June 8, 2006During the summer season, when the lodge is open and the campground is staffed by Parks Canada, a yellow school bus shuttles campers, lodge guests, and day hikers from the parking lot at Wapta Lake to Lake O'Hara. The trip is slow and follows a relatively unremarkable dirt road for 11 kilometres, steadily gaining elevation as it goes. For a hike it was rather boring. The weather wasn't great. A light drizzle fell by times and the sky was heavy with cloud.
Finally, we packed up our stuff, put it on our backs, and went for a long, heavily-burdened hike. We went off to Lake O'Hara for the night. This is my second time here. The first time was a few years ago with Meaghan. Everything is different this time, but the same. The mountains don't change nor do the rivers, the lakes and the trees. Most of these things change over generations. Human perception changes. So does the face presented by changing seasons.
Although Meaghan and I did get snowed on when we were here before, there was little snow pack except at higher elevations. It was August. This visit is two full months earlier in the season. Creeks that were a trickle then are a rush now. The seven veils waterfall is actually seven water falls flowing over a broad rock face. Last time there was barely a trickle.
The biggest difference between then and now though is the sense of emptiness. There is a skeleton crew of staff getting the lodge at the lake ready, but asice from them we are the only people up here. No day-hikers, no campers, no parks staff. No one but us.
As usual, by times we walked and talked, and by other times we walked and chewed our own thoughts. One of the few benefits of the road was the openness it offered. Bears were waking from their long winter slumber and the more warning we had of one's presence the better. As usual, we didn't see any. It was a couple of hours before we reached the campground at Lake O'Hara and we welcomed the chance to drop our bags in a shelter and recharge before exploring the surrounding area.
Our hike up to Lake Oesa was a delight, as much because of the solitary nature of our experience as it was because of the stunning beauty. I'll have only memories of the area because I left my camera behind. The entire valley, hemmed in by half a dozen mountains, was capped by clouds which slowly let loose a light dreizzle of rain. Despite the wather, or perhaps because of it, it was easy to forget we weren't really that far removed from civilization.The mountain goats were grazing high up on a slight ledge, though it is hard really to call it a ledge, more like a sliver on a steep slope. I'm not sure how they do it but they manage to survive where only birds should be. I do wish I had taken my camera. Sure, it was wet and I didn't want to risk damaging it, but hindsight being what it is the dampness was manageable. The area was surreal. So quiet. So still. The monochrome of grey and white of stone and snow was broken up by flashes of yellow and red lichen, and the discarded orange needles of larch trees fallen on snow.
Standing in the quiet at the edge of Lake Oesa I was standing in a different world. A world without machines or lights or buzzers. No thumping of deep base coming from low riding cars. There were no clocks here. No need. The only schedule was that set by our stomachs and the passing of the sun. It was with regret we turned back the way we had come. Of note, we saw three mountain goats along the way. I was very excited.
Back at the campsite we made a fire. It was a frustratingly long and cumbersome process. The stove in the shelter is the tiniest little thing I've ever seen. It may very well have been made by Matchbox. It took us 45 minutes of diligence to get a fire going. Once the fire got going though, it got well.I spent a day spraying the fly with silicone water-proofing, trying to bring it back to a usable point. I slathered the seams with sealer. I hoped it would work. I thought it would work. In the end it didn't work. The tent had served me well for years. It housed me on my first long journey east ten years ago. Then I was travelling at the whim of drivers open to the pleadings of my thumb and a sign directing me to Halifax. It housed Meaghan and I on our long trip back to Vancouver later that summer. That trip alone leaves me with an attachment to it that's hard to sever. Now it hangs in a bag from the ceiling in the basement. I'll give it up some day.
As I write this I am lying on top of a picnic table in the shelter. I am tucked snuggly into my sleeping bag, I have a headlamp, and a portable mattress pads my underside. This is where I'll sleep tonight. My tent, the old one that is, not my Wanderer2, has become a miserable failure in the rain, despite a solid effort to revitalize its water repelling abilities. Had I slept in it tonight I would only have been able to occupy ... I wouldn't have been able to sleep in it. It was raining inside the tent.
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