Day 0
Flea and Slov were on the highway south from Calgary, headed to Waterton and the start of the Great Divide Trail. They’d been driving a couple hours and there was still no sight of the Rockies, which were obscured by a low haze somewhere to the west. The vast Canadian prarie gave no sign it was about to rupture. The car crested a slight ripple in the ground, what seemed a routine undulation, and the horizon splintered into a high, jagged line. The mountains looked levered up from the depths of the earth, which is more or less the case: the debris of of an ancient world heaved up for our meek perusal. Here were the Rockies, then. They extended hundreds and hundreds of kilometres in either direction to form the great, furrowed brow of North America. 

Flea and Slov were in the custody of John, a trail angel who did the GDT in bits and pieces back in the 90’s when it was just motley scraps of trail. John had put them up in his place for 3 nights in Calgary, so they could undergo the harrowing organisational undertaking of resupply: assembling 70-odd kilograms of food to send to strategic points where their path through the mountains would intersect with civilisation. As if that weren’t enough, John then drove them the three hours to Waterton, dispensing an edifying history of Canada en route. On the way, they passed windfarms packed dense as grass.

In Waterton, on the flanks of the mountains, there was fine brown fur of dead trees, the residue of the forest after the devastating fire of 2017. Waterton itself is a chink in the rock pried out by a big chisel. There are lakes and rivers aplenty. The rivers feed into the Pacific, via the Columbia River, the Atlantic, via the Mississippi, and the Arctic, via the Saskatchewan. The mountains which now vaunt at 3000 metres over these waters were once a seabed. They are sedimentary, with the occasional splash of lava thrown in. The layers of sediment put one in mind of tree rings. A glance which takes in the base of a mountain and is lifted to the summit sees a billion years pass. Here is the accreted matter of aeons, fleshed out one mote of earth at a time.  Numberless grains of dust and sand percolated down through the deep waters and were compressed into mudstone, red and yellow and green.

The boys pitched tents at the Waterton campground and inaugurated the trip with some beans and rice, with four eggs thrown in to help frontload a few carbs.

Day 1
Distance: 16km
Elevation: +600-100
Swims: 1

Waterton townsite to the border and then up to Bertha lake.

After yesterday’s fine weather, the boys awoke to hail. From Slov’s vantage on his belly, looking under his tent’s skirt, it seemed as if the hail were popcorn springing from the ground. The famous Chinook winds ripped through and made off with a few poorly pitched tents.

The boys waited till the afternoon when the weather slackened and then paced the 6kms from the townsite to the border. There, Flea insisted on a ritual swim. They plunged in and shivered on the beach with as much pomp and ceremony as they could muster. Thus began the GDT in earnest—1100 something kilometres through the Canadian Rockies—and the boys starting as they mean to finish, shivering uncontrollably in the lashing wind and rain.

Afterwards, it was up to Bertha lake. Bertha isn’t strictly on the trail, but as Flea and Slov are meeting a friend in Coleman (the first town) in ten days time, they have time to kill with extra add ons. They were rewarded for their minor exertions with a most delectable iteration of Flea’s famous PB Satay, enriched with wasabi peas and honey roasted sesame nuts—it really brought the flavors of Asia to life.

Day 2
Distance: 8km
Elevation: +750-750
Swims: 2
Up Bertha Peak and back down and around the lake.

Flea and Slov scampered up Bertha Peak  (2454m) in the morning. The previous day’s hail, lashing rain and high winds had scrubbed the sky to a clear blue polish. Atop the peak, views into Glacier, USA, and up the spine of the Canadian Rockies. Back at the lake, a swim. Slov said it was nice to be here. Flea said it was nice to be.

And then lunch. Just as they were wiping the last of the Nandos Periperi mayonnaise off their proverbial plates Flea cried “Bear!” and sure enough there was a black bear on the lake edge, about 40 metres away. It took a fish from the lake while Slov took pictures. It loped off and immediately afterward, onto the lake edge, came another bear! Brown (but another black—a “cinnamon bear”, said Flea, who looked, in his Nigel Thornbury outfit, misleadingly like an expert.

