Monday, July 24, 2006
travelogue:
DAY EIGHT (Okay, I have gone back in and added this preface to my post for tonight:
Grant just read through it and said it sounded pretty pessimistic and was hard to follow...that I skip back and forth a lot. He is right! It needs a lot of reworking and editing...more than I have time to do tonight. We decided to leave the post here...but, I will go back in and rewrite our account more cohesively later. And, don't let the tone of the post mislead you...honestly, the pack trip we took was the most fun I have ever had on any vacation. I would do it again in a heartbeat, and plan to. It was exquisite...but we did get really exhausted and really dirty. But, there were many moments during our pack trip when I thought, "I could do this the rest of my life and be perfectly content!" It is so gorgeous up there...and 'my' horse was such a joy to be with. And I love the solitude of being in the back country so far from any roads or signs of civilization. All that said, here is my post...)
Wow! Where shall I begin?… First of all, I apologize for only posting a lone photo last night without even any commentary…but, I figured if I posted the photo, at least our friends and family would know we made it out of the wilds without becoming grizzly fodder. (Our guide DID find fresh bear tracks near our campsite the morning we packed out…and grizzlies have been sited near the place we camped earlier this summer, but, the bears didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother them!) We were so tired (a good tired!, but sheer bone-weary exhaustion, none-the-less) that we didn't have the umph to do much of anything Sunday night. I was too tired to take photos of the gorgeous mountains on our drive out (the light playing across them dramatically as a storm threatened to roll through). Considering, I am such a photo fanatic that I took over three thousand photos during the pack trip (exhausting my eight gigabyte supply of SD cards), being too tired to dig out my camera says a LOT. So, you can understand that I truly didn't have the energy to WRITE anything to post last night! I just was dying to crawl into a hot shower and scrub away the dirt and grime that was practically tattoed into my hide! We were suppose to camp at Lake Louise tent area both the night before our pack trip and again the night our pack trip ended...but we ended up just using the Lake Louise site long enough to repack our gear well enough to free up the kids' seats in back and traveled on to Calgary to spend the night in a hotel instead! I am sure we were a mystery to the other campers...we pulled in and pulled out our tents, but, instead of putting them up, we refolded them and packed them and the rest of our gear back into carrier on our roof, then pulled out and left. The guy at the front gate couldn't figure out why we were checking out twenty minutes after checking in! It really worried the poor fellow. He kept asking us what was wrong with our site. What was wrong with it was that it was outside!
There have been so many changes in that part of the Rockies since I was last there twenty years ago. I was saddened to see the highway lined with tall fencing…but I guess it is better for the wild-life…keeps them from crossing the highway and keeps people out of their area, too. Last time I drove through there, wildlife (moose, big horn sheep, elk, etc) would come right up to the edge of the woods and be clearly visible from the road if you were watching closely. I miss that NEARNESS….but, I am sure it is much better for the wild-life the way it is now. Also, camping was out in the open. Now days, the campsites (at least the one we stayed at the night before our pack trip into the back country began) are surrounded by tall electrical fences…sort of “people corrals” to keep the bears out. It was a little weird sleeping inside a fence, alongside a bunch of other folks. I felt a little like Begins and Lightening (our two horses back home)! Still, it was nice going to sleep at night with the knowledge that there was something between us and the bears other than the fabric of our tent wall. It made it more comfortable snuggling down into my sleeping bag when I didn’t have the little nibbling of doubt in the back corners of my mind that that same warm sleeping bag would become an entrapment if a bear came upon us…making us tasty little sandwiches! I also have to admit that even though each camp site was so small it couldn’t accommodate both the tiny tent we had brought for the Murrays and the six person tent we had brought for ourselves (we had to stake one side of our tent off the area meant for the tents on the slope of the plateau side) and the campsites were densely packed in together, still it was surprisingly private--giving the illusion of true camping. There were lots of pine trees lining all the camp sites. It was pretty. It was surprising how packed in we all were, and yet how it didn’t seem as packed in as it was. All night, though, we could hear road noise on the nearby highway…loud trucks, etc. This was at the Lake Louise tent camping area. Ironically enough, we never got around to actually SEEING Lake Louise! Oh well…next time!
One thing that was really surprising was that it always seemed to be daylight! It didn’t get dark until about 11:00pm (midnight Kansas City time!) and was light again by 6:00am.
We were so tired by the time we got our tents set up and our supper cooked over the campfire (hotdogs and s’mores) and our showers taken that we pretty much just went straight to bed that first night of camping. Then, the next morning it was a mad rush to get our campsite broken down and get off to Timberline Tours for our trip. In our haste, we abandoned the notion of figuring out how to get the newly unpacked tents back IN their canvas bags (they grow, you know, the first time you unpack them and put them up!) or getting everything strategically positioned back into our car roof carrier. Instead, we just folded up the car roof carrier and stuck it inside the car and folded up our tents and put them in the car (instead of on top of the car). We couldn’t even zip the tent containers shut…we just let the tents hang out of the bulging containers. Of course, our van was already PACKED TO THE HILT before we crammed all the on top of the roof stuff into the interior of the van…so, the very back of the van and even the back seat where the kids had ridden, were packed TIGHT clear up to the roof with stuff. Vonnie had to hold Rayna in her lap and I held Darcy in my lap and Doug sat on top of the cooler between my legs and Vonnie’s legs. That is how we made the short trip from Lake Louise to Timberline Tours. It was a funny sight! As we all climbed out of the van, people naturally thought we had driven all the way from Missouri like that!
