Hypothermia
File:Valhalla mountain lake.jpg
Clayton: age 6.
My dad and three of his friends along with their sons and myself, decide it would be fun to hike into a lake situated in an extinct volcano. Wragge Lake, in Valhalla Provincial Park.
Four fathers and four sons, but I remember very little about the others. I know that dad's friend Ron Freisen and his son Erin were there, because afterward they recounted their own perspectives of the story when I was older. My own memories are very specifically about me and dad, with the others existing in my minds eye only as shadows much taller than myself.
I have some vague recollection of someone commenting that at six years old, I might be the youngest person to hike into Wragge lake. I have no accompanying memory of worry about it. I was six, after all. But also I had absolute confidence in my dad - he had been a forest ranger after all. And, well, sort of an infallible god, basically. You know how it goes.
There was a 1.5 hour drive from our home in Nelson to the north end of Slocan lake... I assume. In the way of whitewashing that three decades has, it was completely unmemorable. As was the unloading of the dirt bike from the back of our yellow-and-white GMC pickup truck, and the who-knows-how-long ride up the logging roads to our planned approach point. Where my memory begins is with the contemplation of going straight into the bush.
Something about going where there was no road, no path, and no signs was completely alien. My good-little-boy brain stayed in the yard when told, stayed on the sidewalk when told, looked for traffic when crossing the street, and didn't step on cracks for fear of mommy's back. This weren't no ordinary park. I can just imagine how wide my eyes were, or the drinking-it-all-in expression I had as my dad and his bushwhacking friends navigated our way through the rugged mountains with a compass and topo-map.
Writing that, a little shiver ran up my back. The seed of that wonder is still with me, reminding me of my love of wild mountain spaces. Despite my pathetic hiding in cities for most of my life since. But just to say it, because it should be said, the high mountain country of Valhalla Provincial Park is gorgeous.
We plodded our way though lush ravines and wound around gullies and scrambled over scree ridges, and eventually clambered into the heart of the cone-shaped mountain, and beheld the circular lake cradled within. If, at that moment of revelation, a shimmering dragon were to rise out of the water with forest sprites riding it, I think it would have seemed utterly appropriate.
There was a flurry of activity after we recovered from our awe, and I hope I managed to help setting up our little tent, but I'm not certain that I did (I often hung back quietly at that age). I am pretty certain that I didn't partake in the fishing that first afternoon, being reluctant with baiting hooks and killing fish and just generally shy, and instead spent my time playing nearby hopping from log to log where they jammed together at the end of the lake that trickled down into a creek down the mountain. After my dad shared with me some of the cutthroat trout he had caught, simply broiled over an open fire for dinner, my interest in fishing the next day was considerably increased.
But first, there was the array of spooky stories told around the campfire, under the brilliant panoply of the Milky Way. With all our packs hoisted up high between trees, we crawled into our tents, and proceeded to freeze our asses off.
It didn't rain during the night, but the dew the next morning was almost as soaking as any torrent could have been. Dad got us up and started briskly moving about to counteract the chill, hoping that the sun would soon appear over the lip of the volcano and warm us somewhat. We started fishing, and had some modicum of luck before the sky got too bright, but then the fish disappeared. Which was hard to fathom, considering how small the lake seemed - where would they go? I watched my dad and his friends joke about the miserable luck, as we all futilely kept casting the same flies that had worked so well the previous dusk.
We never really got warm, though, because some threatening clouds rolled in, first obscuring the sun, then treating us to some cold misting rain. I can still remember the sense of regret that nobody wanted to start a fire to cook our few fish (for whatever reasons), and instead we just brunched on some trail mix and packed up our camp in the rain. At noon, it was time to head back.
Our return was supposed to be easier than our approach, because of being more generally downhill. But with the forest all heavy with moisture, we moved through it more regretfully. Being small, I got more tired slogging along in my wet shoes, wet pants from all the water running off my little poncho, and my habit of shouldering bodily through the woods due to a reluctance to get my hands even colder by moving branches out of the way. I started to lag.
I don't think I was being recalcitrant, but it's hard to say with little kids. My memory of my motivations at the time are perhaps intentionally forgotten due to shame, or maybe I was innocently without guile. Regardless, I do recall being relieved that dad didn't seem angry with me when he offered to carry me so that we could keep up. He hoisted me up so that I sat on his shoulders, using the tent strapped to the top of his pack as partial backrest. And oh how we strode through the wood!
Except, of course, it was still high altitude, it was still raining, and I wasn't expending any effort - so I got really cold. Even the view disappeared in the damp cloud that enveloped us, and I ended up just hanging onto dad and trying not to complain. (Note how I said "trying".)
When we got to the logging road where the dirt bikes were parked, I had difficulty getting off dad. My little hands were stiff little fists hanging onto his pack straps, and I couldn't bend my legs enough to slide over his pack. He got me off, though, and rubbed my hands in his, and got me to jump up and down clapping my hands like he taught me to when we went skiing. He lashed the packs to the tank of the motorcycle, and got one of his friends to help me onto the back of the seat (I needed than anyway; I wasn't tall enough to hop on by myself).
I don't remember who it was, but before we got underway someone noticed that they had used up more than half of their fuel already. So it was decided, to play it safe, we would glide the motorcycles down the mountain as far as we could. I'm not sure if that makes much sense, really, but I do have a hilarious memory of all of the dads and sons racing down the mountain in slow-motion, bouncing up and down on the footpegs pretending to be jockeys. It must have been even colder to have added wind chill, but the fun-loving spirit of it all seemed to keep my spirits up.
Finally we got down to the trucks, and before anything else dad started up our old Chevy, cranked up the heat, and set me inside. It was getting gloomy out already, as I recall, and was fully dark by the time we got home. My hands hurt from the warm air out of the truck vents, and they stung trying to hold onto the hot cocoa my mom made for me when I got home. I remember loving all the fussing they made over me, and happily falling asleep with the electric blanket on my bed.
It wasn't until some years later that my dad filled in some blanks about how worried he was during that hike out. I guess I had turned almost blue by the time we got to the motorcycles, with puffy purple lips. He was reasonably certain that I had at least moderate hypothermia, and confessed that if I hadn't started being able to improve my dexterity and stopped forgetting what we were talking about during the drive home he meant to drive directly to the emergency room.
All's well that ends well, I guess.
Of course, it was just one year later that a logging road was built pretty much directly to the verge of Wragge Lake. I've ridden there several times on my dirtbikes since. The road fell into disrepair before I returned from university to visit it again in 1999, though, and had to hike up the remains of the road.
It's still gorgeous.
If you go, be careful of Grizzlies.