Day 39

On the last night of Section E, Flea tossed and moaned in the prophetic throes of a dream. In it, he felt the faltering of feeble limbs, the sharp complaint of injury and the dull ache of hunger. He bore ceaseless rain, felt mud sucking at his feet, and saw an untrafficked forestry service road wending its purgatorial way to nowhere. But the day broke with a wide gold smile and Flea shrugged off his night terrors. He and Slov traipsed down the last part of the Skyline trail and cut across the wide Athabasca valley to Jasper. In accordance with their famously exacting standards of hygiene, they rinsed themselves in a lake enroute.

The boys checked into their hostel around midday and were ushered into a small, stifling cell with six bunks. They were to share these quarters with four lads from Manchester with gel in their hair and scoring drugs on their minds. The lads’ muted response to Flea and Slov’s arrival made clear that, despite their ablutions at the lake, they were still less than ideal bunkmates from an odiferous point of view. The boys dutifully submitted to their first shower in 500 kilometres and international relations subsequently improved. They even did their laundry—the first time this procedure had been possible since they’d soaked their clothes in a toilet sink at the end of Section B three weeks prior. Still sporting their shower towels, they put every scrap of washable fabric in a basin full of hot water, which immediately turned a silty grey-brown colour that brought to mind the faecal runoff of a dairy farm.

So it was, with their bodies and clothes perfumed and their cheeks agleam with pearly lustre, Flea and Slov reentered civilization. Civilisation! Sidewalks and selfies and saleable goods by the armful. People in neat-pressed clothes wafting fragrant aromas. Flower-beds, municipal buildings, bronze statues of venerable dead people and cars rolling past bright and hard as candy: all the rude jostle of urban life. 

Jasper has more outdoor stores per capita than just about anywhere else in the world. Slov, who had finally succumbed to the imperious dictates of fashion and decided to trade in his malformed wide brim hat for something less overtly comical, ventured into one. After a quarter of an hour of painstaking deliberation, he chose a cap fortified with a generous sun-flap. At the counter, he was greeted by an old lady with long, frizzy grey hair who looked a little like Badjelly the Witch if she’d got into sports retail instead of child-abduction. Badjelly nodded matter-of-factly at Slov’s barbaric facial hair: at this point, his neckbeard would have done even Thoreau proud. “Been out in the hills have we?” 

Slov gave the affirmative, name-dropped the GDT with calculated nonchalance, and placed the cap on the counter. Badjelly took no notice: she was taking the measure of the warped wide brim. “Sweetie,” she said, “don’t you think that hat wants to finish the GDT with you?” Slov left the shop without making his purchase. He was touched. Touched, but also concerned about the shop’s long term fiscal viability if Badjelly continued to attribute sentimental feelings to old hiking apparel.

Flea, meanwhile, declined to replace his shoes, which were now 800kms old and begging to be retired. They’d been cut, slashed, wedged, crunched and scuffed to within an inch of their life and arguably looked even worse than Slov’s misshapen headgear. Alas, their pitilessly stingy owner was determined to put them to work one last time. 

Later that day, the boys rendezvoused with Washout. Their friend had hiked ahead the day prior, chalking up a very respectable 50kms along the Skyline trail and into Jasper—such are the perks of long legs. It was his birthday. He’d taken a cabin with his folks and brought the boys some of the delicious cake his Mum, Marilyn, had made, which the boys promptly inhaled. 

Day 40

Back at the hostel, their narrow, unventilated bunkroom proved to be poorly designed for sleeping but quite serviceable as an all-night sauna experience. The pampering didn’t stop there. The next day, Washout took them to some thermal hot springs in his folks car. Muscles softened in the sulphurous waters, the trio readied themselves for the final push: 235 kms or so to Kakwa Lake through the most rugged and remote terrain of the GDT, followed by a mandatory 30km walk to the Bastille Creek Trailhead. If you didn’t score a ride, you could expect an additional 74kms of forestry service road to get to Highway 16. The service road itself is muddy and rutted and unfriendly to all but the most redneck-worthy of SUVs. Fortunately for the boys, Washout’s old buddy from the Pacific Crest Trail, Dropzone, was endowed with just such a vehicle. He had generously offered to meet them at Bastille in 10 days time.

Day 41

Much as they had enjoyed their unsolicited sauna, Flea and Slov were too stingy to pay for another night at the hostel, so they pitched their tents on the adjoining grassy verge under cover of nightfall. The next day, Marilyn, who was nearly as tall as Washout and haloed with bright blond curls, dropped the trio off at the trailhead. (The unprincipled Flea and Slov had elected to skip the 21kms of road walking. Washout had slack-packed it the previous day.) Waving a teary goodbye, Marilyn enjoined the boys to look after her boy during the next ten days. This was funny, as Flea and Slov were barely capable of looking after themselves. 

The day’s walking to Miette River Camp passed without incident. There, in a grey drizzle over dinner, the boys presented Washout with his birthday present: a wheel of fine cheese with a poorly-rolled joint for a candle, a little bottle of whisky, and professions of brotherly love. Then darkness lay itself down in the trees and the friends fell asleep listening to the tuneless music of rain on trees and tents.

Day 42

It rained all night and continued, unnecessarily, into the morning. With the weight of ten days food forcing their feet deeper into the into the soupy earth, Washout and the boys made squelchingly slow progress. “We be schleppin’”, Flea observed sagely. Not for the first or last time, lunch was consumed under the pitifully meagre shelter of an anaemic spruce.

A wide grassy valley greeted them in the afternoon, with bunches of wildflowers scattered generously in every corner. Clouds were draped over the mountains like old wet towels left on the line. Slov asked Washout what he’d been reading on the trail. 

“I’m reading a book about bear attacks,” he said. 

“Jesus Christ” said Slov. 

