Writer’s Apprentice began from a place of selfishness. The pool of interesting writers and the interesting places to find them seems to be diminishing by the day. Our ever-visual world rewards photos and videos, and words are falling by the wayside. How great would it be if we could be the spark for a new batch of writers?
After years of discussion, I was shocked when Pete actually turned nothing into something, and entries started rolling in. And rolling in. And rolling in. Amusement turned to dread, and I soon realized that I actually don’t like reading about bikes all that much.
I can still remember the joy as I stumbled upon Ashley Blumhagen’s essays. After a few dozen false starts, here was somebody who played all the way to the whistle. Her pieces were polished and could very well have been cut/pasted in their raw form into this or any other mountain bike-related website. Indeed, when it came to shortlisting and suggesting edits, we all sort of struggled to come up with suggestions. I guess you could….maybe if you…what if we…no. It’s all pretty good! Still, we had a few thoughts, and Ashley took those and made the piece even better.
This created another challenge for us. What are we actually trying to reward here? Potential? Raw creativity? Grammar? There was an argument to be made for Ashley to take the whole thing.
Both of Ashley’s pieces worked, but this was the one that stood out for me. I read this piece, and I was there. I’d been there, and she captured it perfectly! So, without any more words from me, here is one of Ashley Blumhagen’s very excellent Writer’s Apprentice entries.
-Dave Tolnai
Plan E – by Ashley Blumhagen
The stove hissed, sputtered, and died. I lifted off the pot, unscrewed the fuel can, and gave it a shake to check what we both knew: it was empty.
“Where’s the fuel you grabbed from the office?” I asked.
“Ummm, I didn’t bring it?” More question than statement. “I grabbed that for me, not for this trip.”
Shit.
Double shit. Shit, shit, shit.
This was just the latest in a string of… errors isn’t the right word. Plot twists? Unexpected turns of events? We were less than twenty-four hours into our four-day bikepacking trip into the Chilcotins, and this one was entirely my fault.
I knew fuel was on my gear list, not Heidi’s. Heidi had mentioned grabbing a spare fuel can from work, and since we were in the middle of a planning session, I assumed it was for the trip. It had twigged that maybe it wasn’t, but I didn’t check. I should have checked. I should have made sure we were on the same page, that I was on the same page.
But I didn’t.
This trip had been a long time in the planning. We’d been talking about it for almost a year. We’d been talking about it, watching and re-watching YouTube videos, reading and re-reading blogs and trip reports, scouring Trailforks, making lists, and creating route after route on every mapping app we had. We’d scheduled meetings with each coworker who’d ridden the Chilcotins. “Meetings” where the only agenda item was “tell us about your trip”, and the only minutes were marked-up maps and lists of dos, don’ts, and must-ride trails. By the time our vacation started, our coworkers were at the “if I hear the word ‘Chilcotins’ one more time… (insert fist shake)” point, and really, we couldn’t blame them. We were so ready. Except clearly we weren’t. I wasn’t.
So here we were: breakfast, day two, out of fuel.
Luckily, the fuel had lasted long enough that we’d both eaten, and I had water just warm enough for coffee. We were fueled, and I would be caffeinated enough to have this conversation.
“I guess that decides it”. I can’t remember which one of us said it, but it was true. And a bit of a relief? The only question now was which route we would take to get out.
Since we’d set out from Friburg Rec Site the day before, everything had gone sideways. The forestry road was washed out and undrivable much earlier than we’d expected. Normally not a big deal, but by our original plan, we didn’t have enough wiggle room in our itinerary to add the extra kilometres to our day, and still make it to Bear Paw camp. We needed to make it to a camp because we hadn’t packed a bear canister. And the Chilcotins are kind of known for bears.
So we picked a new trail in, backtracked, parked, snapped the obligatory loaded-bikes-leaning-on-trailhead-sign photos, and, still aiming for Bear Paw, set off.
Hard doesn’t even describe it. Type 2 has nothing on this kind of “fun”. We reached new levels. I think we found Type 4.
We had looked at the total ascent and descent of this new trail, and the roughly three hundred metres total climb was nothing. Easy. Well within our fitness.
We should’ve looked more closely at the profile itself. Maybe we didn’t look at all? I don’t think we had any other option at this point, even if we had. Reviewing that elevation profile now, my reaction is visceral. Seeing those steep arches, I’m back on the trail. My arms ache, full of lead, pushing my 50+ lbs fully-loaded full suspension mountain bike up near-vertical gullies. I can feel my feet, sitting on the couch typing this, slipping backwards a few inches for every hard-fought step forward, down the dusty trail I’m trying to climb, trying to catch Heidi’s shadow above me.
The traverses between the gullies should have been a relief, easy little sidehill pedals, maybe even some coasting. Nope. We found narrow, rutted, pedal-clipping sidehill. Sidehill that was just loose and exposed enough to push my limits, especially knowing my tired arms couldn’t steer my heavy bike out of a tumble if I did catch a pedal or a bike bag. So we pushed. More.
We stopped often to check maps, the route we had memorized totally thrown off, re-evaluating, what felt like constantly. We stopped even more to rest. We were so, so slow.