Fortunately, the bears didn’t cause any disruption in the camp that night. A egregious instance of urinary indiscretion did, however. Slov was quietly reading the opening chapters of Don Quixote, not bothering anybody, when he heard the unmistakable sound of urine issuing from an overfull bladder. He lifted his gaze from Cervantes’ ironic prose and saw, to his utter disbelief, an incriminating dribble of pee meandering quite unabashedly under the skirt of his tent fly, toward his sleeping mat. He cried out incredulously, “surely that’s not piss!” Flea affirmed it was so in such a maddeningly nonchalant tone that Slov nearly skewered him with his hiking pole then and there, like a human kebab for grizzlies. He said, “I’m just using the piss porch. It’s the thru-hiking lifestyle.” Slov said that pissing into your friend’s tent made a mockery of human decency, thru-hiking or no. Flea said, “it was only a little bit.” Several moments passed. “It’s basically just water.”

Slov quaffed a liter of water and debuted his own piss porch that night, to Flea’s horror. He nevertheless dared take the moral high ground. “Vengefulness is not a quality you want to cultivate, bro.”

Day 3
Distance: 30km
Elevation: +1300-1400
Swims: 4
Times Flea said “this looks like Grizzly country”: 5

An early start—5:30am. Beautiful light filling the valley like the amber hues of treasured whisky in a crystal tumbler. Flea and Slov trotted down toward Waterton, basking in the silence, punctuated only by the occasional “Heeyyy Bear!” as they turned the blind corners.

This place, Slov thought, fired up by a few too many chocolate covered coffee beans, is a conspiracy of rock and water. Mountains carved and pleated like kilts. And fire—the fire that torched the forest and the fire of the Earth’s core that bears the continents on its back. The Pacific plate and the North American plate meet here and are smooshed. And wind, too, which fairly hurtles through what was, a thousand million years ago, a seabed subject to the analogous passage of the currents.

Everywhere the vegetation a hip high rug of neon green, springing from the ashes of the former forest. The burnt trees lent the place a gothic feel. They’re a mix of charred black and bone white. Some look like enormous spent matchsticks. Many are short and bent nearly parallel with the ground, all in the same direction, like pikes in an ancient fortification.

Fairly big day. Flea and Slov made it up an impressive valley system on the Carthew-Alderson Trail to the (frankly, blockbuster) Carthew Pass. The GDT didn’t waste any time with foreplay, was the general consensus. Across the border, which split the valley before us, the mountains of Glacier National Park protruded impressively from the bedrock. The peaks capped huge amphitheaters of stone, each a near perfect semi circle bottomed out by a lake of surpassing blueness. And what drama is fit to be staged in amphitheaters as grand as these? Not even the masterworks of the three great Athenian tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides—only the implacable ruck and roil of Geology, the clamour of tectonic plates as they jockey for position, the salty profusion of the seas and their dusty demises, vacuumed up by heat and haze, the deep gouging glaciers and the long slow scapels of the rivers knifing through the uplifted fringes of the continents.

The boys dunked themselves in the frigid waters of many a lake, each milked from the snow this week or last. Rolled up at Akamina Camp at 7:30.

Day 4
Distance: 20km
Elevation: +-1350
Swims: 2
HBPH: 15

Akamina Camp up Akamina Ridge, off to Forum peak, and down back to Akamina Camp.

Deer in the camp overnight, skittering around. Slov was drowsy, near sleep, when something sent them off—a person moving slowly around camp in heavy hiking boots. The heavy-treaded hiker came up quite close to Slov’s tent and he thought, in his disordered pre-sleep way, they were trying to pitch their tent next to him. Then he remembered there were allocated tent pads. And there weren’t any others that close. Their hiking boots were really heavy. And the breathing, too, which had a husky, growly timbre. Ok, too close, right up against Slov’s tent fly, sniffing, breathing that horroble heavy moist breath. Slov called a very wobbly “hullo?” pulled off the safety on his bearspray, unzipped his bug net on the right hand side and pointed the mace pathetically at the point in the tent fly where the breathing seemed to be coming from—about 40cm from his head. A long few moments passed, and it became very clear to a certain Slovenly Loafer that a) he likes life very much and is not interested in dying just yet, b) death, when it inevitably comes, ideally would not come in the form of the yawning maw of an apex predator and, c) tent fabric is rather thin. Slov called out to Flea, reposing in his tent 10 metres away, “Is that a bear?” and he replied, dismissively, “it’s just a bear bro.” Oh, Slov thought. I’m supposed to play it cool. Maybe this sort of thing happens all the time. The bear huffed, seemingly jolted by the calling, shifted its weight, and started walking off. It felt to Slov like a doctor had just administered a very potent, fast acting relaxant. He withdrew his trembling hand and began to push the safety back on the cannister when he realized that the bear wasn’t moving off, it was moving around the tent to investigate the other side. He unzipped the bugnet on the left side of his tent and once again aimed the spray. He figured if the bear started pushing on the tent, he’d have to unzip the fly and let loose with the mace, probably getting most of it on the fly and on himself. At least, he reasoned, I’ll be a very unappealing meal once I’ve been thusly sauced. It was a lot of faith to put in a chemical agent that was spelt almost exactly the same as capsicum, which he’d actually had in his dinner and enjoyed. But the bear moved off, taking it’s terrifyingly ponderous gait past Flea’s tent and down the embankment. Slov was too petrified to open the tent and watch it move off.