By the time the trio made it to Colonel Camp that evening, they were sodden, hungry and knackered. This combination is not always conducive to fraternal harmony. That harmony was duly tested by what came to be known in hungrier days as the great Couscous Debacle of 2022. Flea was responsible for carrying and preparing the boy’s dinners. His better judgement was doubly compromised by his inordinate appetite and benighted legs, which counselled emptying as much of his packweight into the pot as possible. The result was a positively ludicrous quantity of couscous for dinner. Slov, for the first time on the whole trail, was incapable of finishing a meal. Flea’s stomach, which is the gastrointestinal equivalent of a black hole, absorbed the copious remainder, putting away something like a kilo of cous with barely a belch to show for it. Slov, unimpressed with his calorifically profligate hiking partner, sulked and nursed his overfull tum.

Day 43

The next morning, on a trail the precise colour and consistency of chocolate pudding, they climbed over Colonel Pass and dropped down into Moose Valley. Slov, who longed to see a moose (and was still sore from narrowly missing out on the intimate encounter Flea and the Spunky Monkey had with one back on Section C) expectantly scanned the area. Because he was so busy looking out for horned quadrupeds, he fell in a river. His electronics escaped the dunking unscathed, but the same could not be said for his dignity. 

Several dozen mid-thigh river crossings later, Flea and Washout were equally wet. The rain stopped. Then, after a hiatus that was barely worth the mistaken optimism it engendered, it started again. Washout and the boys adopted their now customary lunchtime posture, huddled and sodden, under the sieve-like shelter of another emaciated tree. Slov peeled off his socks to inspect the latest territorial acquisitions of his resurgent foot fungi.

After lunch, the trio wended their way up to a high camp just below Moose Pass, setting off little localised rain showers whenever they bumped a branch. Quiet prevailed. Three featherless bipeds on the trudge, tendons creaking, each mind fondling its cares in companionable silence. Then, Washout: “You know, I was feeling kind of depleted by work and the daily grind for a while there. I really needed something to fill my cup. The GDT has been so good.” 

The boys mmmned in agreement. The party lapsed again into a silence broken only by their footsteps, which, in the sucking mud, made sounds like a masticating swamp creature. A few minutes passed. It really was very wet.

“I’m feeling like my cup is pretty fucking full right now”, Washout concluded. 

They pitched camp just as the rain finally clocked off its three day shift. The surrounding mountains angled into low cloud dim with evening. Two porcupines appeared, looking like ambulatory brooms. They were cute for approximately two minutes, then they turned their attention to the tents, which they harried till the early hours of the morning, retreating with offensive nonchalance in the face of curses and shaking fists.

Day 44

Sleep deprived but in otherwise high spirits, the crew made its way over Moose Pass the next morning. Low cloud still clagged the views but it was nevertheless the first proper stint of rain-free walking since they left Jasper. Mid morning, they found a partially dismantled camp with four young hikers in a high degree of consternation. The group had set off the previous day from the Robson Visitor Centre to do Section F southbound and parked up for the night on the banks of Calumet Creek. They were preparing for bed when a couple of cougar cubs ran into the camp, got a fright, and scrambled up a tree right beside the tents. The cubs took up a doleful cry. Their mother soon appeared and began stalking around the campsite, growling the weird way they do, and pinning the young hikers in place. They were unable to put any distance between themselves and the cubs without getting closer to the mother patrolling the perimeter.

Night fell. Still the cubs mewed anxiously from the tree. There were occasional sounds of sticks cracking underfoot. Yellow eyes glinted intermittently in the dark. Eventually, the terrified friends resolved to curl up all in one tent together, say their prayers, and hope for the best. Inside the tent they lay paralysed with the fear of imminent disembowelment. Each one clutched a canister of bear spray. They slept unwillingly and in snatches. When they roused themselves early the next morning, however, the cubs and the mother were gone. 

Taking leave of the shell-shocked survivors, the trio made their way past the venerable Mount Robson, robed in a thick shroud of vapour. Its actual location was the subject of a dispute among the party. So it was that Washout & the boys, mired in mild bickering and geographical confusion, passed from Section F to G. They settled into their varied rhythms and continued up the Smoky river. Flea, uncharacteristically, strode out ahead. Washout of the Long Leg took his time bringing up the rear. A river crossing required tact but didn’t elevate the heart rate nearly as much as a big mammal in close proximity. And there was evidence that just such an animal was nearby, for the trail was besplattered at regular intervals with violent, red diarrhetic explosions—not so much scat as spray, which derived its colour and texture from half-digested berries that looked, in such an insalubrious context, positively haemorrhoidal. A bear, and a big one too. Late afternoon, walking in the middle of the group but out of earshot of either, Slov found a sizable print in the mud. Undaunted, he marched on, safe in the knowledge that if anyone was liable to bump into their berrylicious friend, it was Flea.

Fortunately, everyone made to Chown Creek Camp unmolested by tooth and claw. Beside the camp Smoky River rushed past with the eternal shush of water over rock. Washout declared himself knackered after footing the 35kms from Slide Camp; everyone was still burdened by many days worth of food. Equipment was doing it just as hard as the body. The soles and the upper of Flea’s shoes, for example, were showing signs of marital strain. He fingered the hole anxiously during a dinner of PB satay noodles. But Flea’s petty human concerns melted away like snow in spring when he went to fill his water bottle. The clouds had at last lifted to reveal, at the head of the valley, a mountain cut like a pyramid from the bedrock of deep time, piercing the purpling heavens and mantled with glaciers golden in the dwindling light. It was named, underwhelmingly, Mount Bess. Mount Chown next door got its name from a 19th century methodist minister apparently so upstanding he pledged to abstain from alcohol at the sober age of four.

Day 45

The glaciers from Bess and the teetotaling minister fed the Smoky River, which braided spectacularly down the wide valley. Somewhat less than spectacular was Flea and Slov’s painful, halting progress through its infernally cold waters the next morning. Their feet hurt so much that their nerve endings went on strike. Washout, a true Canadian, was entirely unperturbed. After the morning’s trials, section G relented and served up some easy walking. For about a kilometre. Then it plunged the hapless trio into lacerating thickets of willow and pine. Their difficulties intensified when they lost the so-called “trail”, which was certainly obscure and possibly only theoretical.

