Ah, wilderness

Hiking in the heartland of British Columbia

Author: By Peter Oliver, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, April 19, 1998

Page: M1

Section: Travel

If you have not heard of Trophy Meadows or of Wells Gray Provincial Park, do not consider yourself a geographical ignoramus. These are places rarely visited by the tourist mainstream and almost never promoted, hidden away in the relative obscurity of the mountain ranges of south-central British Columbia and overshadowed by more illustrious neighbors. To the east are the Canadian Rockies, where streams of RVs and rental cars pour each summer along such famous roadways as the Icefields Parkway, to photograph justly famous scenery. To the west are the coastal ranges, where another tourist influx descends upon Vancouver and the burgeoning resort of Whistler/Blackcomb.

I first came to central BC 14 years ago on a heli-skiing trip and have subsequently found myself coming back time and again, in spring, summer, and fall. I am brought back not only by the spectacle of the landscape -- the deep valleys, saw-toothed peaks, and pale-blue glaciers -- but also, as someone with a reasonable degree of back-country wanderlust, by what I find to be an almost ideal balance struck between pristine wilderness and accessible wilderness.

Let me explain by way of comparison. This is not as carefully managed a world as the Canadian Rockies, where summer crowds, national park regulations, and hundreds of miles of magnificently maintained hiking trails tend to dampen the heady and sometimes frightening thrill I get from being in wilderness more truly wild. At the same time, much of interior BC is not so dauntingly wild as, say, remote regions of Alaska, where in most cases access is possible only by expensive, small planes and where maintained trails are all but nonexistent.

We're talking a pretty good chunk of mountainous turf here, too. The several sub-ranges of the Columbia Mountains -- the Purcells, Monashees, Selkirks, and Cariboos -- cover an area of southcentral BC of roughly 40,000 square miles. Not all of it is wilderness, of course: There are roads and towns and signs of civilized life, logging clear-cuts being the most scathingly obnoxious among them. Yet parks and wilderness areas are too many to enumerate here, and bigger than you might imagine. Wells Gray alone is roughly three quarters the size of Yellowstone.

There's no way to do it all in one visit, of course -- why else would I keep coming back?

So I offer up for starters a hiker's sampler: three short takes on three locales, and three ways, in an escalating order of challenge, of experiencing this exquisite mountain world.

Start with heli-hiking, an invention of Canadian Mountain Holidays (800-661-0252) and the mocking stock of backpacking purists. Ride a helicopter to remote, high-alpine environments? The purists scream blasphemy, considering it an abomination of the principle of earning one's right, through hard work, to be in wild environments. Fair enough, but what I discovered, after three days last summer at the Bugaboo Lodge in the Purcell Mountains, is that heli-hiking doesn't necessarily mean hiking lite.

Lodge guests were split into groups of like hiking ability and interest, and seeing as I was regarded as a healthy rabbit, I was assigned to the most aggressive group. Taking stock of the many lodge guests in their 60s or older, mainly inclined toward gentle rambles, I figured that ``aggressive'' was a term of not much more than relative value. I was wrong.

My cohorts turned out to be a hyperactive family of four from New Jersey, including two spirited boys seemingly ready to march northward to Alaska if called upon to do so. There was also an obviously well-conditioned fellow in his 20s, and when we were joined by off-duty lodge employees, oozing youth and vigor, it was clear that our destiny, in the hands of our guide, Willy Trinker, would be something other than casual nature walks.

In fact, our most rewarding hike in three days involved little helicoptering at all. Instead, we began our journey on a less elegant machine -- a pickup truck -- which carried us about a mile from the lodge up a logging road to a trailhead. In the small parking lot, the cars of other hikers and climbers had bits of wire mesh and fencing secured around the wheels, to discourage porcupines from gnawing thorough the rubber tires.

A well-defined trail led from there up through a cool, evergreen forest and on through large boulders that had been pushed down the mountainside by glacial activity. Within an hour, we broke above tree line, where wildflowers grew in patches of intense color between the rocks. We skirted up and across walls of rock by climbing ladders and cables permanently secured to the rock to provide support for hikers like ourselves. That adrenalized moment -- a fall or misstep would have had unfortunate consequences -- was followed by a mellow stroll over rock-strewn meadows to the Conrad Kain hut, fixed to a high, isolated knoll overlooking the crevasse-streaked sea of the Bugaboo Glacier. From here, climbers prepare themselves to tackle the famed spires of the Bugaboos, which rise 1,000 feet or more out of the glacial ice.

Having ascended close to 3,000 vertical feet, we might rightly have felt that our mission had been accomplished. Instead, we scrambled on through scree and snow to a saddle and traversed to another saddle, all the while treated to the close-up spectacle of the spires and the glaciers surrounding them. We eventually finished our day by glissading -- sliding on our boots on snow -- to a deep turquoise lake, where the helicopter picked us up to take us home. We had logged roughly 10 miles of hiking and off-trail scrambling, and had climbed close to 5,000 vertical feet. The comforts of the lodge, sumptuous by back-country standards, and the evening's epicurean feast struck us all as a fair reward for a day's hard work.

