Over the Hills and Far Away

by Rob Collister

  We were away early next morning. The moon had sunk and we broke camp by the light of a Tilley lamp whose brilliant glow caused the blackness to close in like a threatening crowd. The dogs were shadowy forms, stretching and shaking the snow out of their coats, and beyond them was impenetrable outer darkness. But while we were busy scraping ice from the runners and harnessing the dogs, day came, and by the time I gave the command ‘Up dogs, Huit!,’ smoky pinks and yellows were creeping up the sky behind the mountains.

  All went well at first. The surface was better, the dogs were pulling enthusiastically, and as I led the way out of Square Bay towards the open sea, Morag, only recently promoted leader, responded obediently to commands to move right or left. The first setback occurred when we reached new ice. Here the sea had frozen since the last snowfall and for a moment we mistook the smooth black surface, coloured by the depths beneath, for open water. I chopped a hole in the surface until water gushed up. The ice was a good six inches thick, quite safe enough to sledge on, and as it was free of snow, we looked forward to some fast travelling. We were soon disillusioned. The ice was like a pane of glass, without wrinkle or blemish. Once moving, skis and sledge continued to glide indefinitely – indeed, it was impossible to stop – but the dogs could gain no purchase at all. When they tried to pull, all four legs shot from under them and, bewildered, they sprawled painfully on their bellies. Before long, mutiny was in the air, and when finally I gave the order to swing back on to the old ice, the team turned as one. There was nothing for it but to follow the old ice towards the coast and hope that conditions might improve.

  Sure enough, before long we came to a surface of solidly frozen floes on which we could once more travel seaward. Not far ahead was the rocky headland of Camp Point, a well-known landmark which we should have to round before heading south for Stonington. Beyond it, we should be sledging across a wide bay with no safe campsite for twenty miles – and if the surface was bad, twenty miles could be a very long way.

  Immediately in front I could see a lead of black water splitting the ice. It looked narrow though, and the dogs had become used to jumping leads and tide-cracks in the last few weeks, so I was not unduly worried. Unfortunately, this time new and still fragile ice had formed at the edges of a fairly wide crack, leaving a deceptively narrow strip of water in the middle. Morag was some sixty feet in front of me, so I only realised this as she reached the lead. Even then, I did not realise how weak that new ice was, and urged the dogs on. As they crossed, they broke through it, rapidly widening the crack until Bran and Kon, the last pair, were swimming. It was only the pull from the rest of the team that enabled them to scramble out on the far side, powerful 100lb dogs though they were. The team was now on one side of a six feet gap and the sledge and myself on the other. Unable to think of any dry way out of the situation, I finally yelled to the team and attempted to drive across. The jerk pulled the front of the sledge on to the far side but, predictably enough, the rear sank and I, still on skis, sank with it. Not noticing that both skis had dropped off, I heaved myself out, baggy windproof trousers bulging with water, and seizing the bamboo ‘cow-catcher’ helped the dogs haul the sledge clear. Though my skis had vanished, vital equipment such as sleeping bags and the radio had deliberately been placed at the front so there was no serious damage done. Malcolm was soon with me, having made a detour round the lead and I decided to continue to Camp Point before changing into dry clothes, since we had been asked to check an old food depot, in any case.

  In retrospect, that lead should have been a warning. The surface still seemed firm enough. Investigation revealed that the floes were a foot thick, and the frozen ‘cement’ binding them together at least six inches. It was the structure of the ice that proved treacherous. As I rounded Camp Point, looking for a suitable place to go ashore, I suddenly felt a floe sink beneath me. I was running beside the sledge to keep warm and before I could react, a raft of ice had tilted beneath my feet and I found myself once again immersed in icy water. Close to land, pressure from the sea beneath had become too much for the gigantic crazy paving on which we were travelling. The floes had been forced apart and the ‘cement’ had reverted to a semi-frozen mush. The only hope was to keep the sledge moving, but now the dogs began to fall between the floes. As they panicked and ceased to pull, the sledge lost way until eventually it too slid sideways off a floe and began to settle into the thin skin that was covering the sea.

