Bonnington Traverse, Nov 9-12

Participants: Birgit Rogalla, Vincent Hanlon, Dave Mackenzie, Alex Rigby, Devlin and me

When we got the school calendar back in the summer, I saw that Devlin had a pro-d day on November 12, so we decided to do the Bonnington Traverse over the Remembrance Day long weekend if there was enough snow. We’d decided to just get the huts reserved and lose what we paid if conditions didn’t pan out. The other four signed up later, with the same intentions. Two weeks before the trip, the snow on the highway cams in the area looked pretty good. We watched with dismay after that as the dry sunny weather slowly ate what was looking almost passable. It stayed below zero, but every day the noon sun warmed up the ground enough to take its toll. They highway cams don’t really show the crust, but we could all feel it forming.

Then some other stuff happened.

Birgit came down with some godforsaken lung infection. This was particularly suboptimal because she’d had pneumonia recently, and pneumonia is good at making people more susceptible to pneumonia.

Several months ago my dentist’s boss decided that I wanted a gum graft. The dental assistants and front office staff made a big show talking about how their gum grafts were total breezes and they were going to get more gum grafts just for fun. They booked me for November 22.

Apparently if your gums recede, then so does the bone underneath, and if left unchecked there’s teeth falling out. They like to nip gum recession in the bud when it’s just starting, because the bone loss is irreversible. To do this they take a chunk out of the roof of your mouth, which is apparently sturdier tissue than gums, and use it to construct the gums of your dreams, if you dream about gums.

On November 6, they called me and said that they needed to cancel my appointment on the 22nd but that I could come in on the afternoon of the 7th and they’d fix me right up.

When I arrived at the dentist, they gave me this chlorhexidine mouthwash that had the appearance and smell, and I’m presuming the taste, of special cleaner that goes in the zamboni-like floor cleaner at work. After that they started prepping for my surgery and starting to anesthetize when the dental assistant informed me that I should be taking time off work, that I shouldn’t exercise at all for at least a week, antibiotics, no caffeine, no spicy food, no solid foods, no cold stuff, no hot stuff, prescription pain killers, etc., I asked them where all the talk about it being like nothing at all went, and they basically said that it’s to make people relax, and it’s not a real ass-busting surgery, but it’s still surgery. I thought a bit about saying that I couldn’t go through with it now, but I didn’t, so they did their thing.

If you put on a blindfold and hold a plate with a gristly steak on it and get someone else to cut the steak up, you’ll totally know the difference between the knife pushing while not getting through and actually cutting, even though you don’t have any nerves in the steak. It’s the same when they’re taking stuff out of the roof of your mouth. You can’t feel the cut directly, but you can still feel it.

After some suturing, they put this junk called packing—which, near as I can tell, is pink marine caulking—over the incisions, hand over a stack of prescriptions and give you a sheet of all the stuff to do and not do.

I went home and packed in a dopey state. I forgot some stuff, but not too much.

I’ve been blathering on for a while, so let’s recap. There was no snow visible in the Bombi Pass highway cam, where the trip starts. There’d been two weeks of cold, sunny weather to make a perfectly baked crust, Birgit was sick and at risk for pneumonia, I’d just had surgery and wasn’t supposed to even go to work. Devlin’s 11. There wasn’t going to be much white, but there would be lots of green. We reviewed all of the above and decided that green means go, left work early and started enthusiastically driving towards the waiting underbrush.

I guess I should mention something about the trip. The Bonnington Traverse is 45 km and goes from Bombi Pass, just south of Castlegar, to Porto Rico (yes, that’s how they spell that Porto Rico) which is between Nelson and Salmo. There’s three huts en route—Grassy, Steed and Copper. The route follows a horseshoe path to stay as high as possible, but all of the mountains still have trees on the top. The first three days aren’t supposed to be challenging at all, while the fourth has three significant summits (Territory, Colony and Empire) which have increasingly sharp ridges between them.

The drive out was mainly uneventful, except I hucked up. I’ve never gotten carsick before in my life, so I’m blaming the surgery. We stopped near Paulson Summit, between the internationally-famous Christina Lake and Castlegar, and set up camp in a cross-country ski area parking lot. The chlorhexidine mouthwash is decidedly more unpleasant after the surgery than before.

