A couple weekends ago, my brother-in-law, Ardy, and I took the kids out tobogganing.
As it was the first time in about 22 months that we had enough snow, it was kind of a big deal. The kids in question are his 7 1/2 year old daughter and my 7 3/4 year old son, who are more like brother and sister than any kids exactly three months apart could reasonably be.
We've been raising them like that. It's one of the reasons we moved out here.
We roasted down a nice bowl hill for 90 minutes in different configurations of pairs to much shrieking laughter, and almost no complaining about cold or climbs. Somebody had a campfire going off to one side - out of the way - at the bottom of the bowl. It smelled marvelous.
I can recall a couple times Dad took us out like that - but the
tobogganing was usually ancillary to the trip. Trips out usually
involved ski-doos, dogs, campfires, snowshoes, and - more often than not
- frozen stretches of water, with tree limbs cut into hockey sticks and
pucks. In later years there would be backpacks, bush cabins, and mulled wine, but these are stories for another time.
You only sat around for a winter weekend in The Sticks if it was actively raining. Which - In Winter, in the Sticks - was pretty much never.
It was a glorious afternoon - and all Ardy's idea. So I told him about Twister.
Serious tobogganing in the Sticks didn't require a car; everything in the place was walking distance, even for a pre-adolescent.
It's remembrances like this that make me feel like I grew up in a different dimension. We no longer let our children cross the street alone at an age where we were out of sight of the house from dawn till dusk... but I digress.
You had pretty much had three standard options for sledding when you lived in lower Sticks. The hill behind the row houses was okay, and it was really close, but it was a short rise at only sixty or so vertical feet... and the slope was fairly terrifying at between 70 and 80 degrees. It was also a standard path for a lot of kids to go to school... so very often it was either worn to dirt, or chopped-up and refrozen ice - which rattles your teeth while sledding.
The water tower was better - across Highway three at the top of the hill, and it was a good 150 vertical feet - but still 70 to 80 degrees vertical. It was so steep that snow very often didn't stay on it all that deep, and it was popular enough that the tracks would be worn to the dirt.
The speed you could reach on it would also flay your skin in cold weather.
By far, the best hill around was Twister.
It was an old cut road that wound its way down from Old Highway 3, and opened up to a small meadow at the base of the causeway that was built up to support New Highway 3. The climb was something like 200 vertical feet, but since it was originally a road it was cut into the slope with S turns and switchbacks to minimise the slope. It took a good 15 to 20 minutes to walk up from the bottom.
The result? Add a little snow and you had 3 minutes of steep-banked wide-track bob-sled-inspiring greatness that was populated every snowy weekend available.
And seriously - the more kids, the better. Lots of them would bring inner tubes from the mine trucks - once punctured, they couldn't be used on the trucks any more, but patch them and fill them up, and you can seat up to five 10 year olds on one.
The season after my brother first took me to Twister, Santa delivered a pair of plastic formed sleds. They were basically a rectangular tub with a catamaran shaped front slope, and a seat pressed into the form. They were also the fastest sleds on the hill the next 4 years running.
We were lightning. In one of those interceptors you could let the tubes go first, and get around the top corner, and you'd still pass them before you were half way down. One of the best places to pass was above an innertube on the outside of a turn embankment. If your timing was bad, the tube would bounce you right out of the gully into the trees. Which of course was all of the fun.
The hill was like riding down a drainpipe.
Somebody built a golf course on the end stretch of Old Highway 3 in the mid 80s. A couple years later, someone noticed guys on dirtbikes were using the Twister cut road to get on to the 9th hole of the golf course, and tearing up the fairways.
Several huge roadblocks of deadfall were constructed across the path of the cut road at various intervals almost immediately after that.
And a Legend passed into the mists of memory.