From the Bugaboos I traveled north to Wells Gray, where I joined forces with Ian Eakins, an energetic and philosophical world traveler now re-entrenched in his home country of Canada after years of guiding in the Himalayas. Ian has set up a hut-to-hut hiking network in the Trophy Mountains called Wells Gray Backcountry Chalets (888-SKI-TREK or 604-587-6444) in the park's southern extreme. After years of exploring other mountainous regions of the world, he has decided that this is about as good as it gets.

We began our climb through the forest to Ian's Trophy Mountain Chalet through a drizzly mist, which bathed the evergreens and underbrush in the kind of fairy-tale, soft-focus light so common in Steven Spielberg movies. It was after about an hour of fairly steep climbing on only a vaguely defined trail -- Ian's route-finding was greatly appreciated here -- that we entered our first of a series of flower-covered meadows, each seemingly more dazzling than the one preceding it. We had hit upon the late-summer bloom at its peak, and I really was, like dear Ferdinand, tempted simply to lay down and let my senses be besieged.

Instead, I proceeded on with Ian to the chalet, a rather glorified term for a functional, two-story wood structure. The first floor was consumed by a single, large room for eating, cooking, and socializing, with sleeping cubicles on the second floor. There was an outhouse for biological necessities. But it was our surroundings, not our accommodations, were our reason for being there. Meadows and small lakes stretched around us, and a series of exposed ridges rose above us. After settling into the chalet, we ventured off to explore those ridges, slowed by the occasional summer snow squall, and summited to absorb the broad view of the high circques and snow-mottled hunchbacks of the Trophy Mountains.

Had I had more time, I would have enjoyed making this a backpacking trip of several days, staying first, as we did, at the Trophy Mountain Chalet and continuing on to a chalet in feisty sounding Fight Meadow. Ian laughed gently in recalling a few people he had guided along this moderately strenuous route; upon resting their eyes upon their final destination -- the chalet -- their sudden tunnel vision would blind them to the extraordinary wildflower display in their path. When you've walked 10 miles or so with a weighty pack, across terrain decidedly not flat, a place to settle down at day's end becomes an all-consuming objective.

Finally, I traveled southward to the Slocan Valley, in part simply because of a mellifluous name -- Valhalla Provincial Park. The Slocan Valley is a cultural curiosity, the chosen land of many draft-evading hippies of the '60s and also the sight of Japanese incarceration camps during World War II. The smattering of humanity that now resides here reflects that cultural heritage, an assessment I felt emboldened to make in a store in the tiny town of New Denver. Two English-speaking teenage girls of Japanese descent were wearing beads and bell-bottom blue jeans and were buying soda pop on a hot day. To help me explore this country, I managed to track down a hyper-energetic local fellow named Jim Gillman, a backcountry guide working for Lemon Creek Lodge (604-355-2403) outside of Slocan. I had thought I might be able to simply pop into Valhalla for a day hike or two, and Jim, who had been a ranger there in years past, would know where to go.

My ambition, however, misled me. This was rugged country, where rough, rutted roads led deeply into the forest to hard-to-find trailheads, and where trails would eventually peter out into game trails or no trail at all. An alternative for driving to trailheads would have been via water taxi across Slocan Lake. All of this involved better planning and more time than I had bargained for, particularly if I wanted to experience what is surely the jewel of the park -- a five-day traverse across its trailless high country. The granite spires of the Valhalla Range burst above high-alpine tundra with much of the rocky muscularity of the Bugaboos, with dozens of lakes large and small surrounding them.

The Valhalla traverse was not something I would ever consider without guidance, given the absence of trails, the very good chance of getting dangerously lost, and the possibility of encountering grizzly bears en route. And if I were looking for a guide, Jim would certainly be my man. He knew the country and could tell a good story, as I discovered in a day of canoeing along the Slocan River. With Jim in your company, you are never lacking for entertainment.

So there it is -- my reason to return again. The Valhalla traverse. And I will be sure to wait until August, when the wildflowers explode with a force powerful enough to bring a bull to its knees.

A five-day trip from Trophy Mountain Chalet to Fight Meadow Chalet costs $600 per person for groups of six or more. Meals, lodging, and guide service are included. The season runs from mid-July through mid-September. Reservations can be made by calling 888-SKI-TREK.

Lemon Creek Lodge (604-355-2403) can assist with making arrangements for a guided backpacking trip along the Valhalla traverse, as well as other hiking in the Slocan area. Rates are negotiable, depending upon the length of the trip and the level of outfitting required.