The next morning, after a sleep that probably won’t go down as one of the all time greats, Slov immediately broached the bear topic with Flea. He looked at him, incredulous. “What bear?” Slov stared, aghast at what he took at first blush to be perhaps the most brazen attempt at gaslighting since the moon-landing conspiracy was first disseminated. “You even said it was a bear!” He cried. Flea’s mouth formed a little ‘o’. “Ohhh, nah bro, I said it’s just a deer…” In a friendship which has for many years been bouyed along by an assiduous commitment to clear communication, this was a travesty. Slov recounted the evidence: the heavy breathing, the heavier footfall, the uncanny Paleolithic knowing that something large and possessed of tooth and claw was in the extremely immediate proximity. Flea looked doubtful, but lightly disguised it.

The pair were lined up to do another side trip today: the Akamina Ridge. They set off in silence. The burnt out forest, with its dense, tall undergrowth, felt eerie in the hour before the light touched it. Under the heady influence of bear-paranoia, it seemed capable of disguising a whole herd of grizzlies. The tops of stumps, brown foliage, big rocks, all at first glance seemed incontrovertibly bear shaped. It was like a real-time game of where’s Wally, with higher stakes. “It could have been a stag, maybe?” Flea said, after his lengthy silent deliberation. “They’d have a heavier breath and footfall”. “Uh huh”, said Slov, pointing at a pile of bear scat on the trail so fresh it was practically steaming. The boys slowed their pace and got the mace out. 30 metres further they found the defector having a post poo forage in the tall vegetation—an adolescent Grizzly, according to the dubious authority of amateur zoologist Flea. They backed away slowly, shouting friendly things. The bear barely acknowledged them, a grunt at most. Typical teenage behaviour.

Slov felt vindicated but was gracious enough not to go on about it.

Akamina Ridge, being a loop, was accessible from another direction, so they went that way instead. On the climb up to Forum Lake through dense, unburnt forest, the HBPH (“Hey Bear”s per hour) hit record highs, with approximately 20 calls in the space of as many minutes. The prospect of bear encounters discourages the sort of distracted rumination which is usually a hallmark of the hiking mind. Requisite caution manifests as a kind of alert mindfulness. Maybe, Slov thought, his mind wandering, the sonambulance which is everywhere visible in the modern world corresponds to the degree to which we are at a remove from the jeopardies which were a reality of pre-agricultural society.

A swim in the glorious Forum Lake reestablished the day on good footing, although there was a horde of blood-crazed bugs awaiting Flea and Slov when they exited. These bugs included two types of biting fly, a small black fly and also the dreaded Horsefly, which is of monstrous proportions (relative to regular flies), capable of taking whole chunks out of you, and has an arrogant demeanor besides.

They were pursued by the swarm during the steep ascent, unable to maintain sufficient speed to leave behind the rabid insects. Only once they gained the ridge, through some mild scrambling, did the signature blast of Waterton wind do away with them. A stunning trip along the tops, with a truly spectacular ensemble of peaks, all over the border, which ran its imaginary course through the valley below, dead straight like nothing else in view. Of Waterton’s many fine qualities, its most meritable may be that it offers up terrific views of Glacier National Park.

On the route back they passed by Wall Lake and found a half dozen kids ranging from 5 to 11. They were equipped with several plastic fishing rods about a meter long with a casting distance of only a few times that. Nevertheless, they’d caught three fish. One had had it’s head flattened by a cherubic 7 year old who sported golden curls of the sort that one would think might disqualify a person from bashing heads in with rocks. Another was in the process of being gutted by a skinny boy with a knife nearly as long as his forearm. The last was dangling haplessly from one of the afirementioned rods, a little neon pink number. An ignoble way to go for any fish.