Showing posts with label Mountains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mountains. Show all posts
Wednesday, 9 January 2013
Monday, 5 November 2012
Rum Junction
I recently recounted certain events surrounding the development of a hunting cabin called the Rum Junction Hotel. About a klick south of Highway three, barely five minutes out of the little town I grew up in - The Sticks - there is a bottle in a tree.
Whatever. This story has elements that are not gonna be politically correct. I'm probably gonna offend PETA, MADD, and possibly the BCTF and a bunch of other acronyms, but that's the way things went down. Get over yourselves.
But then, my old friend Zon tells me I'm not exactly hindered in my commentary by an enormous audience, so I guess we're good.
Right. Into the abyss.
Dad and I were out hunting. It occurs to me that this is usually the way these things start.
The unusual part is that he actually saw something. An Elk.
And he saw it long enough to get a shot off.
When I was 15 years old, Dad was a pretty good shot. Having said that - a bottlecap in a tree is almost exactly unlike a 500 kilo Elk ripping up turf and trees around it as you can, realistically, get.
But I wasn't there - I was in the valley. I started moving in his direction when I heard the shot.
I found a man in befuddlement. He was certain he'd aimed true - but we could find absolutley no evidence.
Eventually, Dad found a tiny shred of bloodied flesh on a bush in the vicinity, that might indicate a bullet wound on a large animal. So now we had to track it down.
Six hours later, it was getting on to dusk, and we had not managed to find even one more trace of an animal that was injured, and we very nearly tore that valley apart. But Dad, being a Conservation Instructor and Environmentalist in his way, had an idea that seemed like a good idea at the time.
Heh. There's an acronym I use as a matter of routine... SLAGIATT. Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. It's a great catch-all for when things go unpredictably, horribly sideways. This seems to happen a lot in My World.
We were coming back the next day - and we were bringing The Dog.
I grew up with dogs. There were usually two. And they were generally large - as in over 40 kilos, and 30 cm tall at the shoulder, and very often both. This Dog was both. He was the unregistered offspring of a purebred Shepard and an Alsatian Police Dog, and a couple years later would be diagnosed with genetic Retinitis Pigmentosis, and then develop cataracts.
That's a story for another day, of course.
He was in no way intended or trained to hunt or track... but there was nothing wrong with his nose.
The next day, we were back in the draw at Roberts Creek.
Dad handled the Dog. The Dog was somewhere over 50 kilos, and still otherwise prime, and Dad, rightly, was concerned that he'd yard me off my feet running a blood trail.
Four grueling hours up and down 45-degree slopes with nothing to show for it, the Dog pulls Dad off his feet. In landing, Dad came down beside a bush and one of the twigs slid under his glasses, and gouged the cornea of his right eye.
Never done that, but I wear contact lenses sometimes. I'm pretty sure that it HURT. I seem to recall him mentioning that once or twice.
Dad was on a mission, though, and gamely carried on through excruciating pain, his eye tearing to the point of useless.
And for several more hours, we continued to find absolutely no trace of this evidently phantom Elk. Dad, finally, had had enough, and sat down beside the old snag in the center of the draw up the valley. He pulled a bottle of overproof Demerara rum out of his pack. It was a 750 ml bottle; back then we'd have called it a 26er. It was about a third full.
"I brought this to toast with in case we found that Elk," Dad said. "Don't imagine you can drive us home." I thought about it for a second or two, and, having never touched a steering wheel in a moving vehicle to that point, knew my limitations.
"Thought not. Well, I can't see a damn thing, and this is the only painkiller we have. Pass me one of them cokes."
So we sat under that tree, and killed the sixpack of coke we had in my bag, splitting the remains of the bottle between us. When it was empty, Dad decided to hang it in the Snag we sat under, in the bottom of that draw. there was a perfect broken-off branch pointing straight up about 10 feet high.
I rode Dad's shoulders and mounted the bottle on the branch... and we hiked down the 20 minutes to the truck and drove home - very fortunately without incident. It took years for dad's eye to heal all the way. And now - we have cellphones so such events would never happen.
