AMVP (Outward Bound) - One Year Later

Just over one year ago, about thirteen months to be a little more precise, I completed a three-week mountain adventure, the Coast Mountain Venture to be exact. During the course of the trip we endured some fairly extreme conditions ... at least, they were extreme for me. At the beginning of the course I felt cautiously optimistic that I was up for the challenge.

I remember basecamp, when we were all assigned our gear and introduced to our fellow group members. We were shown the equipment that we would be using, relying on, for the duration of the trip.

We were assigned our food for the first half of the trip. It came out in several rucksacks and Rubbermaid containers. We were also given the menu for the following ten days. Our first task as a group was to confirm that we had all of the food we needed and then divide it equally among the group members so that it could be packed accordingly. After much rabble-rousing, we finally figured out a system that would work and succeeded in getting seven relatively even sets of food. We even had the wherewithal to record and verify where each of the meals went.

Before supper in the mess tent we had to figure out how to set up our tents. Now, these tents are not like regular tents. They don't have a bottom to them; there's just one pole in the middle of the tent and the corners are tied down with guy lines using whatever is available-trees, logs, rocks. The tents posed a lot of problems during the course of the trip, including one night when, in the middle of a rainstorm at about two o'clock in the morning, the corner of the tent simply ... let go of the rock it was holding on to.

The tents became somewhat of a bone of contention between two different "cliques" that ended up forming within the group. There were those of us that did and those of us who did not. Setting up and tearing down two tents and preparing breakfast, even in the mountains, simply shouldn't take three hours. It just shouldn't.

One of the participant's behaviour was also getting more and more ... erratic. He was not looking out for himself or, for that matter, anyone else. He ended up spraining his ankle quite badly and holding up the group for the next couple of days. We were able to move but not nearly as quickly as if we'd all been healthy. Not to mention it was raining. For the first seven days were on the trip we had a cumulative total of about eight hours of sunshine.

After a couple of detours due to a) late arrival at our initial destination (due to sprained ankle); and a swollen river that wouldn't allow us a safe way over (our second such river, along with a third that we had to wade through); we finally reached our first camp where we would stay for more than one night. Arrowhead Lake.

After the peak ascent, where it is custom to carry a rock with you and place it on a giant cairn at the top, a personal 'flag' of sorts, we began our descent back down to meet up for resupply. It was on the trip down that I began to have some serious doubts about my ability to complete the second half of the trip.

My feet were aching all the time. We had been walking in rain and snow for nine days straight, with only a brief respite with a shot of sunshine or the cover of a canopy of trees. Add to that two nights sleeping in a soaking wet sleeping bag-make that lying awake in a soaking wet sleeping bag and I was starting to lose my earlier conviction. I became so obsessed with my feet, the pain and discomfort, and the weariness that had begun to set in (sleep loss has a cumulative effect) that I had a conversation with one of my instructor/guides during a rest break. It was an emotional conversation as I discussed my concerns and fears and asked if she and her partner shared my concerns. He too joined the conversation and, much to my relief, they did not share my concern. After a long conversation with them I found a renewed conviction to complete the course-whatever it took.

When we got back down to the rendezvous point where we were supposed to meet the supply truck, resupply on the spot and then go back into the range we'd just come down from, the instructors had a surprise for us. We were going back to basecamp for the night, to dry off; eat a sit-down meal; under a tent; get a bit of meed needed rest and rejuvenation.

They had another surprise for us as well.

To be continued...

Click here for part 2 of this article.