  The situation seemed critical. Expecting the sledge to sink at any minute, I quickly cut the main-trace and unclipped the dogs from their side traces before they drowned. To my surprise, however, the sledge, though well and truly embedded, did not sink completely. Hope dawned that it could yet be saved. Attaching a rope to the ‘cow-catcher’, I crawled from floe to floe, making my way towards the shore twenty metres away. After several fresh duckings, I discovered that I was safe enough on the larger floes so long as I did not try to stand up. Landing was difficult since the last floe, heaving on a slight swell, was separated from a sloping bank of smooth slippery ice by a metre of water. The floe was small and the bank steep, so if I fell in I should be unable to climb out again. Taking no chances, I leaned cautiously over the gap and cut hand and foot holds with an ice axe before delicately transferring myself to the shore. In front was a ten-foot wall of vertical ice which demanded more step cutting. Then, teeth chattering and toes numb, I set out to look for Malcolm.

  Seeing my plight in time, he had returned to the far side of the headland. Now I found him in a position little better than my own, forty yards out, among loose floes, with the rear of his sledge half under water. Fortunately, his dogs had not broken through and before long, our combined efforts had heaved the sledge safely on to dry land. My feet needed immediate attention, but they soon came back to life in the warmth of Malc’s sleeping bag and, without wasting any more time, we scrambled back over the broken rocks of the point. I had been fearing the worst, but the sledge was just as I had left it, and the Picts, for once too frightened to fight, had remained huddled anxiously together on a large floe; all, that is, except Chinook, a large, cheerful, but relatively timid dog, who appeared to have been sent to Coventry and sat in splendid isolation on a small floe of his own. The first task was to clip them all back on to the main trace – not easy in the confined space of an ice-floe, with eight dogs trying to lick me and express their pleasure at my return. That done, I fastened a rope to Morag at the front of the trace, and with Malcolm pulling on the other end, they ran ashore with surprisingly little difficulty, hauling each other out of the water as they fell in. There was not room for them to stay on the shelf so each dog had to be heaved up the ice wall and dropped down the far side; and now the fights started. It was quite some time before the team was finally spanned in the steep-walled gully beyond and the snow was liberally sprinkled with blood. That left the sledge to be rescued. I unloaded it, on hands and knees, while Malcolm hauled tent, boxes and sledge bags ashore with the rope. At last, aided by a pulley system, the lightened sledge could be tipped on to a floe and righted. By the time we could think of pitching the tent it had long been dark and the temperature was well down in the minus twenties. I had been in wet clothes for seven hours. Shaking from cold and exposure, I wriggled thankfully into my sleeping bag, only to experience excruciating pain as the frozen tissue of fingers, toes and knees thawed out. Codeine had negligible effect and I slept very little that night.

  By the following morning, each kneecap was an enormous blister, and fingers and toes were in a similar state. After contacting Stonington on the radio for medical advice, I stayed in the tent bathing the frostbite blisters in a biscuit-tin of warm water and carefully bandaging them. Meanwhile Malcolm laboured like Hercules, trudging back and forth over the 100 metres of rocky defile that separated our respective landings. Box by box he carried my 600lb load across to where his sledge was beached, moved the dogs two at a time and, finding the ice once more firmly frozen, pushed my sledge round the outside of the point. It became
apparent that the floes were only loosened by the pressure of high tide, and froze firmly together at low tide. Camp Point is potentially a highly dangerous place since, should the ice blow out, the way inland is barred by vertical rock; in effect, it is a trap. Climbing part way up the cliffs, Malc could see that the ice was unbroken right across the bay to the south, and so we decided to push on immediately before the weather broke.

  By the time we were away, it was a superb moonlit night, crystal clear, with sparks of cold fire being struck from the snow and no sound but the occasional eerie creak of an imprisoned berg. It was bitterly cold. To save the blisters, I had to stand on the back of the sledge rather than ski or run. The surface was a good one so the extra weight did not affect the dogs; but they were mystified by my frenzied contortions as I flung my arms about to keep warm.