That bottle sat upside down in that tree - hell, as far as I know, it still is. Eight years after we placed it there Dad expressed amazement no one had shot it out yet. I have not been through that draw in 22 years, though, so I can't even tell you the snag is still standing, let alone the bottle.
That Snag in that Draw lives forever as Rum Junction. Welcome to the Group.
Okay, seriously. In that neck of the woods, there are very likely a number of bottles in a variety of trees - but none that I know of that are a named landmark for a very select group.
Couple things. I grew up in the 80s. It wasn't exactly the wild west, but... well, okay, it was actually the West, technically. My point is you've all very likely seen the posts on facebook how we should never have survived our childhoods... well a lot of this story would probably - nowadays...
Couple things. I grew up in the 80s. It wasn't exactly the wild west, but... well, okay, it was actually the West, technically. My point is you've all very likely seen the posts on facebook how we should never have survived our childhoods... well a lot of this story would probably - nowadays...
Whatever. This story has elements that are not gonna be politically correct. I'm probably gonna offend PETA, MADD, and possibly the BCTF and a bunch of other acronyms, but that's the way things went down. Get over yourselves.
But then, my old friend Zon tells me I'm not exactly hindered in my commentary by an enormous audience, so I guess we're good.
Right. Into the abyss.
Dad and I were out hunting. It occurs to me that this is usually the way these things start.
The unusual part is that he actually saw something. An Elk.
And he saw it long enough to get a shot off.
When I was 15 years old, Dad was a pretty good shot. Having said that - a bottlecap in a tree is almost exactly unlike a 500 kilo Elk ripping up turf and trees around it as you can, realistically, get.
But I wasn't there - I was in the valley. I started moving in his direction when I heard the shot.
I found a man in befuddlement. He was certain he'd aimed true - but we could find absolutley no evidence.
Eventually, Dad found a tiny shred of bloodied flesh on a bush in the vicinity, that might indicate a bullet wound on a large animal. So now we had to track it down.
Six hours later, it was getting on to dusk, and we had not managed to find even one more trace of an animal that was injured, and we very nearly tore that valley apart. But Dad, being a Conservation Instructor and Environmentalist in his way, had an idea that seemed like a good idea at the time.
Heh. There's an acronym I use as a matter of routine... SLAGIATT. Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. It's a great catch-all for when things go unpredictably, horribly sideways. This seems to happen a lot in My World.
We were coming back the next day - and we were bringing The Dog.
I grew up with dogs. There were usually two. And they were generally large - as in over 40 kilos, and 30 cm tall at the shoulder, and very often both. This Dog was both. He was the unregistered offspring of a purebred Shepard and an Alsatian Police Dog, and a couple years later would be diagnosed with genetic Retinitis Pigmentosis, and then develop cataracts.
That's a story for another day, of course.
He was in no way intended or trained to hunt or track... but there was nothing wrong with his nose.
The next day, we were back in the draw at Roberts Creek.
Dad handled the Dog. The Dog was somewhere over 50 kilos, and still otherwise prime, and Dad, rightly, was concerned that he'd yard me off my feet running a blood trail.
Four grueling hours up and down 45-degree slopes with nothing to show for it, the Dog pulls Dad off his feet. In landing, Dad came down beside a bush and one of the twigs slid under his glasses, and gouged the cornea of his right eye.
Never done that, but I wear contact lenses sometimes. I'm pretty sure that it HURT. I seem to recall him mentioning that once or twice.
Dad was on a mission, though, and gamely carried on through excruciating pain, his eye tearing to the point of useless.
And for several more hours, we continued to find absolutely no trace of this evidently phantom Elk. Dad, finally, had had enough, and sat down beside the old snag in the center of the draw up the valley. He pulled a bottle of overproof Demerara rum out of his pack. It was a 750 ml bottle; back then we'd have called it a 26er. It was about a third full.