One thing about the pack trip…no one ever seemed to be in any hurry for anything. There were no time tables or stress over how long it was taking to pack things (or unpack them)…everyone there was so laid back. That can be a bit disconcerting if you are used to organizing your life on timelines…but we all adjusted! Another thing we soon learned is they always underestimate how long something is going to take (and never seem to notice they have underestimated!). We had been told the pack trip in would take four hours and the trip out (by another route) would be five hours. Wrong! It took us SIX AND A HALF hours by horseback in. Before we packed out, John took our guide aside and told him he needed to switch our route out and take us by the shortest route possible (as the planned route out was even longer than the route in had been). Caleb (our seventeen year old guide) told John that we could go by the most direct route out…and he said that would take us about three hours. It took FIVE HOURS! I will add here, that our other seventeen year old guide didn’t want to lead Rayna’s horse out…but wouldn’t let me lead her horse out (as that is against their policy--letting parents lead another horse while riding themselves), so, Rayna handled her own horse by herself the entire ride out. She did great…though there were a few times I was really worried and I came very near just leading her horse whether the guide liked it or not. (Her horse tended to stop and graze, then go trotting down the mountain to catch up with the horse in front.) Rayna has always been sure-seated in the saddle, though…and the trotting didn’t bother her a bit. In fact, as the horse took off trotting the first time and I yelled to her, “Rayna pull back on the reigns and say ’Whoa’!” All she did was shake her head joyfully and yell encouragingly to her horse, “Whoopee!!!” She was a pretty cute sight…such a little girl astride her horse, handling him all by herself. As we were taking the most direct route out, we passed a number of hikers on our trip out and more than one oohed and ahhed over the littlest rider in our group as we passed them. (I don’t mean to make it sound like we had trouble with our guides. We were a little shocked that the only people leading us into the back country were a seventeen year old girl, a seventeen year old boy, and an eighteen year old girl (our cook)…but, they did a terrific job and were a lot of fun. Still, you know how mothers are with their babies…never cross a mother’s baby or that mother will have a tough time liking you. Our guide was sweet as could be, but she and I disagreed about what was safe for my youngest on the last leg of the journey out of the back country…so, my mamma bear personality reared it’s head momentarily.)
I must say, though, that our journey INTO the back country (that first day) was a marathon of endurance. I had naively assumed that the tour outfit would be packing bottled water in for us…and that bottled water would be available to us en route. Before we had left Missouri, Darcy had begged me to buy her a canteen for the trip. Dumb me…I had told her that would just be one more unnecessary thing to pack and that we already didn’t have space for the things we HAD packed (everything on the LIST we had been provided to pack by…long underwear, rain gear, etc). Canteens and water bottles were not on that list. (Guess the tour outfit just assumed we would have sense enough on our own to bring that!) Our guides (the two girls) both had water bottles of their own…so, I don’t think they realized how dehydrated the rest of us were by the last leg of our very hot, long, wearying journey into camp. It was unusually hot for that area…and (blessedly dry!). We never needed our long underwear, our coats, or our rain gear in the back country. (The first morning we had stayed at the crowded “people corral” at Lake Louise, it had been too hot for us to get into our sleeping bags when we had gone to bed that night, but, the temperature had dropped DRAMATICALLY during the night. Around 4:00am, Doug woke me up…skittering over to my side of the tent saying, “Green. Green. My green!” His skin was ice cold and he was asking me for his green sleeping bag. (I had just laid out their youth bags--fifty degree rating--but he knew there was a big green bag for him, an adult sized sleeping bag that was rated for thirty degree weather.) The girls were awake with chattering teeth, too. I scrambled around in the dark and pulled out the bigger bags for each child, placing their lighter, smaller youth bags inside the adult sized sleeping bags. This made wonderfully warm nests for each one of them and we had a hard time getting them OUT of their snuggly nests a few hours later when it was time to get dressed and break up camp to head out for our pack trip. We could see our breath and it was cold enough that the kids and I wore our winter coats. (Grant, meanwhile was sweating in short sleeves as he and John tore down our camp. But, the guys are always hot when the rest of us are freezing to death!) I was amazed at the HUGE temperature change in such a short time. When we had been listening to local radio the evening before, the DJ had been giving the weather report and had been complaining about the “stifling heat” they had had that day. We had laughed, because it was quite PLEASANT temperature-wise…like a pleasant Spring day. I would have guessed the temperature to be about 70 degrees Fahrenheit (course they listed the temp in Celsius…which doesn’t computer in my mind unless it is 37-39 degrees--normal body temperature or a fever). But awaking to a brisk WINTER morning, made me think of the previous afternoon as a heat-wave, too! Believe me, that morning as I sorted through our clothing to pick out what to take with us on the pack trip, I leaned towards the cold weather stuff. It turned out, though, that that first cold morning in the Lake Louise tent camping area was to be our only frosty morning. We had beautiful weather the whole time we were in the back country. Though it was HOT towards the end of our trek IN on that first day, the rest of the time in the back country wasn’t too hot through the day and very mild through the night…and no rain! (We heard that the previous summer they had only had twelve days that hadn’t had at least a little rain. Rain is VERY COMMON up there, I guess. And, it comes up on you with almost no warning since you cannot see much of the sky (surrounded on all sides by mountains). The skies can be completely clear one moment and stormy the next. We never had to break our rain gear or our winter clothing out a single time though!