  After a while I gave up the unequal struggle and sank into a frozen dream-state, on which the passing coastline and consciousness of the cold only occasionally impinged. Malcolm led the way and, with another team to follow, my dogs gave no trouble. It was with a start that I noticed a light straight ahead. We had passed the great rock prow on the far side of the bay without my noticing it and were now only six miles from home. A Tilley lamp had been left out to guide us round the snout of a glacier which flows past Stonington’s back door into the sea.

  Suddenly, a dog appeared, racing round the sledge and trying to play with Morag. I assumed he must have escaped from base. It was a beautiful, almost ghostly sight, this mystery beast gambolling in the moonlight. Only when the team became so distracted that I tried to catch the stranger, did I discover that it was Jamie. Somehow he had slipped his harness, and with the hood of my anorak drawn so tight that I was peering myopically through a screen of fur, I had failed to recognise him as one of my own dogs.

  Cold and tired, we reached Stonington at 5.30 in the morning. Friendly hands were waiting to unharness the dogs and picket the sledges. The interior of the hut was bright and warm and a pot of tea had been brewed. It was good to be back.

  By midday the sky was overcast and the wind rising. The ‘blow’ lasted eight days and at the end of it every scrap of sea ice between Stonington and Camp Point had disappeared. We had been just in time.

  – Chapter 28 –

  WANGANUI RIVER

  A splatter of wings on water,

  ducks drag into the air;

  from a bell-bird, skulking in the Bush,

  droplets of pure sound fall

  loudly, heavily, like the drips

  from our paddles upon

  the pewter surface. Otherwise,

  silence hangs over this

  glittering reach of river and

  the fern-green gorge that contains it.

  Blades lift and pull in unison,

  minds, like water, deepen,

  quieten to the rhythmic swing,

  until movement without

  becomes stillness within, and we are,

  just for a moment, one,

  and we are not on the river

  but we are the river.

  1988

  – Chapter 29 –

  WEST COAST WILDERNESS (1995)

  The bear – a black one we were relieved to note, not a grizzly, but a powerful, loose–limbed animal nonetheless – was about 200 yards away, near the crest of the ridge. He paused to watch us for a moment, then continued foraging among some blueberry bushes. Fall is a good time for bears; food is plentiful and generally they are tolerant of human intruders. However, we were taking no chances and gave him a wide berth as we picked our way across white granite slabs on to the crest of the ridge. It was a beautiful place. To north, east and south glaciated mountains stretched away endlessly. Before us a deep blue lake occupied a hollow in the rock. Where water seeped out of the ground grew the creamy white flowers of Fringed Grass of Parnassus. The summit looked no distance at all, but in reality it was still two hours away.

  We had woken to a temperature inversion, a sea of cloud filling the valley below cutting us off totally from the rest of the world. Our only concerns all day were elemental ones like heat, thirst, weary legs and the security of hand or foothold. Our senses were alert to the whistle of a marmot, the acrobatics of ravens, the flavour of pure spring water, and the bite of granite crystals into our fingertips. From the summit, we peered down on to the bare ice of a small decaying glacier and watched, far off, a hot-air balloon being used to extract timber from the forest. We ate salmon sandwiches and home–made cookies and were startled by a bald eagle which appeared from nowhere, floating past noiselessly.

  It was a long day. By the time we returned to the cabin, our faces were glowing from sun and wind, and we were more than ready for Laurie’s salmon bake and apple crumble. We slept soundly that night.