When they eventually found the trail again, winding steeply up the shoulder of Mount Bess, they were astonished to see a party of horse trekkers—four people and as many horses—edging their way down in the opposite direction. Kitted out with leather-tooled harnesses and accents from Texan to Swiss to equine, they said they’d trot to Waterton in a month. Theirs was the first ever attempt at a full equestrian thru-hike of the GDT. 

After lunch, just below Jackpine Pass, the boys set off in advance of Washout, hoping to hustle their way to the start of the Perseverance Alternate. Their energy was flagging, but they’d done almost every alternate since Waterton and wanted to be alternative to the bitter end. Bitter indeed it would prove to be. They gained Jackpine pass in the early afternoon and climbed onto a long, wide rolling ridge studded with limestone boulders where a few stoical marmots made their residence. The boys were detained by a cloud-haloed view of the terraced splendours of Mt Robson, still coquettishly obscuring the fullness of its figure in vaporous garments. Somewhat less inclined to coquetry, the boys stripped and had a long overdue bath in a shallow but pristine alpine tarn, flaunting their own, rather more modest geographical prominences. 

Refreshed, but not exactly reinvigorated, they trundled laboriously along the ridge, struggling to maintain the pace they’d need to position themselves for the big push on the Perseverance Route the next day. Flea’s shoes were now in a truly woeful state: the rift in the relations between upper and sole could no longer be ignored. Sticks and small stones were getting in and Flea’s feet were spilling out as he side-hilled down to the idyllic Blueberry Camp. This spot, nestled alongside a fabulously serene lake and ornamented with wildflowers, looked positively paradisiacal. The two boys stood there, waveringly. They were behind time. It was late and getting later. Sunset was trailing her golden hem across the great plains to the east and would soon gather her dress for the long, careful step across the Rockies. Flea surveyed the pleasant scene dejectedly. “I mean, it’s not that great here,” he said.

The lowering sun bathed the lake in gentle luminosity. Trees fringed the shore, rooted contentedly in the earth. Birds loosed clear notes into the stillness of the deepening eve. 

“Probably gets kinda buggy in the evenings,” Slov said.

Flea started walking. “Honestly, you couldn’t pay me to camp here.” 

“A truly godforsaken hell hole of a camp,” Slov agreed. 

They set off into the weary dusk to complete the last few kilometres to the junction of the high route—5 kms short of where they’d hoped. After they pitched their tents, Flea attempted to repair his shoes. After half an hour and enough cotton thread to make pajamas for a dormouse, his footwear was looking vaguely fit for purpose once again. Meanwhile, Slov had prepared their 20th iteration of beans and rice, which, as always, inspired rhapsodic praise. Every time, without fail, it was as if their tastebuds had died and gone to Tex-Mex heaven. They reached dizzying heights of culinary sublimity: the salt, upon which empires have been built and whole armies been paid; the muscle building proteins; the particulate fats in the cheese powder; the warm bite of the chilli flakes—all combined on the ravening palates of two exhausted mammals to produce sensations that can only be described in the vocabulary usually reserved for the divine.

Day 46

The next morning the sun rayed out in purple and pink and the boys clambered up the first of what would be many punishing ascents of the day. The Perseverance High Route was reputedly one of the most challenging GDT alternates and some alleged it took one and a half or even two times longer than the regular route. It added an additional 3000+ metres of elevation gain and involved some exposed scrambling. On the trail app, Adventure Muffin warned fellow wayfarers: “Before you follow the sirens and their promise of scenic amazement, you may want to consider…” before enumerating at length its manifold difficulties. Unlike Odysseus, however, Flea and Slov were no match for sirens and, with the giddy optimism that has always led to their greatest follies, they set off.

Having failed to make any head-way the previous day, they needed to polish off the whole route in one day to stay on track. According to the estimates of previous hikers, this was borderline delusional. If they failed, they’d fall behind Washout, run out of food, and Slov (who was not stoical in the slightest on an empty stomach) would probably have to fire up the PLB and get airlifted to the nearest supermarket. 

After the mellow angles and hospitable terrain of the previous day, the Perserverance alternate immediately felt different. The boys picked their way carefully up and down steep slopes littered with tectonic refuse. The sun mounted its fiery chariot and its team of horses licked the cracked rocks with hot, rasping tounges. The boys’ feet drummed stone, progressing slowly from one fractured boulder to another. Midday approached. They sweated their way around the armpit of a wide, cliffy valley and then scampered up to the day’s second pass. There they found an unnamed tarn and gratefully plunged in.

Feeling better, the boys dried themselves on some wide, flat lake-side rocks before wolfing down their lunch wraps. Lying there in a post-prandial daze, Slov asked Flea what the point of thru-hiking was. Not because he was feeling jaded. All morning he had felt a nameless celestial satisfaction that belied the discomforts of their bruising terrestrial passage. Flea, repository of bad smells and wise pronouncements both, regularly furnished edifying answers to these vague, looming sort of questions. Whether he procured those answers from within the labyrinthine folds of his brain or his equally labyrinthine bowels, Slov knew not. 

People don’t thru-hike because it’s a uniformly pleasant experience—anyone with that expectation will be promptly disillusioned. Certainly, thru-hiking has its moments. The cool, full-body lick of an alpine tarn after sweating over the sun-burnt backside of a mountain, for example. Annihilating a tub of ice cream after 8 days of rationing dehydrated meals. Slipping into a warm bag of feathers plundered from waterfowl after a day spent saturated and cold. These instances of heightened pleasure, however, derive their potency from the privations native to the trail, which are manifold and unavoidable. In the course of a long walk you are certain to be sweaty, shivering, hungry, bruised, tired, afraid, wet, weary, pained, achy, itchy, annoyed, dehydrated and lost—repeatedly. As the discrepancy between Slov’s physical and spiritual well-being testified, however, something beyond the desultory utilitarian calculus of pain and pleasure can come into play. 