Back to my account of our first day, though… The kids and I started out loving the experience. (Grant, John, & Vonnie were a little less enthusiastic…maybe DREADING the experience would better describe their starting frame of mind?) But, I have to admit that by the time we finally got to our campsite at Red Deer Lake, I was so miserable that I (secretly) considered maybe staying at camp the next day instead of going out for the horse-back day trip to the natural bridge. They were saying that was to be a three hour trip… The ’four hour trip’ we had just experienced that had become a six and a half hour marathon--the last hour, sheer torture as I baked in the sun was thirstier than I can ever remember being in my entire life didn’t really predispose me to looking forward to jumping right back into my saddle the next morning. I didn’t say so, though. (I mean I was the one who had drug us all up there!) I really thought Darcy would WANT to go on the trip the next day. Wrong! She told me she didn’t think she would go. Vonnie, John, and Grant had already made it clear (even BEFORE our six and a half hour torturous trek) that THEY planned on staying in camp and recuperating the second day. Doug and Rayna, though, WANTED to go back out on the horses. They had no more than gotten off their horses as we staggered into camp, than they began pestering me about when they could go back on another horse ride! Ironic, that the woman who arranges the tours had originally suggested we might need to alter our plans because of the two younger children. Turns out, they weathered the trip better than any of us…even DARCY. (Darcy, however, quickly recovered and had already decided by the time we went to bed that first night that she would go on the day trip with us PROVIDED Yea Yea lend her water bottle. (Only Vonnie had brought a plastic bottle of water with her when we left for the pack trip. We had THIRTY bottles of water in the van, but, none of us had brought one with us. I had left behind my empty Canada Dry bottle, too. So often in the trip, I would think longingly of that bottle I had emptied only moments before we left and had thrown back into the van! How wonderful it would have been to have had SOMETHING to hold water in, besides the small plastic coffee cups that were at the camp site…anything that I could have stuck in my saddle bag! That one plastic bottle of Vonnie’s became a prized possession! She gladly lent it to Darcy for the second day but only on the condition that Darcy guard it with her life! ….Just to help you understand, we had rushed around the morning before to get to Timberline Tours and had only had a single pop tart each (one of the two that are wrapped together) for breakfast and a few swallows of water. Then we had waited a long time in the sun for the journey to begin. We had ridden hours in the baking sun before stopping for lunch. Lunch had been some delicious ham and cheese sandwiches and one tiny juice box apiece--mixed berry. There was nothing else to drink after the five swallows it took to empty our juice boxes…except lake water. I was a bit dubious about drinking lake water, but Brittany (one of the guides) suggested we do just that, assuring me that she drank from the lake and it didn’t make her sick. (She, however, had water in a large travel mug that she had brought with her.) She told us to cut the top off our little drink boxes and dip them into the lake. We did. My instincts told me, “Not a good idea!…standing water…amoebas…”, but, my throat was so parched that it overcame my reservations. We had just finished guzzling down lake water when Caleb arrived with the pack team (his own mount and another horse and two mules laden with our luggage and the food we would be eating those three days in the back country.) Caleb saw us dipping our boxes back down into the lake for another refill and admonished us NOT to drink the LAKE water. He said, “The streams are glacier fed and they are safe to drink from. That is where all our camp water comes from, but, you shouldn’t drink from the LAKES.” I felt Montezuma’s revenge coming on! Fortunately, it was just psychological. I never got diarrhea, nor did Grant or Doug or Darcy. Rayna did…but, I am pretty sure hers was a virus that she got off Pop John. John was sick the first day and a half at camp--but it had started for him before any of us had drunk the forbidden lake water!
