Canada's Mountains

Mount Rundle from Mount Cory Seto on Mount Rundle

Tuesday December 15 1987

This was one of my first summits.

After we got down, Tom and I drove back to Calgary and all we talked about was our summit, and what a fantastic day it was.

I was ecstatic, giggling like a child at times. We had pulled off a scramble in blizzard conditions.

and I had tried a few weeks before, but ran out of time, only making it within an hour and a half of the top.

 

So Long Ago

On the second try though we somehow managed an early start. I remember on the way down, we had to use flashlights when the trees were reached. I seem to also recall that it was over 10 hours on the mountain and just before the start of winter; the daylight is short.

The summit gets closer;

On the way up, the gales were so strong I could literally lean back till my body was perpendicular to the slope of the dragons back. The wind up this smooth featureless slope can really whip. It also created a sort of tunnel vision. The snow flakes going strait by my head had less relative motion in my field of view than the flakes further out.

This made the view up the slope look like a tunnel. I enjoyed that!

The final ridge was gained late in the afternoon, and the small rock shelter there was covered with rime ice looking like feathers.

Then shimmied across the sharply crested ridge. One spot has nothing for your feet so you just pull yourself along. After that it's a short walk to the summit.

After about 13 years the events of that day are still with me. See what a fantastic, active thing scrambling is?

You get Technicolor memories to talk with old friends about, and hopefully have a few chuckles.

We do not remember days, we remember moments. The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.

Cesare Pavese
1908-1950, Italian Poet, Novelist, Translator

It is said that God gave us memory so we could have roses in winter. But it is also true that without memory we could not have self in any season. The more memories you have, the more you have. That is why, as Swift said, ''No wise man ever wished to be younger.''

George F. Will
1941-, American Political Columnist

You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.

Fyodor Dostoevski
1821-1881, Russian Novelist