On the most basic level, thru-hiking is simply the business of getting from A to distant B on foot. The people who put together long trails like the GDT often imbue them with a certain thematic satisfaction by lining them up with borders or geographically significant features. One starts from the Canadian border, for example, and follows the continental divide. But the scrub on one side of the border looks no different from that on the other, and mountain ranges unroll their long spines on the bedrock without regard for human distinctions such as these. As for the end, the GDT, just goes on until it becomes impractical to go any further. It takes you deep into nowhere and leaves you there: not ending so much as lapsing into wilderness. Dante began his epic poem Inferno in a place just like that: “Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark / For the straightforward pathway had been lost.” 

The four sore feet of Flea and Slov were counting out the last measure of their journey. Soon, the straightforward pathway would be lost. It would be after leaving the arboreal denizens of the Rockies behind, however, when motoring cityward in an air-conditioned car, or reclining in the soft embrace of a couch, that they would find themselves in a forest dark. 

But, for a few days more, they had a specific destination. And this is perhaps the fundamental appeal of a thru-hike. No matter how kinked and tortuous the route, the trail from A to distant B is, in the deep sense, a straightforward path. At the outset, you enshrine a remote and arbitrary point, exalt it as a holy site, and make your pilgrimage to it. You check your bearings like Dante checked his bible. For this one season of your life you have a terminus planted on map and in mind. You aim your body at it like an archer aims their arrow. You give yourself up to the ascetic luxury of a singular purpose. Your energy moves down one channel, and the days on trail form a clear, bright line across the trackless expanse of being. 

“Anyway,” said Flea, wiping some periperi mayonaise off his cheek, “we should probably get going.” 

He and Slov clambered over the second pass and down into Spider Creek, which drew its filaments from a wide basin of shattered rock. As they descended, the valley widened and mellowed into verdure. Naturally, the route didn’t follow it. Instead, it deviated up another gruelling ascent to the adjoining ridge, which formed a part of the continental divide itself. Here was the middle of the scalp of the continent. Gravity and earth part the rain along it like a comb parts hair, and the great rivers gather the water in long tresses that spill into the Pacific and the Atlantic. Drops that fell a few metres either side of the boys would travel to coasts 10,000 kilometres apart.

A breeze was picking up, but Flea and Slov dipped out of it as they descended into the head of the valley beneath the aptly named Perseverance Peak. The sun raked the rocks and the mountain reared steeply ahead: a water break was in order. After some snacks and self-administered foot massages, the boys switchbacked slowly upwards, their only intercourse a dialogue of laboured breath, ragged and unfit to be formed for words. They inched up the last section, digging in feet and poles, scrabbling for purchase along the high scree protecting the summit and finally, in the steady heat of mid-afternoon, gained the peak. On every side, as far as could be seen, mountains, row upon row, a white-helmeted phalanx bristling its myriad points at the wide blue breast of the sky, defending the great, sloven continent of North America from the heaven that would redeem it.

Flea and Slov had a sit down. A ridge like an arthritic spine lead northwards and onwards. After catching his breath, Flea headed off in front, his spindly profile silhouetted against the emptiness beyond. The only sounds in that tall, barren, birdless place were the steady rhythmic click and clatter of his poles on rock, the rasp of scree moving underfoot, and the low hum of the Chinook wind. 

The boys delicately down-scrambled a risky step around a steep rocky outcrop. Flea’s pace began to flag. The afternoon was making a courteous bow to the approaching evening. Against expectations, the wind gathered strength, blowing firm, and firmer still, till it whipped itself into a gale almost stiff enough to lean on.

Slov scrambled down the lee side of a wide-slung saddle and waited for Flea, who limped into view ten minutes later. “Not good” he said, pointing to his ankle. “Nothing happened, it just got really painful in the last half hour.”  He popped some pills and they huddled over the map. The wind howled overhead. The map’s topographical lines curled with the deceptive serenity of a raked japanese garden. There still remained several sketchy miles of exposed ridgeline between them and the next plausible camp-site and they were moving too slow with Flea’s ankle and the wind to make it safely, so the boys bailed down into the nameless basin below. It was a wide green bowl that narrowed and choked up with thick forest as it funnelled its catchment back down to the Jackpine valley, where the boys could rejoin the main route the next day. It was evident that some absolutely horrendous bush-bashing lay in wait.

Wincingly, Flea made his way off the ridge. He and Slov found a secluded spot up against some low cliffs on the southern side and laid out a cowboy camp for a night under the stars. The air, uncloistered by the thin nylon of their tents, was sharp and cool. 

Day 47

The boys awoke early for their descent. They had a massive day ahead if they were to catch up with Washout and remain on schedule. Flea’s ankle was tender but manageable. After some abortive attempts to penetrate the dense thickets of subalpine fir and spruce, they ascertained that the stream, grooved right down the middle of the side-valley, was the most efficient mode of travel. A steep section where the water fell through heaped rocks required care, then the stream flattened out and they splashed along happily enough but for occasional tussles with river willow. The cool water helped numb Flea’s aggrieved ankle. The sun rubbed the sleep from its eyes and tossed a few gold doubloons on the water for them.

Eventually, the stream swung away from their intended course and spat them into the bush. Two hours of excoriating bush-bashing ensued. Flea and Slov limped onto the trail several dozen expletives later, with leaves in their hair and scratches on just about every part of exposed skin. Late-morning now held sway. It had taken four hours to move 3 miles. They knew Washout was headed for the Morkill Campsite, 28 kilometres up trail: they’d better hustle, was the consensus. 

