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Thanks for joining us on our adventures,
Michael and Taylor Kittell

Bugaboo Provincial Park

One of Michael’s skills is developing a Grand Plan.  If you have ever heard him describe how he captured a photo of some special event that only happens with the sun is just right, the earth is spinning at a specific angle, and the skies have just the right amount of clouds, then you have some sense of what I’m referring to.  He’s not as interested in “going for a hike” as he is in developing a Grand Plan that gets us to some unique perspective (usually to photograph, of course).   

Let me interrupt myself to say that the last few weeks have been a constant barrage of logistics.  How do we insure Michael’s camera gear when we’re abroad?  What countries do we have to get visas for ahead of time?  How do we maintain health insurance?  What are our plans?  What is our budget?  Where are we sleeping tonight?  What are we doing tomorrow/next week/next month?  WHERE ARE WE GOING?!  It’s enough to make us stick our heads in the sand and assume everything will take care of itself.  But after a few minutes of that, we pull our heads out again and keep checking things off the list.  In this context, we haven’t been able to execute as many of Michael’s Grand Plans in this first part of our trip as we would have liked, but we did have an amazing adventure in Bugaboo Provincial Park in British Columbia, Canada.

Bugaboo Provincial Park is located in the Purcell Mountains in Southeastern BC and is one of the premier alpine rock climbing areas in the world.  Huge granite spires rise steeply above glaciers, creating a jaw-dropping alpine environment.

View of the Bugaboos from the summit of Eastpost Spire

After a long drive on a dirt road in the middle of Nowhere, BC, you arrive at a parking lot with an astounding number of other people and remember how much this place is “discovered.”  Luckily, that means that there’s a lovely pit toilet at the trailhead and loads of chicken wire and sticks you wrap around your car to prevent porcupines, marmots and other small creatures from eating your tires (luxuries not often provided at trailheads).

Tire protection is key to ever getting home

Note to Self:  Lean poles against something BEFORE putting on the monster pack

From the parking lot, there are two trails into the park: the Trail Everyone Uses and the Other One (the Cobalt Lake trail).  The Grand Plan: enter via the Other One, traverse no less than 4 groups of spires from East to West, tag summits along the way, and exit via the Trail Everyone Uses.  After leaving the parking lot, we didn’t see another soul for 3 days and it was marvelous. 

Our first camp, where we stayed for two nights, was in a serene alpine meadow on a ridge overlooking the Eastern Spires with a view of the very remote Vowel Group.  The sunset was spectacular.

The view from our first camp (yellow tent on the far left)

The swirling clouds of sunset looking at the Vowel Group

[Insert irreverent and self-promoting caption here]

Michael at work

Our first full day was a long one.  We kept our glorious camp in the same place and, after much hiking, climbing, scrambling, and general legwork, did a three-kilometer-long ridge traverse from the summit of Brenta Spire to the summit of Northpost Spire.  Most of the traverse was scrambling until the final stretch to Northpost Spire, which had moves classified at 5.6-5.8.  Unfortunately, the guidebook’s description of the crux of the route was absolutely not correct - no way was that only rated 5.8!  Fortunately, Michael is amazing at route-finding and we were able to rappel down the ridge and follow a series of exposed and freaky ledges until we reached an oh-my-god-I’m-going-to-die-from-rockfall-paranoia-inducing gully to the summit.  From there, it was a quick rappel and a long, blistering scramble/hike/scree-slide back to camp.

Taylor on the traverse

This day – this whole adventure in general – highlighted a clear change for both of us in our climbing style.  After the accidents we’ve been involved in and witnessed, our sense of invincibility, our assumption that everything will be okay, and our willingness to “just go for it” are markedly diminished.  In the past we’ve been careful and smart with protection, but now we both feel more aware of our own (and each other’s) mortality.  Yet we feel so alive when we’re out in a remote, alpine environment with spectacular views, pushing ourselves physically.  It’s now the aesthetics of an adventure that matter and technical difficulty has been demoted to a secondary goal.  Our enjoyment of these mountain adventures hasn’t changed, but the way we do them has.  

With the rise in temperature and the clear, sunny skies (a plus) came a new hatch of mosquitoes (a minus) and our serene alpine meadow became a deet-smelling, clothing-from-head-to-toe-even-though-I’m-not-cold situation.  It was time to move camp.  We donned our embarrassingly heavy packs and headed onward. 

We traversed through the Eastern Spires, dropping our packs to climb various spires along the way: Cobalt Lake Spire (horrific rock and a nerve-wracking albeit scenic experience), the Whipping Post (more of a quick jaunt than a climb), Crescent Spire (a wonderfully entertaining scramble), and Eastpost Spire (carefree route-finding and stunning views). 

After these four summits, we headed downward to the masses of Applebee Campground, where we were able to find a spot with a view of the second half of the Grand Plan: a snow-and-ice traverse through the Bugaboo Glacier peaks.

A view of Applebee Campground (Tent City) below the central spires

However, the second part of the Grand Plan just wasn’t meant to be.  Temperatures had warmed considerably, making glacier travel less safe, especially for a two-person rope team.  The decision was sealed when Michael chucked his ice ax towards his other gear and it somehow managed to fall through a very small crack and clink-clink-clinked downward into oblivion for future species to find. 

Our second camp (with the small crack that ate Michael's ice ax on the right)

With much reluctance, we hiked the Trail Everyone Uses back to our car, crammed our stuff into it in record time while being chased by hordes of mosquitoes, and drove the road back to civilization… and back to our logistical check-lists.

