Umm help?

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

It happened pretty fast.

One minute I was on the side of snow covered and tree dappled mountain walking along in my snowshoes and the next I was in the side of the mountain up to my waist in snow.

"Ok, don't panic," I told myself. "Just carefully lift your feet out of the hole and move towards the rest of the group. You can do this."

I moved and sank lower into the snow.

Now I was up to my chest and I was starting to feel a bit panicky.

"How deep is this (insert expletive) stuff? And what the hell is this tree doing under here?!" I wondered to myself as I touched the top branches of a prickly pine tree submerged next to me.

I tried wiggling again and saw the snow in front of me give way making my little pit that much bigger.

"Oh this is just fabulous, great...freakin' fantastic," I thought. My first real outdoor experience in the Yukon and I get stuck in quick-snow!

"Umm help?" I called to Annie-Claude and Alain who were standing on their skis about six feet from me.

"Oh!" said Annie-Claude as she glided over to me on her skis.

Oh, indeed.

It had been a tough trek up Log Cabin Mountain that morning and my little predicament wasn't making things any easier.

We'd just spent the last hour or so climbing up the steep slope on a narrow path through trees drooping with snow. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous, but I didn't have much time to notice it on the way up. I was more concerned with making it up the incline in my borrowed snowshoes and not getting freaked out by how high we were climbing.

I'd only ever been snowshoeing once before and that was fairly disastrous, but I wanted to try again with more sophisticated equipment kindly leant to me by Annie-Claude.

At first everything was fine. I strapped my boots onto the metal frames and walked around a bit to test them out on the snow at the base of the mountain. "Well this is alright," I thought. "No big deal, feels pretty normal."

Little did I know the fun was about to start.

I'd seen a picture of Log Cabin before we left home and the narrow path we'd be trouping up, but it didn't sink in until I was looking up at the large mountain and the sharp angle of the trail just how hard this little hike was going to be.

The incline started pretty much right out of the parking lot where we left Alain's jeep. Before long we were all feeling the heat as we worked to get up the trail.

At first it didn't seem so bad, but then my heart started pounding and it was getting a bit harder to breathe. I tried telling myself that the climb would be great exercise and not to worry, to just take it one step at a time.

That worked until those steps were getting harder to take. The snow on the mountain was pretty much all fresh powder - not hard packed so walking up the trail was a tricky prospect. I slipped around in the snow holding on to my ski poles for balance and leverage. Frederic, Annie-Claude and Alain's friend, was carrying his snowboard and had just as much trouble keeping his balance.

"Why am I doing this?!" I yelled in my head.

"Because you wanted an adventure and now you've got one." I retorted silently to myself.

"Ugh, shut up," I thought.

I'm not exactly a mountain climbing kind of girl, but I'd decided before leaving London for the Yukon that I would try new things and push myself to experience new activities.

Well mission accomplished and I'd found myself in a nice snow hole to boot.

As I tried to pull myself out of the hole on Log Cabin's side I didn't look down the slope beside me. We were pretty high up - just on the outskirts of the tree line and the view was incredible, but terrifying too. I was seriously afraid that I'd hop out of the hole and roll right down the mountain side.

Lucky for me, Annie-Claude is a great skier and a wonderful guide. She calmly told me how to get myself out of the pickle I was in and helped me get on the right path to start heading down the mountain.

Once I was out of my little snow-cave in the making, I slowly made my way down again to where we'd all have lunch. On my way down the trail I had a chance to really look around and see how beautiful the land was.

Getting back into the tree covered area you could see just how many trees there were on the mountain side and on the land around the mountain. Covered in snow and sagging from the weight, the trees looked tired as I swished by them. Everything was so quiet and muted by the snow I swear you could have heard a pin drop.

I had a great time taking pictures of the view and of the snow-frosted trees and it made all the hard trekking on the way up worth it...including my embarrassing run in with the sinkhole lol.

After lunch with the group I carried on down the trail on my own. I stopped every so often just to take in the absolute silence and breathe in the clean air whispering past me.

It was really an amazing experience.

I don't know if I'd ever climb up a mountain again in the snow, but I think I'd like to try some flat trails. Hopefully I wouldn't run into any snow sinkholes there lol.

All in all though, I'm really glad I got the chance to see Log Cabin and learn a bit about the area. I have pictures, but it might take some finangling to get them on here. My internet connection doesn't seem to want me to post them, but I'm slowly making headway in getting them online.

Aside from the great weekend adventure I had I also had a really exciting first week at CBC North. But more on that in my next entry tomorrow...

Nighty night and safe mountain climbing!

Jess