  * * * * *

  Beneath me, the coarse granite is cushioned by a fur of dry moss and a little overlap in the rock slab creates a perfect back rest. As I write, I am reclining in this natural ‘chaise longue’, gazing past scattered trees – yellow cedar and western hemlock – over denser forest to the wrinkled waters of the inlet some thousands of feet below. Beyond lie the forested slopes of Sonora Island and the distant ‘blue remembered hills’ of Vancouver Island. The sensation of being perched in an eyrie is heightened by a sudden riffle of feathers and rush of wings as a hawk stoops past, a dark missile travelling with terrifying velocity, to disappear into the trees after prey unknown. More sedately, a black woodpecker in search of insects spirals down a gaunt grey snag – a dead tree devoid of bark or branches. It would have been tidied away long since in a managed European forest. But this is not Europe. It is the west coast of British Columbia, a wild, ice–carved landscape, uninhabited but for a few logging camps and fish farms.

  Round the corner of the cabin comes Skookum, the huge, good-natured Alsatian. He is being taunted by a squirrel that scolds and chatters from a safe distance up a tree. Cautiously, the squirrel inches its way down the fissured trunk, goading the dog to leap. Skookum is used to this game and waits motionless at the bottom. Finally, it is the squirrel’s nerve that breaks and it shoots back up the tree with a squeal of annoyance.

  The cabin is a simple affair of plywood sheets nailed to a wooden frame. To reduce damp and to prevent it being totally buried by snow in the winter, it has been built on four massive tree stumps, giving it the appearance of an old granary. A bucket has been placed upside down over the chimney to keep out squirrels and pine–martens. Last winter another unwanted visitor, a grizzly bear, smashed open the door when the cabin was unoccupied and we are still finding polythene bottles punctured by teeth and claws in the bushes round about. Like it or not, one is very close to the natural world up here.

  I am the guest of wilderness guides Rob and Laurie Wood, and the journey to their cabin has not been without effort. It started with the flight from Heathrow to Vancouver, the eight-hour time change, backwards, enabling me to take a thirty-minute onward flight to the little port of Campbell River on Vancouver Island the same day. Not as jet–lagged as anticipated, I caught the ferry across to Quadra Island the following morning. Rob and Laurie were waiting to drive me across the island to Heriot Bay, a small anchorage where their catamaran Quintano was moored. On the jetty we were joined by Tom and Julia, proprietors of the Heriot Bay Inn, who were taking a well-earned holiday after a long summer season.

  There was not a breath of wind so Rob fired up the outboard and we motored through a maze of narrow tidal channels between islands and eventually up a long forested fjord to a deserted logging camp at its far end. The sun shone and we lazed about on deck, cans of beer in our hands. That night we ate dinner on the boat, and then Rob anchored her off-shore, returning in a canoe. Half an hour’s walk up a bouldery river bed and an overgrown logging road, brought us to an empty cabin where we spread out our sleeping bags and fell asleep serenaded by croaking frogs.

  The next day started easily enough, gradually gaining height on the old logging road, overgrown with alder tree
s through which a tenuous way is kept clear by the Woods and their friends. At lunchtime we lit a fire and brewed some tea to strengthen us for the spell of bush whacking that lay ahead. For Rob, tea making is an important ritual, slowing down the pace, drawing together the members of a group and encouraging them to be fully present in the moment.

  Leaving the security of the old road, we forced our way through a tangle of alder branches and thickets of salmonberry, thimbleberry and the notoriously prickly Devil’s Club. Fortunately, this was short-lived, and soon we emerged into first-growth timber, huge well-spaced trees spared by the chainsaw. However, many of the trees had long ago been ‘culturally modified’ by the local Indians. Instead of felling trees, they would peel off long strips of bark, especially from cedars, to use as roofing material and even for clothing. The amount taken was not enough to damage the tree and the bark eventually grew again, but the long tapering scar remains as a reminder of a more sustainable silviculture than is usually practised today.

  The hillside was steep now, and the going strenuous. Frequently we were skirting round or clambering over moss-grown fallen tree trunks or heaving ourselves up on the stems of blueberry bushes. With packs full of sleeping bags, spare clothes and food for three nights, it was hot work and tiring. We were all glad when the trees began to thin out, the angle eased, and we finally reached the cabin.