Saturday morning we ate in Castlegar, drove in some circles because I wasn’t on the ball, bought some gas-station sunglasses to make up for the ones I forgot, and then went up to Bombi Pass. There’s a parking lot right at the pass that you normally ski from, but the road was totally bare, and the forecast was dry. We decided that we’d feel dumb if it snowed and we couldn’t get the cars out. We agreed to all potentially feel dumb together and drove up about 6 km before starting to hike, and reached enough snow to start skinning before the road ended.

Optomisits

Vincent had new poles that he was proud of because they cost him $20 at Canadian Tire instead of more money at some place that sells non-ornamental poles. He lost one of the baskets in the first kilometre of snow.

Just as we got to the ridge overlooking the hut, we met dogs. Shortly afterwards we met the owner, who turned out to be the huts guy for the Kootenay Mountaineering Club, and we talked about the joys of hut maintenance and the things that people do, while scratching dogs. The ski down to the hut was fairly eventful, and most of the events were rocks.

We arrived at Grassy quite early and had plenty of time to talk and play Bananagrams. The table at Grassy has cracks large enough to drop Bananagrams tiles through, which adds an extra challenge. Somehow we survived.

View from Grassy Hut

Devlin, Dave, Birgit and Vince in front of Grassy Hut

Sunday started out pretty good. It was blue skies, but cold enough to not get soggy, and after a brief struggle to get up to the ridge the skinning stayed mainly easy until we pulled the skins off to ski down the shoulder of Grassy to the next col. It was super crusty, with logs and brush everywhere. We thrashed down at a pace that was definitely slower than the skin up. After doing a fair bit of jibbing and patterning our bases, things got to where we couldn’t really slide anymore, so we started skinning.

It looked like the descent of Grassy would be interesting (Photo: Birgit)

Further down on Grassy (photo: Birgit)

Rather that waxing poetic about the brush, I’ll just point out that three of us lost parts off our skins. We eventually emerged onto a road, at the col between Grassy and Siwash S4. The route is supposed to go up Siwash S4, but the whole ridge had as much rock as snow, so none of us were inclined to do it when there was a logging road with at leas some snow going around it. We had lunch, which for me was a round of camembert. I’d picked up a round of soft cheese for lunch each day on account of the gums. I was a little worried that after 330 g of camembert that I’d have had enough, but I downed it like a champ.

More optimism (photo: Dave)

We descended the logging road until we ran out of snow, then cut across a clearcut to where we could see more snow-covered road. This avoided the bare road but got us off the main road and eventually condemned us to a skis-off bushwhack from the end of the last clearcut to the col between Siwash S4 and Siwash. After a relatively non-heinous thrash, we reached the col and got back onto the road as it was starting to get dusky.

Alex bushwhacking (photo: Birgit)

Devlin was getting quite tired as we left the road again, to go up Siwash to Steed Hut. The last 1.7 km would have been a snap under decent conditions, but the snowpack was quite thin, and there were several large boulder fields that required substantial acrobatics to get over. The final bowl was crusty enough that we couldn’t stomp through it, and side-hilling up in the dark was both nerve-wracking and tedious. Devlin accused me of forcing him to go on the trip, so I pointed out that I asked him if he wanted to do it and he just said yes. He objected that he didn’t know it was going to be this bad and said that he was never going to ski again and made a variety of discontented non-verbal utterances.

Crusty times (photo: Birgit)

By now Vincent had lost both baskets from his economical poles, and they were bent into a variety of interesting shapes.

Near the ridge top, Dave, who had been doing the majority of trail breaking, resorted to taking the skis off. Some post holing got us to the ridge top, and after a disconcerting festival of crust and rocks, we got into the trees and had a relaxing final skin to the hut.

Dave, Vincent and Alex were still eager to keep going, but the rest of us had doubts for various reasons. Devlin was pissed off until he got some food in him, Birgit’s lungs were not happy in the cold night air despite her wearing this special air warming mask, and I was raising the spectre of it being too icy to proceed halfways through the last day, where there’s steep ridges and a long final descent, and then what? Backtrack for 3.5 days? Some looking at the map convinced us that there were some tedious but not impossible options for bailing, so we decided to keep going.