After our stop at that lake, we scorched in our saddles for many a miserable hour. Actually, in spite of my thirst, I ENJOYED our ride and the gorgeous scenery the first five and a half hours…but that last hour lasted an eternity for me (as I am sure the whole six and a half hours lasted an eternity for those in our group that never wanted to be on the back of a horse to begin with). By the time we got to camp, my tongue felt like it was three times thicker than its normal size. I have never felt such a dry mouth in all my life. We were all about half dizzy, I think, with thirst and exhaustion…well, at least everyone over the age of nine. The two younger ones were bouncing about having a blast. Darcy and the rest of us were whipped. Vonnie and Grant had really had a miserable time with their horses…having to constantly yank their heads up to keep them from stopping to graze. Vonnie’s hand was actually SWOLLEN AND BRUISED from gripping the reigns so tightly and getting banged against of the saddle horn when her horse, Midge, would swing his head in protest. Grant’s horse, Rocky, hadn’t cooperated very well, either. He was a huge horse that used to be a guide horse. At the beginning of the trip, when the two female guides (Caleb not with us, as he would be following later with the pack train) had realized that Rayna would need to be led, as well as Doug, they had originally suggested that Grant lead Rayna’s horse, since Rocky was a former guide horse and would take such an activity in stride. They weren’t considering, though, that Grant isn’t used to riding horses himself and expecting him to tow a very UNCOOPERATIVE horse behind him was not a good idea. After Grant lost his grip on the lead rope early on, I took over. Britany told me that my horse wasn’t used to leading, but I appealed that I was more comfortable leading the other horse than Grant would be and that it seemed like my horse was doing okay with that activity. (Turns out my horse, Snickers, was a jewel. He was so cooperative and hard working and such a STEADY, unflinchingly calm mount. Later, I learned that he was one of their “bear chasers”…horses used to chase grizzlies off. And, that he had formerly been a roping horse. My intuition of Snickers, without the benefit of that knowledge, proved sound…he did great dragging along stubborn, ornery old Nada (Rayna’s mount), not startling at all even though Nada was horrible at following and seemed bent on getting her rope wrapped under his tail (at which point I would DROP the rope and circle back around to retrieve it). Never once did Snickers freak. Many a horse would have. Indeed, Zappy, the guide’s horse did freak later when towing Nada and getting similar treatment from Nada. Anyway, I lead Nada (Rayna’s mount) until we stopped for lunch. I think the two girl guides got into a lot of trouble, though, with the more experienced (seventeen year old) Caleb when he caught up with us at the lake and found out they were having a rider lead another horse. I guess that is WAY against their rules…on the grounds that if trouble arises, a parent tends to instinctually have a death grip on the rope--even to the point of being scraped from the saddle themselves by that rope, rather than letting go of the lead rope with the understanding that their child’s mount won’t go far from the rest of the horses. I comprehended, though, when to drop the rope rather than getting knocked out of my saddle by the rope wrapping around me or getting bucked as the rope wrapped up under my horse’s tail and did fine with leading Nada. I know my opinion is biased, but I think I was doing a better job of keeping Nada in line that first half of the trip than the guide did the second half…when we kept losing the back end of our group because Nada wouldn’t cooperate. (All of which helps explain why I was irritated two days later when I felt like Rayna needed to be led and the guides were telling me I couldn’t lead her! But, like I said, I think the two girls must have gotten into a lot of trouble when it was discovered I had led Rayna all the way to the lake that first day…because arrangements had changed in a hurry the moment Caleb arrived. Honestly, though, Snickers was a much better choice, horse-wise, to lead another horse than the more flighty Zappy was.)
Well, it is late…so, I will wait until tomorrow to post about our succeeding days (which were SO MUCH BETTER than our first day--all would agree!).
I do want to quickly tell a few more things, though… One moment of excitement (not the good kind) occurred during our lunch break at the lake before Caleb caught up with us. The two girl guides had tied all our horses up to some small evergreen trees (bush sized) so we could have our lunch. Well, right off the bat, Zappy wound himself around his bush and somehow got his rope wrapped behind his hind legs and managed to flip himself over. The way his halter was wrapped tightly around him, he was quickly suffocating. He couldn’t breathe at all and was on his back. His body weight was holding the halter tightly around him, closing off his air way. It was a terrifying sight as Brittany struggled to save her horse and Isabel (new to this job--the eighteen year old cook) was momentarily confused about how to help. Brittany was fast acting and saved the horse…but it was a horrifying scene to watch…frozen in place, not knowing what to do to help. Later in the trip, flighty Zappy, tried to roll in the lake WITH BRITTANY still in the saddle. Again Brittany anticipated what Zappy was doing and managed, just at the last moment, to get her back up square on her feet before she could roll. It seems that Zappy came from Rivenstoke(?)…the same place our very capable guide Caleb haled from…where there are lots of streams and lakes and the horses are known for their love of the water and love of swimming. Brittany told us that on a trip shortly before ours, a regular rider had been on Zappy when Zappy had decided to roll in the lake. The woman got drenched (still in Zappy’s saddle when Zappy dropped down into the water and rolled) and her brand-new digital camera was ruined. I was quietly thankful that I wasn’t assigned Zappy! Brittany really liked Zappy a lot, though, and was pleased to be riding him. Zappy was a beautiful horse…and he couldn’t WALK, he pranced!…but, he was just too flighty and silly. Later, he sored his legs up into a bloody mess one night while hobbled and turned loose to graze. The other horses walked sensibly with their hobbles on…comprehending that they could not RUN while the hobbles were on. Zappy, however, never walked with the hobbles. He would rare up on his hind legs and jump like a rabbit to get around…which had to be really hard on him.
Another thing that sticks in my mind, was one of our trips to the privy…I was holding Rayna’s hand as we walked down the trail to the privy. Rayna beamed up at me and exclaimed, “This is just like a ‘Mother-Daughter Day’!” Bless her happy little heart! Only a four year old would view a trip to the outhouse as a “Mother-Daughter Day”!