Back at camp it was hot. With the forest reduced to sticks the only shade was being cast by the bear boxes so the boys sought refuge there. Flea, unrelieved, lay down in the muddy creek bottom. Slov got a blood nose. Somehow managed to get blood on his shorts and hat both. It is the fate of all his clothing, to be bled on. Bled on, and then lost—his talent for bleeding noses is exceeded only by his talent for losing possessions. He is used to it. Things aren’t really his, per se, they’re just passing through on their way to more secure ownership.

As he was wiping vasilene in the offending nostril (a trick suggested by friend Tamara), a party of three approached. Party in both senses of the word. Two rangey, long haired ginger men, with matching goatees and a woman with dark hair who did not have a goatee. The goateed ones introduced themselves thus: “Hey! You guys got a cigarette? No? Thank you.” A small bow. “We don’t smoke. Not since we started this hike.”

Everyone exchanged names and itineraries. For reasons that will become clear, we’ll refer to them as M1 and M2 (the boys), and A. Hearing about Flea and Slov’s recent bout of COVID, one of the M’s said, “you know what cures COVID? Edibles and Ketamine.” This was vigorously affirmed by the other M. M2: “We move medicine to the people, so it’s always around. Slov: “you guys are in pharmaceutical distribution?” M1: “We sell drugs. DMT, specifically. We make batches of 18 pounds at a time. A gram of that stuff does 20 hits.” M2: if you’ve done DMT in Canada, or even America, there’s a good chance it’s ours. A decent chunk ends up in Europe, and China too, actually.

Day 5
Distance: 20km
Elevation: +1700-1500
Swims: 1

The next morning, Flea and Slov started the slog up Mt Rowe, described as the single hardest ascent on the GDT. It followed the cut line of the BC/Alberta border straight up the flank. The fires had mercifully cleared a lot of the deadfall described in the guide, however, and they polished it off without recourse to expletives.

Along the top they followed a wispy trail along a tortured ridge littered with red mudstone, which, post fire, looked like mishappen soot-stained bricks. These cottage rai. lay between charred stumps and trunks, which were softened by innumerable bouquets of wild flowers, clumped amidst the ravaged earth. Their legs, brushing through the remains of the forest, themselves accumulate ash, so that it looks like they’ve suffered a botched persecution at the stake.

Over the ridge on the Tamarack Trail, an extinguished forest covers the valley, thousands of fallen trees, visible through the torched canopy, lay strewn on the ground. One for every two still rooted. From this vantage, 2500m up, it looks like a stack of kindling scattered in a gale.

A pause to put electrolytes in the water—of which they carry several liters, this section not having any place to refill. Flea roots around enthusiastically up one of the legs of his shorts. “Checking for ticks. Classic tick spot, right around the base of the sack.”

A grunt up Festubert Peak past steep chutes stuffed with ratty snow, like nostrils plugged with tissue, and then a few hours to Twin Lakes for the evening—two more lakes in a sequence so fine it would be hubris to attempt to enumerate them and extol each in the manner and degree it deserves. In them, fish snatching bugs off the surface so often it seems like the water is boiling. On the rocks around the lake, rival empires of lichen bedecked in black, grey, green and orange.

The boys ate and then hastily pitched during a surprise rain, accompanied by a few flashes of lightning, cozying up together under Slov’s fly. A great day.

Day 6
Distance: 16km
Elevation: +800-700
Swims: 0 😦

A leisurely morning, incorporating some meditation, reading and writing. A short day on the cards. Horses on this section, their hoof marks like a repetitive alphabet composed only of u, c, and n punctuated every kilometre or so by a hefty dump.

Slov, while discoursing pompously about some aspect of the Classical world, took a tree to the head. Another followed soon after, but with the blow derived from a gas rather than a solid—the injured party likening Flea’s fart to being slapped in the face by the foetid carcass of a rodent two weeks dead.

An otherwise mild day. Pitched at Scarpe pass below the afeared La Coulette Ridge system, and drew water from a mossy spring near camp. Midway through dinner—an exquisite Middle-Eastern cous cous number—Flea let off an abrupt “Hey Bear!” The bear proved to be a hiker, Jason, a fellow in his 40s. He had the handsome-everyman countenace of Russell Crowe and a voice that was to the ear what lacquered mahogany is to the hand.

The boys squeezed into their tents for another meditation, disrupted by the cracking of trees, which they nervously chalked up to their new acquaintance perhaps getting firewood, and snuggled in to sleep.