The Jackpine valley trail was one of the most notorious stretches on the GDT. One comment on the trail app said “the bushwhacking will break you.” By a stroke of good fortune, however, a GDT volunteer crew had cleared it two weeks prior, and the going was not intolerable. But the temperature climbed with the sun and Flea’s ankle began to throb. Slogging through the calf-deep mud, his enthusiasm for travelling long-distances on foot momentarily flagged. Slov, recognising something was needed to vivify his faltering friend, baited him into a philosophical argument concerning the relative merits of various ethical frameworks. In his adolescent years, Flea had been both a champion debater and an ardent utilitarian, and these latent tendencies reasserted themselves as he rose spectacularly to the challenge. Their voices wrestled tirelessly, drowning out the melodious notes of the birds. The landscape blurred into an altogether different terrain of propositions, hypotheticals, and increasingly specious analogies involving train accidents, rouge surgeons, and the Third Reich. Surprisingly little progress was made towards a unified theory of proper human conduct. In the meantime, however, the miles melted away under their feet and they found themselves standing on Big Shale Hill under a tall, pale, late-afternoon sky. Behind them, the Jackpine river trailed its silver ribbon into the past. Ahead, range upon range, the mountains lapped the continent like waves on a shore.

They gulped down the views as they gallivanted (Flea rather more cautiously than Slov) along to Shale Pass. The trail dropped from there into a boggy valley, for which section G was starting to get a bit of a reputation. With Flea clenching his teeth and quaffing painkillers, they marched the final few miles towards Washout and their rest. The trail dimmed out underfoot, head torches flashed on. Finally, in response to one of their increasingly delirious bear calls, they heard a faint answering “Boo—wee—eee!” from afar. Soon after, as though their parting had been two years and not two days, the three friends’ clasped in enthusiastic greeting. 

Over dinner they swapped stories. The boys were pleased to hear that Washout’s night at Blueberry Camp had not been so idyllic as they’d imagined it would be. A bunch of horse trekkers had turned up and, after adorning their horses with bells, they’d let their steeds graze all night, bells clanging noisily all the while. When Washout had politely asked them, sometime around 1 a.m. whether they might tie up their horses again and remove the bells, they’d said “that would be animal cruelty.” The victim of the infernal chiming, recounting the story, pointed his thumbs at his chest, “I was like, what about me? I’m an animal!”

Day 48

A fine day of walking followed, marred only by Flea’s injury. He was three days’ walk from the nearest trailhead and he loped mincingly along as best he could, bathing his ankle in cold streams at every opportunity. Slov had prescribed him every pill they were carrying and Washout threw in a few extra. Washout always had something extra to share—foot cream, fisherman’s friend, electrolytes, toothpaste tabs, and, of course, his inexhaustible supply of marijuana. He was a veritable walking apothecary. 

Flea’s shoes were protesting no less than his body. He spent the post-lunch siesta period patiently reinforcing his fraying repair job. Washout watched him plying his new trade. “Once this is over, Flea, I think you’ve got a bright future in shoe cobbling.” 

From various blogs Slov had read, he’d got the impression that you could hardly turn a corner between Jasper and Kakwa without seeing a moose, caribou or grizzly. Sadly, there had been an eerie absence of animal friends. (Except porcupines, the little fuckers). Washout, who had once been involved in developing a video game set in the Rockies, said it was like the person in charge “forgot to populate the landscape.” 

Late that afternoon, Slov rinsed his face in a stream, flashed what he hoped was a winsome smile, and inquired, “How do I look?” 

Washout eyed him appraisingly, taking in Slov’s bristling monobrow, the unkempt snarl of his sideburns, his sweat stained shirt and the leathery arms protruding from its rolled up sleeves. “Kinda like one of those inbred hillbillies from Deliverance, to be honest.”

Flea sniggered—as if he looked any more respectable. He limped around in mismatched camp shoes and holey merino thermals and had a beard ragged as a Russian novelist’s.

Washout, for his part, had an uncanny ability to maintain a serviceable standard of hygiene on trail. After seven weeks in the wilderness he looked rugged, certainly, but retained—inexplicably to Flea and Slov—his dignity. His beard was full but tidy, and had a little grey in the chin that gave him a distinguished look. His skin glowed manfully. All this, along with his impressive stature and upright bearing, made him seem like some worthy from a frontier town in the 19th century, a respected provincial magistrate, perhaps, posted to the hinterlands to ensure folks there behaved with some modicum of decency.

They camped that night on a wide plain bisecting the mountains, a day’s walk shy of Kakwa the terminus. Someone had improvised a bench seat which sat looking at the mountains that had coughed up the trio that evening. As the daylight dwindled, Flea and Washout assumed their positions on “the couch” and sat there quietly. Slov mended cuts in his pack with needle and thread. After a long, peaceful interval, Washout picked up a little stick, pretended to press some buttons, and pointed it at the mountains screening the horizon. “Huh,” he said, putting the stick down. “Seems like there’s only one channel.”

Flea laughed. “Nature channel.” 

The sky purpled into darkness. Washout and the boys ate a hearty repast and retired to their tents full of the feeling of approaching endings.

Day 49

The next morning, Washout and the boys awoke early and flung themselves at a chink in horizon to the north—Surprise Pass. Breath smoked like incense in the sharp pre-dawn air. The sun groped through cloud, which yielded over the course of the morning to a diffuse red-brown haze. Fire, somewhere. The party topped the pass. Slov consumed the last of his Snickers with a mixture of pleasure and regret. Flea and Washout stood eyeing the Surprise Pass alternate which reared up on the high valley’s western side: a chunk of tectonic plate levered up to form a rampart of rock, an altar more prodigious than anything the Aztecs could have conceived, proffered to a sky increasingly thick with the smoke of sacrifice day. Or so Slov thought as the last trace of nougat flavour evaporated tragically on his palette.

First, they had to cross a narrow, fast-flowing stream. Slov reckoned he’d be able to jump it.

Feet moistened, the trio panted steadily up a long, even slope strewn with stony debris and ragged snow. Precipitous cliffs kicked up to the west over snow-fringed tarns, opaque like the cloudy eyes of the old. After a couple hours toil, Washout and the boys footed a huge mound of unbroken scree canted at a stiff 30 degrees. It looked like an alternate from Mars. The only vegetation in sight comprised a few scanty handfuls of dry grass, clinging to stone. Looking up, their field of vision neatly divided on the horizontal: sky balanced on rock.