Well, I will write more tomorrow! (Tonight we are staying in Swift Current in Saskatchewan. Alberta has some of the most stunning landscape I have seen anywhere in the world...but, Saskatchewan has such warm, open, friendly folks! They make you feel like you are already home!) ¶ 7/24/2006 08:33:00 PM
DAY EIGHT (Okay, I have gone back in and added this preface to my post for tonight:
Grant just read through it and said it sounded pretty pessimistic and was hard to follow...that I skip back and forth a lot. He is right! It needs a lot of reworking and editing...more than I have time to do tonight. We decided to leave the post here...but, I will go back in and rewrite our account more cohesively later. And, don't let the tone of the post mislead you...honestly, the pack trip we took was the most fun I have ever had on any vacation. I would do it again in a heartbeat, and plan to. It was exquisite...but we did get really exhausted and really dirty. But, there were many moments during our pack trip when I thought, "I could do this the rest of my life and be perfectly content!" It is so gorgeous up there...and 'my' horse was such a joy to be with. And I love the solitude of being in the back country so far from any roads or signs of civilization. All that said, here is my post...)
Wow! Where shall I begin?… First of all, I apologize for only posting a lone photo last night without even any commentary…but, I figured if I posted the photo, at least our friends and family would know we made it out of the wilds without becoming grizzly fodder. (Our guide DID find fresh bear tracks near our campsite the morning we packed out…and grizzlies have been sited near the place we camped earlier this summer, but, the bears didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother them!) We were so tired (a good tired!, but sheer bone-weary exhaustion, none-the-less) that we didn't have the umph to do much of anything Sunday night. I was too tired to take photos of the gorgeous mountains on our drive out (the light playing across them dramatically as a storm threatened to roll through). Considering, I am such a photo fanatic that I took over three thousand photos during the pack trip (exhausting my eight gigabyte supply of SD cards), being too tired to dig out my camera says a LOT. So, you can understand that I truly didn't have the energy to WRITE anything to post last night! I just was dying to crawl into a hot shower and scrub away the dirt and grime that was practically tattoed into my hide! We were suppose to camp at Lake Louise tent area both the night before our pack trip and again the night our pack trip ended...but we ended up just using the Lake Louise site long enough to repack our gear well enough to free up the kids' seats in back and traveled on to Calgary to spend the night in a hotel instead! I am sure we were a mystery to the other campers...we pulled in and pulled out our tents, but, instead of putting them up, we refolded them and packed them and the rest of our gear back into carrier on our roof, then pulled out and left. The guy at the front gate couldn't figure out why we were checking out twenty minutes after checking in! It really worried the poor fellow. He kept asking us what was wrong with our site. What was wrong with it was that it was outside!
There have been so many changes in that part of the Rockies since I was last there twenty years ago. I was saddened to see the highway lined with tall fencing…but I guess it is better for the wild-life…keeps them from crossing the highway and keeps people out of their area, too. Last time I drove through there, wildlife (moose, big horn sheep, elk, etc) would come right up to the edge of the woods and be clearly visible from the road if you were watching closely. I miss that NEARNESS….but, I am sure it is much better for the wild-life the way it is now. Also, camping was out in the open. Now days, the campsites (at least the one we stayed at the night before our pack trip into the back country began) are surrounded by tall electrical fences…sort of “people corrals” to keep the bears out. It was a little weird sleeping inside a fence, alongside a bunch of other folks. I felt a little like Begins and Lightening (our two horses back home)! Still, it was nice going to sleep at night with the knowledge that there was something between us and the bears other than the fabric of our tent wall. It made it more comfortable snuggling down into my sleeping bag when I didn’t have the little nibbling of doubt in the back corners of my mind that that same warm sleeping bag would become an entrapment if a bear came upon us…making us tasty little sandwiches! I also have to admit that even though each camp site was so small it couldn’t accommodate both the tiny tent we had brought for the Murrays and the six person tent we had brought for ourselves (we had to stake one side of our tent off the area meant for the tents on the slope of the plateau side) and the campsites were densely packed in together, still it was surprisingly private--giving the illusion of true camping. There were lots of pine trees lining all the camp sites. It was pretty. It was surprising how packed in we all were, and yet how it didn’t seem as packed in as it was. All night, though, we could hear road noise on the nearby highway…loud trucks, etc. This was at the Lake Louise tent camping area. Ironically enough, we never got around to actually SEEING Lake Louise! Oh well…next time!
One thing that was really surprising was that it always seemed to be daylight! It didn’t get dark until about 11:00pm (midnight Kansas City time!) and was light again by 6:00am.
We were so tired by the time we got our tents set up and our supper cooked over the campfire (hotdogs and s’mores) and our showers taken that we pretty much just went straight to bed that first night of camping. Then, the next morning it was a mad rush to get our campsite broken down and get off to Timberline Tours for our trip. In our haste, we abandoned the notion of figuring out how to get the newly unpacked tents back IN their canvas bags (they grow, you know, the first time you unpack them and put them up!) or getting everything strategically positioned back into our car roof carrier. Instead, we just folded up the car roof carrier and stuck it inside the car and folded up our tents and put them in the car (instead of on top of the car). We couldn’t even zip the tent containers shut…we just let the tents hang out of the bulging containers. Of course, our van was already PACKED TO THE HILT before we crammed all the on top of the roof stuff into the interior of the van…so, the very back of the van and even the back seat where the kids had ridden, were packed TIGHT clear up to the roof with stuff. Vonnie had to hold Rayna in her lap and I held Darcy in my lap and Doug sat on top of the cooler between my legs and Vonnie’s legs. That is how we made the short trip from Lake Louise to Timberline Tours. It was a funny sight! As we all climbed out of the van, people naturally thought we had driven all the way from Missouri like that!