At some point, we realized two things: 1) we definitely weren’t going to make it to Bear Paw before dark, and 2) Heidi’s fatigue wasn’t just “I’ve been pushing a heavy bike for hours” tired. She was getting sick. On to plan C? Maybe D at this point: re-route to Spruce Lake camp.
There was a straightforward route to Spruce Lake. It’s clearly mapped. Yet… at an intersection in the woods, with almost no energy left, we opted for a shortcut. Plan E. Clearly, we hadn’t learned a thing. The shortcut wasn’t on our Gaia maps or Trailforks. It was a faded sign in the woods, pointing to an even more faded trail. But for short, we could rally! And piecing together what we could from the maps we had, it should be fairly flat.
Ha. Fairly flat it was. But do you know what flat doesn’t help? It doesn’t help you carry speed, or fully loaded bikes, through overgrowth and over babyheads and downed trees, on a trail that clearly hasn’t been ridden in a while.
Have you ever been so over-the-top tired that everything is funny, hysterical even? I have three kids, and there were many sleepless nights over the years; I know this feeling. It’s not a bad place to be, once you’ve hit and pushed through many walls to get there. At some point on this shortcut, I looked ahead and saw yet another bit of chunk that I didn’t have the legs to pedal through. In a moment of despair, I stopped to drape myself over my handlebars, give my jelly arms a rest, and gasp for air. I don’t think I even raised my head to say, “so… 16 kilometres in, and we’ve barely touched our pedals. Tell me again why we brought bikes?” We fell apart. It was so not funny, but somehow the funniest thing I’d ever said, and apparently one of the funniest things Heidi had ever heard. It was absurd how long we laughed hysterically in the woods. And oddly refreshing. We pushed on. Literally.
Nothing about that shortcut felt short, and our Strava time agreed. But that little breakdown in the woods was a turning point. We weren’t, distance-wise, all that close to camp, but we were about to hit our first easily rideable, fun, flowy, (mostly) downhill trail. We had the lungs to whoop and cheer as we finally rolled into camp, grinning, Heidi sniffling, both of us dusty, smelly, starving, and awed; Spruce Lake is gorgeous. As we rolled in, the sun was lowering over the lake. As we got settled, the pink and purple clouds reflected on the calm water, the dock was sun-warmed under our bare feet, and camp was immaculate. And empty. We had it all to ourselves. Plan E had turned out pretty okay.
Over supper we tossed around a few ideas for the next three days, but chose to leave decisions until we’d had some food, some sleep, and could think straight again at breakfast.
You know, that breakfast where we ran out of fuel.
One option we’d had to throw into the mix the evening before, as Heidi felt more and more ill, was that day two would be our exit day. It wasn’t our first or favourite choice, but it might be the smart choice. Now, thanks to the empty fuel can, it was the choice. At least neither of us had had to make the decision, consciously.
With the day’s end point now known, based on rave reviews from everyone we’d chatted Chilcotins to in the lead-up to this trip, we easily chose High Trail as the route, packed up, and headed out.
We got to pedal on day two, sometimes we even got to coast… downhill. There were glimpses of rationale for bringing bikes, even if we’d long ago figured out that for this adventure, we’d brought the wrong bikes, packed the wrong way, and with our shortened trip, we were carrying way too much food.
The suffering wasn’t totally done, though. There was still exposed, narrow, rutted, pedal-clipping sidehill. There were still steep ups to two passes, the final push to each harder than anything we’d yet climbed. The descent through the valley wasn’t all downhill, more roly-poly with little ups that my heavy bike and tired legs couldn’t carry enough momentum to clear without pushing for a couple of steps. But the ride-to-push ratio had definitely flipped in our favour.
And the views. The. Views. Approaching Windy Pass, in the lushest, greenest, most wildflowered meadow I’d ever seen, I told Heidi to just leave me. I’d become one with the moss and die happy. She ignored me, thank goodness, and nudged us on. At the top, the three-sixty panorama of red- and orange-striped alpine peaks and ridges was so captivating, not even the relentless wind could make us rush our lunch. True to rainbow form, Windy’s red and orange gave way to the green-, blue-, and purple-striped ridges of Camel Pass. Ridges that framed the trail-, tree-, and boulder-strewn valley that would guide us out. Ridges so stunning I gasped as I caught sight of them.
We made terrible time that day. It was even worse than day one, and especially terrible considering we absolutely flew down the last five kilometres of fast, flowy, blissfully downhill forestry road. We were okay with it. After almost a year of planning, we had bikepacked the Chilcotins. We had suffered. We laughed- sometimes hysterically, mostly with joy. We almost cried- sometimes with joy, mostly with suffering. We saw epic views that still call to me. We (okay, I) messed up royally, and we (both) learned so, so much. We made it out. We made it back to our Friburg car camp, and just in time, too; Heidi was about to get really sick. And it wasn’t all bikepacking, but still, we got to stay in the Chilcotins all four days- camping, hiking, swimming, and relaxing. Processing all we’d seen and done- out loud together and side-by-side in comfortable silence- we added many, many things to the “What We’ll Do Different Next Time” list. Extra fuel is definitely at the top. And though the Chilcotins are known for bears, we somehow didn’t see a single one. We did get to chat up a Darren Berrecloth in Tyax Lodge, though, and all-in-all, Plan E turned out very okay.