Day 7
Distance: 15km
Elevation: +1300-1400 Swims: 1

In the morning Jason said he’d kind of hoped it was the boys doing the snapping of the branches. Hmm. Fortunately, their Ursack (a kevlar reinforced sack impervious even to bears) with all the food, remained unmolested.

Jason went to get water from the mossy trickle and came back with reports of fresh bear scat. “Looks like it came out of an asshole about this big.” He made a little circle with his forefinger and thumb. “Probably an adolescent sphincter.”

Hopefully, everyone agreed, some respite from the bears will be found at the projected campsite for tonight, the  innocuously named Grizzly Lake.

Flea and Slov set off up La Coulette Ridge at 6:40am, hoping to get as much of the arduous climb(s) done before before the sun could lay its hot hands on their shoulders. Soon, however, the time came, urged upon them by immoderate consumption of dark chocolate covered coffee beans, to leave some fresh scat of their own.

Around them, as they squatted in unison, a riot of new buds emerging from fecund soil no longer laden with snow. The sun slanting across the ridge, plucking their hunched shadows and casting them way down to the valley below.

Relieved of their colonic burdens, the boys fairly hurtled up the slope, summiting La Coulette just before 9:30. Atop, flies diligently vacuumed up the banquet of sweat with thier long, leg-like mouths, dabbing at the persperational elixir with enthusiasm equal to that which the boys brought to their chocolate almond snacks.

The Barnaby Ridge alternate was up next—20+ kms along the tops with a few niggly scrambles thrown in for fun. Some super saucy wraps aided their passage, but the calories were nevertheless wasted. Flea and Slov, navigationally challenged even when equipped with map compass and two phone GPS, made a wrong turn at the only junction and unnecessarily summited an off trail peak. When they made it down to Grizzly Lake in the evening it took all of three seconds to disrobe and pitch themselves onto its heavenly waters. 

Jason arrived an hour or so later. Together they made a fire and spoke of life.

Day 8
Distance: 15km
Elevation: +1400-1500
Swims: 0 :'((((

Food, the boys agreed, was running low. Jason suggested they boil their rubbish, make a soup. A somewhat meagre brekkie topped up with a handfull of chip crumbs and a couple choc almonds and they set off. A dense fog encircled them, a blank canvas for their imagination, views-wise. As they picked their way along the ridge, squirrels emerged, hands clasped in prayer.

Gradually, the sky lifted its skirt, revealing the splayed Rockies in their manifold glory. Everywhere saddles and passes formed wide crooked smiles in the sky. Back over La Coulette, a huge canopy of cumulus, like the ghost of the former forest to heaven ascended. To the east, a goose down duvet spread across the supine form of the prairie. The boys, lacking nutrition, could not be said to be starved of spiritual sustenance.

Atop Barnaby they found a pink summit registry box containing a notebook with a strange message, a condom, a small bottle of Fireball whisky, a pink buttplug and a tube containing “3 weed cigarettes, keep out of reach of children.” Well out of reach, one supposes.

A grind in the afternoon, Flea’s knee playing up. He quaffed some ibuprofen (known on trail as vitamin I) and the boys resolved to push on. Clouds approached. The knee gave on an exposed ridge coming down from Barnaby Lake. Flea checked the forecast on the satellite phone: 20% rain. They pitched a tent, provisionally, and immediately after a few fat drops fell. “That rain?” Flea said. Several minutes pass, and the rain falls. “Sure sounds like rain.” It was followed by thunder and lightning, which, mercifully, declined to impose directly.

Day 9
Distance: 48kms
Elevation: +1500 -2000
Swims: 1

The boys were rewarded for their early start with a rosy alpenglow. 50kms lay between Flea and Slov and the township of Coleman. These were alleged to be the least scenic and most walkable miles of the section, and they had basically run out of food, so they determined to do the lot. A liberal dose of ibuprofen accompanied breakfast and they set off at a pacy 5km an hour.

Flea’s knee worsened but held. Slov perspired gratuitously. Talk of ice cream quickened the footfall. In their haste, they went the wrong way and ended up in the township of Blairmore, 5kms down the road from their intended destination.

At the supermarket Slov made a grave strategic error and purchased a 2L of dark cherry flavour ice-cream, for which he will ever atone. They valiantly ate as much of the sickly concoction as their stomachs and palattes would allow. “We must”, Flea said, “for the cows.” And so it was with the warmest thoughts for their bouvine friends that Flea and Slov did finish Section A of the GDT. 165kms and 22000 metres of elevation gain and loss lay behind them. The question now was where to sleep.