One thing about the pack trip…no one ever seemed to be in any hurry for anything. There were no time tables or stress over how long it was taking to pack things (or unpack them)…everyone there was so laid back. That can be a bit disconcerting if you are used to organizing your life on timelines…but we all adjusted! Another thing we soon learned is they always underestimate how long something is going to take (and never seem to notice they have underestimated!). We had been told the pack trip in would take four hours and the trip out (by another route) would be five hours. Wrong! It took us SIX AND A HALF hours by horseback in. Before we packed out, John took our guide aside and told him he needed to switch our route out and take us by the shortest route possible (as the planned route out was even longer than the route in had been). Caleb (our seventeen year old guide) told John that we could go by the most direct route out…and he said that would take us about three hours. It took FIVE HOURS! I will add here, that our other seventeen year old guide didn’t want to lead Rayna’s horse out…but wouldn’t let me lead her horse out (as that is against their policy--letting parents lead another horse while riding themselves), so, Rayna handled her own horse by herself the entire ride out. She did great…though there were a few times I was really worried and I came very near just leading her horse whether the guide liked it or not. (Her horse tended to stop and graze, then go trotting down the mountain to catch up with the horse in front.) Rayna has always been sure-seated in the saddle, though…and the trotting didn’t bother her a bit. In fact, as the horse took off trotting the first time and I yelled to her, “Rayna pull back on the reigns and say ’Whoa’!” All she did was shake her head joyfully and yell encouragingly to her horse, “Whoopee!!!” She was a pretty cute sight…such a little girl astride her horse, handling him all by herself. As we were taking the most direct route out, we passed a number of hikers on our trip out and more than one oohed and ahhed over the littlest rider in our group as we passed them. (I don’t mean to make it sound like we had trouble with our guides. We were a little shocked that the only people leading us into the back country were a seventeen year old girl, a seventeen year old boy, and an eighteen year old girl (our cook)…but, they did a terrific job and were a lot of fun. Still, you know how mothers are with their babies…never cross a mother’s baby or that mother will have a tough time liking you. Our guide was sweet as could be, but she and I disagreed about what was safe for my youngest on the last leg of the journey out of the back country…so, my mamma bear personality reared it’s head momentarily.)
I must say, though, that our journey INTO the back country (that first day) was a marathon of endurance. I had naively assumed that the tour outfit would be packing bottled water in for us…and that bottled water would be available to us en route. Before we had left Missouri, Darcy had begged me to buy her a canteen for the trip. Dumb me…I had told her that would just be one more unnecessary thing to pack and that we already didn’t have space for the things we HAD packed (everything on the LIST we had been provided to pack by…long underwear, rain gear, etc). Canteens and water bottles were not on that list. (Guess the tour outfit just assumed we would have sense enough on our own to bring that!) Our guides (the two girls) both had water bottles of their own…so, I don’t think they realized how dehydrated the rest of us were by the last leg of our very hot, long, wearying journey into camp. It was unusually hot for that area…and (blessedly dry!). We never needed our long underwear, our coats, or our rain gear in the back country. (The first morning we had stayed at the crowded “people corral” at Lake Louise, it had been too hot for us to get into our sleeping bags when we had gone to bed that night, but, the temperature had dropped DRAMATICALLY during the night. Around 4:00am, Doug woke me up…skittering over to my side of the tent saying, “Green. Green. My green!” His skin was ice cold and he was asking me for his green sleeping bag. (I had just laid out their youth bags--fifty degree rating--but he knew there was a big green bag for him, an adult sized sleeping bag that was rated for thirty degree weather.) The girls were awake with chattering teeth, too. I scrambled around in the dark and pulled out the bigger bags for each child, placing their lighter, smaller youth bags inside the adult sized sleeping bags. This made wonderfully warm nests for each one of them and we had a hard time getting them OUT of their snuggly nests a few hours later when it was time to get dressed and break up camp to head out for our pack trip. We could see our breath and it was cold enough that the kids and I wore our winter coats. (Grant, meanwhile was sweating in short sleeves as he and John tore down our camp. But, the guys are always hot when the rest of us are freezing to death!) I was amazed at the HUGE temperature change in such a short time. When we had been listening to local radio the evening before, the DJ had been giving the weather report and had been complaining about the “stifling heat” they had had that day. We had laughed, because it was quite PLEASANT temperature-wise…like a pleasant Spring day. I would have guessed the temperature to be about 70 degrees Fahrenheit (course they listed the temp in Celsius…which doesn’t computer in my mind unless it is 37-39 degrees--normal body temperature or a fever). But awaking to a brisk WINTER morning, made me think of the previous afternoon as a heat-wave, too! Believe me, that morning as I sorted through our clothing to pick out what to take with us on the pack trip, I leaned towards the cold weather stuff. It turned out, though, that that first cold morning in the Lake Louise tent camping area was to be our only frosty morning. We had beautiful weather the whole time we were in the back country. Though it was HOT towards the end of our trek IN on that first day, the rest of the time in the back country wasn’t too hot through the day and very mild through the night…and no rain! (We heard that the previous summer they had only had twelve days that hadn’t had at least a little rain. Rain is VERY COMMON up there, I guess. And, it comes up on you with almost no warning since you cannot see much of the sky (surrounded on all sides by mountains). The skies can be completely clear one moment and stormy the next. We never had to break our rain gear or our winter clothing out a single time though!