Leaning on their poles, the trio laboured slowly upwards. It was a good thing they’d eaten half the weight of their packs. (If anything, Flea and Slov’s packs were a little too light: the couscous debacle had taken its toll.) Their exertions were rewarded with the last blockbuster view of the GDT, ominously hazed though it was. Standing there atop the pyramid of grit and scree, each of them formed the sensate centre of a blare of light which ricocheted off the wide, angular expanse around them and into the modest caverns of their skulls, where each brain made a miniature hugeness all its own. Mountains reared out of the bedrock of the mind. One raised wide horns; another looked like a foundering ship; the nearest flaunted innumerable sedimentary layers, polished by the glaciers of colder ages, and above them all, raptors turned slow circles, winding the invisible gears of time.

The trio tended north along the ridge, dropped over a knuckle, and came to a sudden halt. Under the mass banked rock that formed the horizon, the merest sliver of a large body of water flashed in the sun like the rim of a silver coin. The three friends looked at each other. The sun looked over their shoulders. “Kakwa?” 

“Kakwa.” 

They were momentarily quiet. Their shadows leaned on the rock. Washout made a few muffled noises expressive of strong feeling and the boys turned to see tears slipping discreetly into his beard.

After a respectful pause, Flea and Washout made to resume walking. Slov decided to double check the map. “Actually… I don’t know…” he frowned, gesturing. They huddled round, assessed the relevant landmarks and arrived at a consensus. It wasn’t Kakwa. 

“Stupid fake emotions” Washout said, sniffing.They resumed walking. After a few minutes, Flea said, “No, actually, I’m pretty sure it’s Kakwa.” 

He presented his case. Slov scoffed. Flea said, “Bet you a Snickers.”

“We don’t have any Snickers.”

“When we get out.”

“I’m not going to want a Snickers when we get out,” said Slov. “I want one when we’re here, 100 something kilometres from a paved road, with vanishing food supplies.” 

“I’m pretty sure it is Kakwa” Flea insisted. 

Washout conducted an independent review and arrived at the same conclusion. Slov conceded, and the three of them stood there a moment more, waiting for the poignant feelings to return. Washout did not have the resources to cry a second time, however, and Flea admitted that the momentousness of the occasion was somewhat overshadowed by the pleasure of proving Slov wrong. Slov, for his part, had a wee. “That’s how he shows emotion,” Flea explained to no one in particular. “His tear glands are in his penis.” 

They continued the descent, the elevation dropping like the stock index in a financial crisis. Washout, nursing his knees, fell back a little. Halfway down, Flea and Slov found themselves on the edge of a tiny cliff band, a couple metres high, banked with snow that sloped away for some 15 metres. Slov leapt down and glissaded artfully onto firm ground, where he resisted the urge to bow. Flea, concerned about his ankle, skirted along a little way to where there wasn’t such a big drop. The slope was steeper, however, and icier. His feet skidded out as he landed, and he he began sliding down the slope at an increasingly alarming pace. He tried to self-arrest with his hiking pole but the snow was too firm. Slov watched helplessly as his friend accelerated toward the jagged scree and, with a sound halfway between a growl and a yelp, skidded joltingly across the rocks. 

Slov rushed over. Flea’s face was twisted in pain and bright with shock. He lifted bloodied hands, unclipped his pack and rolled wincing onto his side. His pants had been shredded. In the tear, Slov saw his butt check was gashed a vivid red.

“I think I’m ok.”

“Thank god, that was scary to watch.” 

Flea started to his feet, and stood blinking. His hands had been cut in several places but were otherwise intact. Nothing was broken except skin. 

“That could have been a lot worse” he said, shouldering his pack and limping off slowly, marvelling at the continued function of his legs. 

They clambered gingerly down the remainder of the descent, parked up by a stream to patch up and eat some late lunch. There, Flea dropped his pants, lay prostrate on a sheet of tyvek, and demanded medical attention. After securing an ironclad promise that he wouldn’t emit flatulence, Slov wiped his buttcheek with anodyne and dressed it as best he could. 

The three friends approached Broadview Lake not long after and had to decide, battered and bruised as they were, whether they wanted to do the Providence Pass alternate as they’d planned. It was only a few flat miles to the terminus if they followed the main trail. Flea was bleeding in multiple places and walking with an increasingly pronounced limp. In the guidebook, Dustin Lynx had called Providence Pass “the cream of the GDT,” however, and that settled it: Washout and the boys wanted to finish the trail in style.  

It was emphatically the wrong decision. First, the weary walkers had to schlep across the boggy marshland that fringed the lake. Then they were submitted to a heinous bushwhack up steep, narrow gullies choked with fallen trees. Slov tore his pants open. (At this point in the trip, there were holes in everything. Holes in shoes and packs, holes in every pair of socks, in Slov’s pants and in Flea’s, who also had an additional hole in his butt to supplement the original.)

The trio then proceeded to climb through a confusing maze of terraced rock and stunted fir to a promonotory a couple hundred metres higher than necessary. There, Slov fantasised about a parallel universe where they’d done the sensible thing and traipsed to the finish line with ease. “If this is the cream of the GDT, it has been thoroughly whipped and curdled,” he complained. Flea, hands and butt still smeared with blood, remained obnoxiously chipper.

Washout and the boys battled through the remainder of the alternate in a state of increasing delirium. Eventually, they made it onto a well cut trail that dropped down off Ruth Mountain to rejoin the GDT. Late light slanted between the peaks and the air shone bronze above Kakwa.

Once back on the trial, the trio had a mere few hundred metres walking to Kakwa. They bustled jauntily along, giddy with anticipation. Flea hummed. Fifteen minutes passed. They continued to with dwindling enthusiasm along an increasingly boggy trail. Eventually, Washout stopped and turned. 

“Boys, this is the longest friggen 400 metres ever.”

