all of
his school’s winter trips had been cancelled,
including one to a lift serviced ski area.
Several other families would join them at
the hut the following day and I was pleased
they’d chosen that place to be together.
As the last person up that night, I turned
off all the lanterns and sat with my feet up
next to the living room fi replace. The smell
of the woodstove, the soft glowing light, the
simple quiet – I realized I had left the heliski
lodge because with all that stuff, something
big was missing. And I had found it.
A few weeks later, I returned to Wheeler
Hut with my sister, Daisy. It was our fi rst
hut trip together since she gave birth to my
niece three years ago. That day, the hut was
surrounded by high snowbanks, revealing
only window tops. But as we tossed our
sleeping bags upstairs, we noticed only two
others. Mark and Joe, a pair of guides whose
students were learning how to winter camp,
lounged by the woodstove, assuring us they
already knew how to camp. Outside, high
avalanche hazard would limit ski options
for all of us. The hut wasn’t as bustling as
I pictured it in winter, but Daisy clobbered
me at gin rummy, just as I pictured her
doing as long as I could remember.
And then I realized, maybe the building
wasn’t really cold and empty. Places have
cycles. They fl ourish, they wane, like
wildfl owers. The winter was a serious time.
The Iraq war engaged people in strong
debates. We all have a picture of how we’d
like the world to look, but it doesn’t work
that way. A few weeks earlier some friends
lost their toddler to SIDS. When a couple
brings a child into the world they expect
to participate in that child’s growing up,
his fi rst day of school, his high school
graduation. They don’t expect that child to
be gone just as he’s learning his fi rst words.
No parents expect their child not to come
home from an exciting backcountry ski
trip.
If I think of Rogers Pass, I envision
climbing high onto glaciers, inhaling
great mountain views and exhaling as I
sink my boards into deep powder turns.
Those who visited Glacier House a century
ago probably didn’t envision the glaciers
retreating so high up the valleys. They
probably didn’t envision Glacier House
losing its popularity, being reduced to a
few stone ruins in a meadow of asters and
buttercups.
This winter I learned to love Wheeler
Hut the way it is at any given moment,
not lamenting what was missing, but by
celebrating what was there. Spending two
days with my sister, skiing in the valley
bottom and turning back before reaching
the run out zone of Illecillewaet practice
slopes, was two wonderful days in the
mountains, part of a perfect cycle.
Alpine Club of Canada ● Gazette ● Summer 2003 5