"I brought this to toast with in case we found that Elk," Dad said. "Don't imagine you can drive us home." I thought about it for a second or two, and, having never touched a steering wheel in a moving vehicle to that point, knew my limitations.
"Thought not. Well, I can't see a damn thing, and this is the only painkiller we have. Pass me one of them cokes."
So we sat under that tree, and killed the sixpack of coke we had in my bag, splitting the remains of the bottle between us. When it was empty, Dad decided to hang it in the Snag we sat under, in the bottom of that draw. there was a perfect broken-off branch pointing straight up about 10 feet high.
I rode Dad's shoulders and mounted the bottle on the branch... and we hiked down the 20 minutes to the truck and drove home - very fortunately without incident. It took years for dad's eye to heal all the way. And now - we have cellphones so such events would never happen.
That bottle sat upside down in that tree - hell, as far as I know, it still is. Eight years after we placed it there Dad expressed amazement no one had shot it out yet. I have not been through that draw in 22 years, though, so I can't even tell you the snag is still standing, let alone the bottle.
That Snag in that Draw lives forever as Rum Junction. Welcome to the Group.
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Red in the Ledger
I don't remember when Dad taught me to fish.
There are a couple ways to take that statement. SomePeople might take it to mean that the actual event was so traumatic that I've put it out of my mind. That may be true; as stated, I don't remember. I prefer to think it the more benign of the possibilities, of course... that I had been fishing with Dad since I could stand up.
So we're clear, my memory is shockingly good for someone of my evidently advanced age; I can name all of my teachers and most of my classmates all the way back to grade one, nearly 40 years ago.
My lovely wife, of course, would disagree, given my propensity to misplace things. But - this is about Fishing, not Recall.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I went fishing alone - or, better said - "without Dad."
I have stories. Lots of them: the time I hooked the gigantic cutthroat trout and fought him at long hole for 40 minutes before we pulled him in; jumping in to the Elk River in February (hey, it was only 8 inches of water, relax) to scoop Dad's even-bigger-than-my-cutthroat Dolly Varden on to the bank; Dogs chasing down wildlife, trying to eat porcupines, and stirring up hornets, and long, lazy summer afternoons thigh-deep in a mountain stream, fly fishing.
I even fished a hundred-pound kid out of the Elk River one October... but that's his story to tell, not mine.
I feel like I've done my boys a disservice in that I have not yet passed along the knowledge and pure joy of spending a day on the river, and leaving your prized Schrade Old-Timer on a rock somewhere about five meanders back...
Well, okay, that part sucks, but it's all part of the experience.
The biggest thrill I ever got fishing was seeing the one skirt around the shore under the rocks above the Rock Creek rest area - and then i just dropped my bobber where he was, and Bang! I was eight - and caught the only fish that day.
Truth be told, I haven't cast a fly in fifteen years. The last trip I went on was with Dad... up the Bull River headwaters, fly fishing for Labour Day in 1997. It was an annual thing for us.
I just haven't really had the desire to go since.
I think it's time though; It's been more than long enough. I have knowledge, lore, and a love for the pastime - I know some boys who need that passed along, and I certainly Owe that to Dad. All things considered, I better get cracking.
Hm. I better start collecting some gear.
There are a couple ways to take that statement. SomePeople might take it to mean that the actual event was so traumatic that I've put it out of my mind. That may be true; as stated, I don't remember. I prefer to think it the more benign of the possibilities, of course... that I had been fishing with Dad since I could stand up.
So we're clear, my memory is shockingly good for someone of my evidently advanced age; I can name all of my teachers and most of my classmates all the way back to grade one, nearly 40 years ago.
My lovely wife, of course, would disagree, given my propensity to misplace things. But - this is about Fishing, not Recall.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I went fishing alone - or, better said - "without Dad."