Several phones appeared. Sure enough, within spitting distance of the end, they’d inexplicably managed to take wrong turn #173 of the trip. There had been an unmarked junction just before the actual junction to rejoin the GDT and it had led them in almost precisely the wrong direction.  

“Still time to see some wildlife, fellas” Washout laughed.

“The famed albino caribou, perhaps?”

Any caribou—albino or otherwise, would likely have been scared off by the heartfelt rendition of Kumbaya which Flea warbled into the evening air as the friends took their last steps on the GDT. The trail served up a final river crossing and then, weary, elated, Washout and the boys found themselves standing by the wide, slate-grey expanse of Kakwa Lake. The three friends pointed big crooked smiles at each other and embraced.

They dropped their packs at the handsome log cabin a little ways back from the water’s edge. As preparations were made for a triumphant nudie swim, a canoe moved silently across the still waters towards the jetty. The friends paused in a state of half-undress as it docked at the runty wharf and a heavily bearded man clambered out with a fishing rod.

The man nodded gravely at them. Slov said hi. It was the first person he and Flea had seen since the people with cougar problems nearly a week prior. Washout hadn’t seen anyone since his horsey friends at Blueberry camp. “We’ve just finished the GDT” Slov explained. 

“Bit of walking to do yet” the man replied. This terse pronouncement was truer than the trio knew.

“Well, yes. But we were thinking of a celebratory dip. Would it bother you if we… disrobed?”

The man wiped his hands on his pants, grunted ambiguously, and began coiling some rope. Needing no further sanction, the friends whipped off their undies and plunged in. Washout raised his arms, half in triumph, half in surrender.

They dried off in the cabin. Washout engaged in some man chat with Josh. Their cabin mate was a horseman as well as a fisherman. His two steeds—one for him, one for his gear—quietly dipped their heads in the grass while their two legged counterparts hoed into dinner. Afterwards, Flea ostentatiously emptied their reserves of hot chocolate sachets onto the table. In honour of the occasion, and in flagrant disregard for their rapidly dwindling supply of calories, he poured two sachets into each mug. Slov whistled. “Lavish.”

Day 50

Flea and Slov’s breakfast the next morning, however, consisted of the pitiful remainder of their oats. Washout fired off a satellite message to Dropzone to confirm they would be there on schedule and the trio set off into low cloud and intermittent drizzle. The disused road they followed was muddy and devoid of scenic splendour, but the walking was refreshingly easy and spirits were buoyant. A mere 34kms lay between them and the rendezvous with Dropzone. Then, after combusting a few litres of liquidised fossils, they would be reacquainted with the manifold edible delectations of civilisation. Washout and the boys stopped for lunch at a Snowmobile lodge that was boarded up for summer and bedecked with “under surveillance” signs. Flea and Slov consumed the last of their wraps beside the adjoining wood-fired hot tub, which was decorated with a neon palm tree. 

After lunch they followed the brown coil of the McGregor River towards the Bastille Creek trailhead. A half dozen ATVs came careening past headed for Kakwa, and, just before they arrived at their rendezvous, Josh and his horses rode past en route to the highway. He tipped his hat with small ceremoniously and said “Happy walkin’” with just a hint of smugness. Sometime mid-afternoon, the happy walkers arrived at the trail-head to find that Dropzone wasn’t there. 

Dropzone hadn’t responded to Washout’s message, either. Slov sucked in his cheeks. There were 74 kilometres of forestry road between them and highway 16. Washout was provisioned for another day. The boys food supplies, however, now consisted of a handful of couscous, a thimbleful of olive oil and a squirt of mayonnaise hardly sufficient for a sandwich. 

Flea got out his garmin to check the updated weather report which showed heavy rain forecast for that evening and the next day. Sure enough, soon after the despondent trio resumed walking, it started coming down steady. The sound of the returning ATVs signalled possible salvation. Three thumbs were hopefully lifted. The ATV riders seemed to think Washout and the boys were joking. They bestowed beneficent smiles and waved merrily as they sped past, splashing the three dejected figures on the side of the forestry road. 

The party schlepped on, hoping to cover as much distance as they could before dark. As light drained from the sky, it started to hail. The hail turned into a downpour. The friends pulled down the hoods of their rain jackets and hastened along the increasingly muddy road looking for a clear spot to pitch their shelters. Hemmed as the road was by vegetation, this took a while, and by the time they found a feasible camp site they were absolutely sodden. Slov peeled off his wet socks once he finally got under cover. His fungi riddled feet looked like mouldy potatoes that had been left in a puddle for a week.

Cooking anywhere other than in the tent was unimaginable, fire hazard and bears be dammned. Under Slov’s tent fly, Flea prepared what he called wistfully, “the last supper.” Attempting to fool their stomachs into thinking the meal was more substantial than it was, he made the couscous soupy with extra water and dumped in all their remaining spices.

“Gulag broth!” he grinned. 

“Strange how we have so little couscous left” Slov muttered. 

“It doesn’t matter how big the meal is, so long as it has been made with love and care,” Flea assured him. 

Slov’s stomach disagreed. Flea sloshed back to his tent and the boys climbed into their damp quilts feeling more than a little peckish.

Day 51

They decamped at 6am the next morning, jamming wet gear into wet packs. It was still raining, but not as hard as the previous night. They had 55kms to the highway—12 hours walking if they kept a good pace up. That would leave them an hour and a half to catch a ride to a town before it got dark.

Washout had offered the ravenous boys his oats and—equal parts grateful and embarrassed—they had accepted, electing to save them for as long as they could in order to distribute the energy throughout the day. There was still no word from Dropzone. Washout sent a message to his parents on his sat phone letting them know he would be out later than expected.

Each tramper walked alone with headphones in to provide solacing distraction from the accumulating discomforts. Flea had consumed an unprecedented number of anti-inflammatories and painkillers over the last five days, but even so, his ankle’s distress was increasingly hard to ignore. Slov, always reduced to a pitiable state by hunger, listened to a short story by Hemmingway and tried to coax his inner stoic out of hiding. Washout, still fairly well nourished, strode out ahead.