Vincent and Birgit by Steed Hut

The next day started off surprisingly well, again clear weather and crusty snow, but there was more of it, and much less bush. We got to a col connecting to the logging road network within a couple of hours. That was the decision point for us. Birgit wanted to continue but decided that her lungs had had enough. Devlin, with a night of sleep and food in his belly, was firmly in the keep going camp, so we split up. Birgit and Vincent were going to head down the logging roads and try to connect to the highway. The rest of us were going up the ridge and onwards. Birgit and Vincent kindly volunteered to drop one of their party in Castlegar and use their car to pick the rest of us up at the end of the traverse. They made their escape under a hail of gunfire. Apparently it’s somewhat disturbing to be in the woods below the snow around Castlegar during hunting season.

Alex and Dave at the col where Vincent and Birgit had to bail. Valhallas in the backbround. (photo: Birgit)

We headed up the ridge. As usual for the trip, going up wasn’t bad, but going down was a mess. Exiting the ridge was steep—an absolute brush-fest, logs clear of the snow all over the place, all the rocks, more brush, more rocks and always the crust. Looking back, that was the crux of the trip. After a number of hours we covered 1.5 km and connected with a logging road. During this period Devlin decided that he’d made the wrong decision and should have bailed. The standard route is supposed to drop down to where there’s no snow at all and head up a bowl on Copper, which was mostly bare on the bottom half. The road didn’t go there, and it looked heinous. Following the road led us left and up a consistently snowed line high onto Copper. The potential problem was that there was a reasonably sharp ridge between the standard line to the hut and what we were doing. Were we going to get stuck trying to get over ridge and have a terrible bivy?

Devlin and me heading up towards Copper (photo: Dave)

Things were thankfully anticlimactic. The thrash up wasn’t bad, and there were even snowshoe tracks for a few hundred metres, and switchbacking up the ridge took a bunch of kick turns, but it wasn’t bad at all. Devlin was singing all the way to the hut and decided that he was glad he didn’t bail after all. It was a welcome contrast to the night before.

Dusk falls as we head up Copper

At the hut Dave started investigating his feet. I saw some of one foot, and it was missing an Africa-shaped region of skin, but judging by how much duct tape he used on the rest of his feet, I think he was missing all the continents.

The last day is supposed to be the crux, and it would have been if the snow conditions were the same as the previous days. Thankfully it was snowing considerably, and having a couple inches of fresh but dense snow on the crust made a huge difference. The first few kilometres were up to the ridge line and up to Territory Peak.

Dave, Alex and Devlin heading up the ridge to Territory

We’d been trying to contact Birgit’s inReach and had been failing. Eventually we got a message from Iva saying that Birgit’s inReach was dead but that we could message her phone, as she was back in civilization.

After a short descent from Territory, we went up Colony Peak and then had to take the skis off, as the next ridge line was fairly knife-edge and rocky. I had been breaking trail up to that point on account of Dave’s feet, but he headed out along the ridge while I was strapping Devlin’s and my skis to my pack. Under the crust, it was a mess of totally loose facets hiding boulders below. It was hard not to lose a leg down the holes between the rocks, and judging by the track I was following, this was much more of a problem for my fat ass than for anyone else.

Devlin and Alex heading down from Colony

Dramatic rock at the col between Colony and Territory

Dave, Alex and Devlin almost done the boot packing

When we were finally able to put skins on, things went easily to the summit of Empire. We then had to drop about 650 m to get to the lake and logging road. During the first part, on the fresh snow, Alex went as far as saying “This is actually fun!” That changed as we went further down, and both Dave and I broke buckles off of our boots.

Vincent picked us up at the end of the trip, which was rather exciting in the snow, because Birgit’s car’s tires are made out of hockey puck. While Vincent was doing the pickup, Birgit was learning about Doukhobor culture in the Castlegar library, until an author event started. It was a local author, and everyone knew everyone else there, except Birgit. That didn’t stop her from asking a bunch of questions, though.

Birgit taking a nap (photo: Vincent)