Sedgie:

Reckon this means your still in one piece (and not in jail)
Now thats real good.
You better have plenty of photos.
Well, "jail" was a distinct possibility after we located our missing partner and vehicle 30 miles down the road in Radium Hot Springs, BC (after managing to get the RCMP and U.S. Customs involved ... which is a whole 'nother story). I was in the mood for blood & mayhem, but all I did was punch the passenger window -- and not quite hard enough to break it. And my sane (or at least saner) partner, Dogboy, pulled me off before I could get too ridiculous. And that story will keep for the moment ... and might be better explained by your earlier inquiry (you got "the sight" or something there, boy?)

Just wonderin' if you got stranded on some snow-capped mountain, lost in a forgotten ravine
or had a tussle with a grizzly bear.
"Mountaineering" (or "alpinism") is a different gig from climbing short cliffs & ice waterfalls. Certain "objective hazards," like rockfall, crevasses, avalanche, lightning, and freezing your 'nads off all go with the turf. If you're really lucky you might even get your fanny pulled out by one of these things (who came in to haul off a nice young gentleman from Surrey with whom I'd been speaking the night we arrived back from Bugaboo Spire (that's "Snowpatch Spire" in the background). He'll live, but he won't be walkin' too good for quite awhile -- and this is all another story:

image

BUT .... The "objective hazard" I was NOT quite prepared for (at least on this trip) was something that arrived (and was posted) after we went up -- and didn't discover 'til our late-night (by headlamp) return to the trailhead.

Where we also discovered (or I should say, didn't discover) our vehicle.

Essentially, stranded 5 km & 3,000 vertical feet down from the campsite in the middle of nowhere. With 140 lbs. of gear & nowhere to go.

Which required a late night stroll a few miles into some potentially unpleasant turf. These are the last two shots on my camera -- taken somewhere between 11:00 p.m. & 1:00 a.m. about two miles apart:

image....image...

Since I'm writing this, obviously we didn't encounter this particular "activity" -- but I understand a few other folk have been less lucky, and one had to be airlifted out.

And I just located the on-line notice .... which, of course, didn't do much good, cause there's no such thing as "on-line" that far into the Bugaboos. But the "Warning" made for interesting reading -- since I'd just been there.


And if this all sounds less than coherent, it's because I'm less than fully conscious. But alive and mostly unscathed.

It's worth remembering that mountaineering is like fun ... but different.

Selah.


Nice little hackle farm you've got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
~Reph