I have stories. Lots of them: the time I hooked the gigantic cutthroat trout and fought him at long hole for 40 minutes before we pulled him in; jumping in to the Elk River in February (hey, it was only 8 inches of water, relax) to scoop Dad's even-bigger-than-my-cutthroat Dolly Varden on to the bank; Dogs chasing down wildlife, trying to eat porcupines, and stirring up hornets, and long, lazy summer afternoons thigh-deep in a mountain stream, fly fishing.
I even fished a hundred-pound kid out of the Elk River one October... but that's his story to tell, not mine.
I feel like I've done my boys a disservice in that I have not yet passed along the knowledge and pure joy of spending a day on the river, and leaving your prized Schrade Old-Timer on a rock somewhere about five meanders back...
Well, okay, that part sucks, but it's all part of the experience.
The biggest thrill I ever got fishing was seeing the one skirt around the shore under the rocks above the Rock Creek rest area - and then i just dropped my bobber where he was, and Bang! I was eight - and caught the only fish that day.
Truth be told, I haven't cast a fly in fifteen years. The last trip I went on was with Dad... up the Bull River headwaters, fly fishing for Labour Day in 1997. It was an annual thing for us.
I just haven't really had the desire to go since.
I think it's time though; It's been more than long enough. I have knowledge, lore, and a love for the pastime - I know some boys who need that passed along, and I certainly Owe that to Dad. All things considered, I better get cracking.
Hm. I better start collecting some gear.
Monday, 23 July 2012
Good Judgement
I may have mentioned that I traveled with Dad a lot in my youth.
Day trips at any time of year, camping... also at any time of year in random sets of accommodations from tents to pop-up trailers to Grandma's place in Kimberley on any sort of errand or intent you can think of.
We even slept in the back of a '59 Land Rover in October in the mountains. And believe me, that isn't even possible. The last straw for Dad was the night we spent in a tent on opening day of Elk season. We'd packed the tent in - but he'd figured our hunting clothes were such that we didn't actually need sleeping bags.
At that point Dad had about 35 years experience in the bush. Nevertheless it turns out he could still have Very Bad Ideas. That was the longest, coldest night I've ever spent - including working midnights as a security guard over Christmas Holidays some years later.
But, that pretty much killed the tenting in winter for Dad, too. His solution?
Build a Cabin.
He even had the perfect spot picked out - just up the hill a little from where we froze ourselves the prior autumn in the tent with no sleeping bags. We called the little draw up that valley Rum Junction - how that name came about is a story for another time.
He'd decided on a simple A-frame wood construction at about 14 X 10, with the 10 foot axis on the downslope. We would use heavy-grade plastic sheeting to roof it with; and plywood for the walls. Eventually the first 6 feet of the roof slope would sport spiked plywood too - to keep out the porcupines.
All of this stuff would have to be packed in; the road you see on that link wasn't there yet. It wasn't really all that far from the Highway - but the SomePeople that have been there will tell you it's a 20 minute hike... mostly Up.
Yes, it was on Crown land, and yes, technically that made it an illegal structure, but Dad liked to say "No Sweat for a Big Operation (like this)." the Like This was optional, of course. Dad was really good at pressing on through adversity and good judgement.
He did, however, let the guy who had the trap line up there know what we were up to - just so he'd know we weren't up there trapping. The Trapper was cool with that - it actually worked to his advantage to have an extra shelter in the neighbourhood in winter - just in case.
Speaking of good judgement - that was the same year Dad and the fellas from the Old Country decided to go in on a bunch of used oak barrels from a Rum Distillery. The principle was you partially fill a used rum barrel with water, then you set it back on its side - sealed - and rotate it periodically. After some months of this you would have soaked all the residual alcohol out of the barrel into the water, which you could then bottle.
The product was called Swish - and it was actually a lot more potent that you'd think. But it didn't taste as good as you'd think. It was okay with Coke, though.
Right. Building a cabin.
The worst part of building the cabin above Rum Junction on Robert's Creek was not having to pack in what amounted to an awful lot of lumber, nails, plastic, and other hardware. That we did over several trips across a month or so in Mid Summer.