Back to my account of our first day, though… The kids and I started out loving the experience. (Grant, John, & Vonnie were a little less enthusiastic…maybe DREADING the experience would better describe their starting frame of mind?) But, I have to admit that by the time we finally got to our campsite at Red Deer Lake, I was so miserable that I (secretly) considered maybe staying at camp the next day instead of going out for the horse-back day trip to the natural bridge. They were saying that was to be a three hour trip… The ’four hour trip’ we had just experienced that had become a six and a half hour marathon--the last hour, sheer torture as I baked in the sun was thirstier than I can ever remember being in my entire life didn’t really predispose me to looking forward to jumping right back into my saddle the next morning. I didn’t say so, though. (I mean I was the one who had drug us all up there!) I really thought Darcy would WANT to go on the trip the next day. Wrong! She told me she didn’t think she would go. Vonnie, John, and Grant had already made it clear (even BEFORE our six and a half hour torturous trek) that THEY planned on staying in camp and recuperating the second day. Doug and Rayna, though, WANTED to go back out on the horses. They had no more than gotten off their horses as we staggered into camp, than they began pestering me about when they could go back on another horse ride! Ironic, that the woman who arranges the tours had originally suggested we might need to alter our plans because of the two younger children. Turns out, they weathered the trip better than any of us…even DARCY. (Darcy, however, quickly recovered and had already decided by the time we went to bed that first night that she would go on the day trip with us PROVIDED Yea Yea lend her water bottle. (Only Vonnie had brought a plastic bottle of water with her when we left for the pack trip. We had THIRTY bottles of water in the van, but, none of us had brought one with us. I had left behind my empty Canada Dry bottle, too. So often in the trip, I would think longingly of that bottle I had emptied only moments before we left and had thrown back into the van! How wonderful it would have been to have had SOMETHING to hold water in, besides the small plastic coffee cups that were at the camp site…anything that I could have stuck in my saddle bag! That one plastic bottle of Vonnie’s became a prized possession! She gladly lent it to Darcy for the second day but only on the condition that Darcy guard it with her life! ….Just to help you understand, we had rushed around the morning before to get to Timberline Tours and had only had a single pop tart each (one of the two that are wrapped together) for breakfast and a few swallows of water. Then we had waited a long time in the sun for the journey to begin. We had ridden hours in the baking sun before stopping for lunch. Lunch had been some delicious ham and cheese sandwiches and one tiny juice box apiece--mixed berry. There was nothing else to drink after the five swallows it took to empty our juice boxes…except lake water. I was a bit dubious about drinking lake water, but Brittany (one of the guides) suggested we do just that, assuring me that she drank from the lake and it didn’t make her sick. (She, however, had water in a large travel mug that she had brought with her.) She told us to cut the top off our little drink boxes and dip them into the lake. We did. My instincts told me, “Not a good idea!…standing water…amoebas…”, but, my throat was so parched that it overcame my reservations. We had just finished guzzling down lake water when Caleb arrived with the pack team (his own mount and another horse and two mules laden with our luggage and the food we would be eating those three days in the back country.) Caleb saw us dipping our boxes back down into the lake for another refill and admonished us NOT to drink the LAKE water. He said, “The streams are glacier fed and they are safe to drink from. That is where all our camp water comes from, but, you shouldn’t drink from the LAKES.” I felt Montezuma’s revenge coming on! Fortunately, it was just psychological. I never got diarrhea, nor did Grant or Doug or Darcy. Rayna did…but, I am pretty sure hers was a virus that she got off Pop John. John was sick the first day and a half at camp--but it had started for him before any of us had drunk the forbidden lake water!
