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Blades of GlorySometimes you need a helicopter to take the path less travelled.
On our fourth day in the mountains, we saw the bear. Or, to be more precise, the bear saw us. We were between the Monashee and Adamant lodges. To get here, we had flown into Calgary, overnighted in Banff, driven west through Lake Louise, crossed the Continental Divide into British Columbia, continued over Kicking Horse Pass and Rogers Pass and arrived, finally, near Revelstoke. This route, taken by the Canadian Pacific Railway and the first European explorers to the area, was breathtaking, but it was just a prelude to the real attraction of being up on a ridge in the middle of the mountains. Ahead of us, the upper reaches of its 3,520 metres crowned by a cloud, was Mount Sir Sandford. Below us was a steep slope of what looked uncannily like leafy mesclun greens. Descending into the Treacherous Salad Bowl (as I’d come to think of it), we slipped and slid our way to the edge of a burnt forest. Here our guide Lyle’s radio began to crackle. “You’ve got a, uh, somewhat agitated grizzly looking at you,” said the voice on the other end. This was Duane, another guide with Canadian Mountain Holidays, who was watching from the vantage of a nearby ridge. Duane spoke with the urgency of someone telling a friend he has a piece of spinach stuck between his teeth. “He’s coming toward you now at a pretty good, uh, pace. Better group up.” |
Photo: Topher Donahue, courtesy of Canadian Mountain Holidays