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Blades of Glory
We grouped up. Lyle, normally brimming with good cheer and terrible jokes, quietly suggested that our group of 10 stand together. His advice: “Try to look big.” Perhaps the bear really believed that we were a many-legged, backpack-toting beast. More likely, he decided that digging for ground squirrels was a surer bet for lunch. At any rate, the grizzly stopped being agitated in our direction, so we ungrouped and hustled back up the salad bowl slope twice as fast as we’d slid down. Lyle radioed for a lift and, within minutes, we heard the low, familiar roar. “Our knight in shining armour,” an Englishwoman in our group whispered gratefully. That knight was Alex Halliday, captain of the 14-seat Bell 212 Twin Huey helicopter. As he approached, the air raged, flowers danced on the ground and the low roar became a scream. The Machine, as everyone called it, was upon us. By now we knew the drill, though it was a thrill every time. Earplugs in place, we huddled on our knees in the heath. We boarded half-crouched under the whipping rotor, sliding the door behind us like old pros. The bear and his salad bowl below us now, the Machine turned back to the lodge, where, during cocktail hour, the story of our quick retreat would be rewritten as the Great Grizzly Showdown of 2007. “We call them hippies on a stick,” Lyle said of some tiny western anemones that twisted their mop tops in the breeze. Along with being a self-confessed bear magnet, Lyle is an enthusiastic wildflower photographer. He’s often found lying on his stomach with the macro lens of his camera pointed at a patch of leather-leaved saxifrage or some bog laurel. It was after lunch on one afternoon of our six-day lodge-to-lodge heli-hiking trip. We’d spent a misty morning crossing little creeks on slippery rocks and stopped to smell the sweet coltsfoot, a swamp-loving plant that aboriginal peoples used in poultices and salves. We watched Columbian ground squirrels sprint between hideouts. We walked through dense, silty grey mud. “The goats come down to lick this,” Lyle said. “They need the ferrous oxide in the mud to help grow their hair.” Lyle’s own head had familiar lustrous white curls, and he walked through uneven terrain with the sure footing of a mountain goat. I asked how the mud tasted. “It tastes like mud,” he said cheerfully, continuing up the path. |
Photo: Roger Laurilla, courtesy of Canadian Mountain Holidays