After our stop at that lake, we scorched in our saddles for many a miserable hour. Actually, in spite of my thirst, I ENJOYED our ride and the gorgeous scenery the first five and a half hours…but that last hour lasted an eternity for me (as I am sure the whole six and a half hours lasted an eternity for those in our group that never wanted to be on the back of a horse to begin with). By the time we got to camp, my tongue felt like it was three times thicker than its normal size. I have never felt such a dry mouth in all my life. We were all about half dizzy, I think, with thirst and exhaustion…well, at least everyone over the age of nine. The two younger ones were bouncing about having a blast. Darcy and the rest of us were whipped. Vonnie and Grant had really had a miserable time with their horses…having to constantly yank their heads up to keep them from stopping to graze. Vonnie’s hand was actually SWOLLEN AND BRUISED from gripping the reigns so tightly and getting banged against of the saddle horn when her horse, Midge, would swing his head in protest. Grant’s horse, Rocky, hadn’t cooperated very well, either. He was a huge horse that used to be a guide horse. At the beginning of the trip, when the two female guides (Caleb not with us, as he would be following later with the pack train) had realized that Rayna would need to be led, as well as Doug, they had originally suggested that Grant lead Rayna’s horse, since Rocky was a former guide horse and would take such an activity in stride. They weren’t considering, though, that Grant isn’t used to riding horses himself and expecting him to tow a very UNCOOPERATIVE horse behind him was not a good idea. After Grant lost his grip on the lead rope early on, I took over. Britany told me that my horse wasn’t used to leading, but I appealed that I was more comfortable leading the other horse than Grant would be and that it seemed like my horse was doing okay with that activity. (Turns out my horse, Snickers, was a jewel. He was so cooperative and hard working and such a STEADY, unflinchingly calm mount. Later, I learned that he was one of their “bear chasers”…horses used to chase grizzlies off. And, that he had formerly been a roping horse. My intuition of Snickers, without the benefit of that knowledge, proved sound…he did great dragging along stubborn, ornery old Nada (Rayna’s mount), not startling at all even though Nada was horrible at following and seemed bent on getting her rope wrapped under his tail (at which point I would DROP the rope and circle back around to retrieve it). Never once did Snickers freak. Many a horse would have. Indeed, Zappy, the guide’s horse did freak later when towing Nada and getting similar treatment from Nada. Anyway, I lead Nada (Rayna’s mount) until we stopped for lunch. I think the two girl guides got into a lot of trouble, though, with the more experienced (seventeen year old) Caleb when he caught up with us at the lake and found out they were having a rider lead another horse. I guess that is WAY against their rules…on the grounds that if trouble arises, a parent tends to instinctually have a death grip on the rope--even to the point of being scraped from the saddle themselves by that rope, rather than letting go of the lead rope with the understanding that their child’s mount won’t go far from the rest of the horses. I comprehended, though, when to drop the rope rather than getting knocked out of my saddle by the rope wrapping around me or getting bucked as the rope wrapped up under my horse’s tail and did fine with leading Nada. I know my opinion is biased, but I think I was doing a better job of keeping Nada in line that first half of the trip than the guide did the second half…when we kept losing the back end of our group because Nada wouldn’t cooperate. (All of which helps explain why I was irritated two days later when I felt like Rayna needed to be led and the guides were telling me I couldn’t lead her! But, like I said, I think the two girls must have gotten into a lot of trouble when it was discovered I had led Rayna all the way to the lake that first day…because arrangements had changed in a hurry the moment Caleb arrived. Honestly, though, Snickers was a much better choice, horse-wise, to lead another horse than the more flighty Zappy was.)
Well, it is late…so, I will wait until tomorrow to post about our succeeding days (which were SO MUCH BETTER than our first day--all would agree!).
I do want to quickly tell a few more things, though… One moment of excitement (not the good kind) occurred during our lunch break at the lake before Caleb caught up with us. The two girl guides had tied all our horses up to some small evergreen trees (bush sized) so we could have our lunch. Well, right off the bat, Zappy wound himself around his bush and somehow got his rope wrapped behind his hind legs and managed to flip himself over. The way his halter was wrapped tightly around him, he was quickly suffocating. He couldn’t breathe at all and was on his back. His body weight was holding the halter tightly around him, closing off his air way. It was a terrifying sight as Brittany struggled to save her horse and Isabel (new to this job--the eighteen year old cook) was momentarily confused about how to help. Brittany was fast acting and saved the horse…but it was a horrifying scene to watch…frozen in place, not knowing what to do to help. Later in the trip, flighty Zappy, tried to roll in the lake WITH BRITTANY still in the saddle. Again Brittany anticipated what Zappy was doing and managed, just at the last moment, to get her back up square on her feet before she could roll. It seems that Zappy came from Rivenstoke(?)…the same place our very capable guide Caleb haled from…where there are lots of streams and lakes and the horses are known for their love of the water and love of swimming. Brittany told us that on a trip shortly before ours, a regular rider had been on Zappy when Zappy had decided to roll in the lake. The woman got drenched (still in Zappy’s saddle when Zappy dropped down into the water and rolled) and her brand-new digital camera was ruined. I was quietly thankful that I wasn’t assigned Zappy! Brittany really liked Zappy a lot, though, and was pleased to be riding him. Zappy was a beautiful horse…and he couldn’t WALK, he pranced!…but, he was just too flighty and silly. Later, he sored his legs up into a bloody mess one night while hobbled and turned loose to graze. The other horses walked sensibly with their hobbles on…comprehending that they could not RUN while the hobbles were on. Zappy, however, never walked with the hobbles. He would rare up on his hind legs and jump like a rabbit to get around…which had to be really hard on him.
Another thing that sticks in my mind, was one of our trips to the privy…I was holding Rayna’s hand as we walked down the trail to the privy. Rayna beamed up at me and exclaimed, “This is just like a ‘Mother-Daughter Day’!” Bless her happy little heart! Only a four year old would view a trip to the outhouse as a “Mother-Daughter Day”!
Well, I will write more tomorrow! (Tonight we are staying in Swift Current in Saskatchewan. Alberta has some of the most stunning landscape I have seen anywhere in the world...but, Saskatchewan has such warm, open, friendly folks! They make you feel like you are already home!) ¶ 7/24/2006 08:33:00 PM