The worst part was that we built it in Mid Summer, in the bush at about 30 degrees Centigrade (that's 85ish F)... and had to cut in to the side of the mountain location with shovels - digging down about 6 feet on the high side due to the slope.
I did most of that, working with Dad's oldest, closest friend. It was exhausting and horrid due to the temperature, terrain, and bugs.
It was nearly 30 years ago, but the memory is as fresh as yesterday. I was roasting, and had probably lost five pounds to sweat. I reached into a backpack and grabbed an ice-cold 2 liter Sprite bottle, and took a long pull off it.
Did I mention Dad liked to bottle his Swish in old 2 liter Sprite bottles?
Day trips at any time of year, camping... also at any time of year in random sets of accommodations from tents to pop-up trailers to Grandma's place in Kimberley on any sort of errand or intent you can think of.
We even slept in the back of a '59 Land Rover in October in the mountains. And believe me, that isn't even possible. The last straw for Dad was the night we spent in a tent on opening day of Elk season. We'd packed the tent in - but he'd figured our hunting clothes were such that we didn't actually need sleeping bags.
At that point Dad had about 35 years experience in the bush. Nevertheless it turns out he could still have Very Bad Ideas. That was the longest, coldest night I've ever spent - including working midnights as a security guard over Christmas Holidays some years later.
But, that pretty much killed the tenting in winter for Dad, too. His solution?
Build a Cabin.
He even had the perfect spot picked out - just up the hill a little from where we froze ourselves the prior autumn in the tent with no sleeping bags. We called the little draw up that valley Rum Junction - how that name came about is a story for another time.
He'd decided on a simple A-frame wood construction at about 14 X 10, with the 10 foot axis on the downslope. We would use heavy-grade plastic sheeting to roof it with; and plywood for the walls. Eventually the first 6 feet of the roof slope would sport spiked plywood too - to keep out the porcupines.
All of this stuff would have to be packed in; the road you see on that link wasn't there yet. It wasn't really all that far from the Highway - but the SomePeople that have been there will tell you it's a 20 minute hike... mostly Up.
Yes, it was on Crown land, and yes, technically that made it an illegal structure, but Dad liked to say "No Sweat for a Big Operation (like this)." the Like This was optional, of course. Dad was really good at pressing on through adversity and good judgement.
He did, however, let the guy who had the trap line up there know what we were up to - just so he'd know we weren't up there trapping. The Trapper was cool with that - it actually worked to his advantage to have an extra shelter in the neighbourhood in winter - just in case.
Speaking of good judgement - that was the same year Dad and the fellas from the Old Country decided to go in on a bunch of used oak barrels from a Rum Distillery. The principle was you partially fill a used rum barrel with water, then you set it back on its side - sealed - and rotate it periodically. After some months of this you would have soaked all the residual alcohol out of the barrel into the water, which you could then bottle.
The product was called Swish - and it was actually a lot more potent that you'd think. But it didn't taste as good as you'd think. It was okay with Coke, though.
Right. Building a cabin.
The worst part of building the cabin above Rum Junction on Robert's Creek was not having to pack in what amounted to an awful lot of lumber, nails, plastic, and other hardware. That we did over several trips across a month or so in Mid Summer.
The worst part was that we built it in Mid Summer, in the bush at about 30 degrees Centigrade (that's 85ish F)... and had to cut in to the side of the mountain location with shovels - digging down about 6 feet on the high side due to the slope.
I did most of that, working with Dad's oldest, closest friend. It was exhausting and horrid due to the temperature, terrain, and bugs.
It was nearly 30 years ago, but the memory is as fresh as yesterday. I was roasting, and had probably lost five pounds to sweat. I reached into a backpack and grabbed an ice-cold 2 liter Sprite bottle, and took a long pull off it.
Did I mention Dad liked to bottle his Swish in old 2 liter Sprite bottles?
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