Around lunchtime the oats gave the boys a much needed boost, as did the smattering of salmon berries they were able to forage intermittently from the roadside bushes. But there was no denying it: the going was grim. Exhausted from 10 days of gruelling backcountry travel and trying to string together two 50km+ days in a row on starvation rations is no one’s idea of fun. Except, maybe, Flea’s. “The ol’ death march”, he grinned, taking up a jaunty whistle. It hailed again, rained a while, then hailed some more.

Then, with 30kms still to cover—joyous news! Marilyn replied saying that Washout’s uncle in law, Terry, had jumped in his car that morning and set off to their rescue. He was coming from Edmonton—6 or 7 hours drive.

That didn’t mean they could stop walking, however. With all the rain, Washout was concerned that Terry’s car would struggle to navigate the road, so they kept plugging away for several hours, albeit with a lighter step. They walked with their eyes fixed on every corner, willing the car to appear. Slov’s stomach begrudged every step. Flea’s fingers were dead in his gloves.

Then, just as evening came on, the boys heard Washout loose a jubilant cry from up ahead. Terry had arrived. He disembarked from his shining silver Hyundai to a chorus of cheers fit for a Roman general. After shrugging off thanks, Terry popped the boot to reveal shopping bags full of Doritos, cheese and crackers, peaches and craft beer. Slov valiantly withheld tears.

Washout debriefed uncle Terry while Slov and Flea discreetly gorged themselves. Then they all piled into the car and bumped along the remainder of the forestry road—Washout and the boys had managed 40 of the 55kms to the highway. Their ETA had been 8:30: too late to hitch. Terry interjected—“Well, part of the reason I came to get you guys is that there have been these stabbings, two guys—they’ve killed 10 people. They’re loose somewhere. Half the country received an emergency text alert saying not to pick up hitchhikers.”

The Hyundai turned onto highway 16 and headed for the McBride township. Already, the friends’ wracked bodies were relaxing into the commodious embrace of civilization. They’d substituted the wet log they ate their lunch on that day for faux-leather seats, the cutting breeze for a car heater. The vehicle purred down the highway. The 50 kilometres between them and McBride simply vanished: in 30 minutes it covered as much ground as Washout and the boys had walked in 13 hours the day prior. 

Terry, not content to save their necks on a 14 hr round-trip rescue mission, had booked everyone a night at the Wyndham Travelodge. The sign out front said “Security, Wifi, Hot Tub.” Flea and Slov had their own room. The shower elicited moans from Flea that were borderline sexual. Scrubbed up, the party reconvened, swapped compliments, and headed to the McBride Family Restaurant for dinner. Around them: ordinary life. Families bantering. An amiable waitress doing laps between kitchen and table. A couple of teenagers on a date eeking out a faltering conversation over soft drinks. 

Slov had talked a big eating game on the last stretch, but he could barely finish half his pizza, claiming he felt “a bit funny in the tum.” Flea looked at him contemptuously as he reached for one of his slices. “My friend,” he said, “you are the chihuahua of food overconsumption.”

Back in their hotel room, the toilet proved no match for Fleas’ onslaught. Washout came to say goodnight just as he was exerting himself with the plunger. “What’s with these Canadian toilets?” Flea complained. “It wasn’t like it was that big a load. I’d barely eaten anything till an hour ago.” 

“I guess Canadian toilets just aren’t accustomed to men of calibre like yourselves”, Washout replied philosophically. He informed the boys that Dropzone had been in touch. Their ride had been most of the way to the trailhead when his vehicle had broken down. Someone had stolen his catalytic converter. They contain rare earth metals that fetch $70 when scrapped, so people cut them out from under cars with battery powered saws. In the process, they’d damaged something, hence the breakdown. Dropzone only made it back to his place at 3am that night.

Washout beat a hasty retreat to his rather less pungent abode and everyone settled in for a luxurious sleep, the soft parcels of their bodies curled warm in indescribably plush bedding.

Coda

Washout’s folks had invited Flea and Slov to stay in Edmonton. Unspeakable things would take place in their bathroom: unbeknownst to Slov, giardia was brewing in his gut.

The smoke Washout and the boys had seen on the last day of the trail had been blown up from Jasper. When they arrived there at lunch time helicopters with buckets were battling a fire just north of the beleaguered town. The hostel they had stayed at was on a generator. The guests had mostly evacuated. The boys grabbed the things they’d stashed there and hustled on, smoke pluming north of the Athabasca as they fled the scene. The weather forecast for the world looked grim. Forests torched in rising heat. The buzz of battery powered saws. 10 dead in Saskatchewan. Glaciers vanishing like lines of cocaine up the hot nostril of the sky.

But, also, everywhere, evidence of care. Firefighters rallying to save homes. Terry at the wheel saving several skinny butts. In Edmonton, Marilyn and Gil and hospitality that would make the old gods proud. Every summer, between Waterton to Kakwa, volunteers armed with hand saws and community spirit protecting the line from A to distant B.

The car passed through Hinton. Walmart, McDonald’s & Home Hardware raised their structures above the horizon. The mountains had dwindled to a low slope that fell gently eastward, a long forested finger pointing the way back to the horizontal world. Everything looked eminently reasonable. After two months stuck like nubbins of meat in the teeth of the Great Divide, Washout and the boys had been spat out onto Canada’s central plateau. 

The thin forest will keep no memory of the friends who stood by a lake in the wilderness, bone-weary and proud, leaning on each other in the failing light. In years to come, the ground they walked will rise up and claim them and this restless generation. The bones of everyone now living will be bedded in the earth. For now, however, our bodies breast the present, opening time like a ship’s prow parts water. The smoking planet turns in the suns fixed glare. Galaxies, bright and granular, float in infinity. We are the unwitting conduits of a not inconsiderable vastness, and it does us good to live somewhere so big, even if only for a little while.