After deciding that we simply needed to sit down and hammer out some of the answers to the questions we’ve been avoiding (What are we doing? Where are we going and how do we get there?), we returned to Michael’s parents’ cabin on Kootenay Lake, which is essentially camping with electricity, internet, and a hammock.  Now here we sit, Grand Planning away…

**Scramble: Noun: A difficult or hurried clamber up or over something.  Verb: To make one's way quickly or awkwardly up a steep slope or over rough ground by using one's hands as well as one's feet.  Translation: A climb that is not steep enough to be called “technical” and justify using a rope or rock protection, but often still freaky, exposed, and exhausting, even though it sounds like it should be easy (and some are… just not the ones that make it into the Grand Plan). 

The Class Rating System:  Another climber lingo translation here… The Yosemite Decimal System (YDS) is the most common way to rate how difficult or technical a climb is (thank you Sierra Club!).  There are different components to it (classes, grades, and decimals within 5^th Class) but here’s the basic breakdown: Class 1 = A leisurely stroll; Class 2 = Simple scrambling with occasional use of the hands; Class 3 = Scrambling with use of handholds and increased exposure where “falls are not always fatal” (so optimistic…); Class 4 = Simple climbing with exposure where “falls may well be fatal;” Class 5 = Technical climbing involving a rope and protection where un-roped falls result in severe injury or death (luckily not always).

 

How to Prepare for an Expedition (Michael and Taylor Style)

Step 1. Move out of your house entirely. It'll be cheaper in the long run and it adds that extra challenge to finding important items.

Step 2. Purchase mounds of freeze dried gold, preferably the spaghetti with meat sauce variety (and say goodbye to any vegetarian aspirations for the foreseeable future) for anticipated meals in the backcountry.

 

 

Step 3. Spend hours researching the variety of technological tools that could make your trip easier/safer/faster/more social-media-friendly and then decide none of them will actually do those things - they will simply make your backpack heavier and more complicated.  Pack them anyway.

 

 

  Step 4.  Pack all material possessions you may need for all possible activities you may do (car camping, hiking, backpacking, rock climbing, alpine climbing, ice climbing, or a combination of any of the above) into a compact Prius so you can still manage 50 MPG as you drive across the continent.  Realize it simply won't fit.  Unpack and repack the car.  Drive a day and realize you can't reach a single thing you need.  Unpack and repack the car.  Camp for the night and take this opportunity to unpack and repack the car a completely different way.  Drop at least one item you don't actually need with every friend or family member you see.  Repeat daily until satisfied.

 

 

Step 5. Spend days looking at guidebooks, blogs, websites and random day-hikers' photos of cool mountains behind them looking for beta (information) that fits into something exciting, unusual, adventurous, preferably that hasn't been done before, but also isn't life threatening... or too hard.  Come up with a plan.  Then change it.  Now change it again. Hope that'll work, but keep a couple back up options in mind.

 

Step 6.  Arrive in the general area you plan to climb.  Fit everything you need in life into a 70 liter backpack you can carry.  Strap extra stuff on the outside.  Pack this at least a day ahead of time so you have a chance to remember all the stuff you forgot.

 

Step 7.  Do a final, last minute check of the weather.  Scrap the plan, unpack everything and violently curse the skies because every sunny day in the next five days is now forecasted to be rain.  Silver lining: you only have to go back to step 5. 

The Final Step.  Go do something cool that is drastically different than your original plan because of Step 7. 

Two days ago, we were finally able to do our first climb during a half-day weather window: a harder-than-anticipated ice climb up a steep glacier to the summits of Mt. Aberdeen and Haddo Peak near Lake Louise, Alberta.  The climb involved several steep ice pitches and roughly 5,000 feet of elevation gain to a superlative summit view of the neighboring mountains.  Weather rolled in during our descent, which involved no less than 9 v-thread anchors to rappel down the steep ice.  Not the expedition we had originally planned, but a challenge nonetheless, and a great first climb of our trip!

Thankfully, after waiting out a few more days in thunder and lightning, our weather forecast looks like this:

So... The Next Step: A 5-6 day traverse in Bugaboo Provincial Park that will hopefully involve a bunch of summits and some spectacular views!!! 

The ice axe in one hand, the trekking pole in the other... the journey begins.

Perhaps it is not unusual to wonder if we’re crazy.  If you’re reading this, you likely know that we like adventures.  You likely know that we don’t sit still very well, for better and for worse.  You also likely know that we are about to leave the comfort of our cozy home for a period of self-inflicted homelessness and general discomfort, while surrounded by astonishing natural beauty and mountain cultures (hopefully…).  

I’ve been holding my pillow a little tighter, making my warm showers last a little longer, smelling my clean clothes a little deeper, and generally trying to appreciate all the luxuries I anticipate not having for the next indefinite period of time.

In the midst of transitioning cases, physically surrounded by piles of gear, balancing the list of “to-dos” with maintaining our sanity, I sit here writing our first blog post.  It’s a time of excitement, with a dash of sadness and a healthy dose of ignorance err… open-mindedness.   

Yes, indeed, we don’t actually have a concrete plan, even though we are leaving in a little over a week.  At this point, we have a very flexible itinerary: Washington and the Canadian Rockies for the first three months, interrupted by two very important weddings; abroad to the general Himalaya region for the fall, either New Zealand or Southeast Asia for the winter, and perhaps the spring will sort itself out.  The planner in me is eager for something more concrete, but Michael’s commitment-phobia is contagious.  What to do with so much freedom?!  First, we enjoy that we can ask ourselves that question.

Wherever we go, whatever we find, we hope that you will join us in this great adventure.  Cheers!