IN SEARCH OF WHITE GRIZZLIES
By Lawrence Millman, photographs by David R. Gluns
Renowned adventure writer Lawrence Millman journeyed to a hiking spa in British Columbia in the hope of spotting elusive white bears. What he found was even more impressive.
I didn't make my visit to Mountain Trek
Fitness Resort and Health Spa for the conventional reasons: to alter my
physiognomy (with which I'm content) or to improve my spirituality (which
I consider a lost cause). I went because Mountain Trek offers hikes in
one of the most spectacular areas of North America, the West Kootenay
Mountains in the eastern region of British Columbia. And I went to look
for my significant other.
By significant other, I mean a bear, not a prospective mate. I see bears
as lumbering, hirsute, occasionally irascible versions of ourselves who
somehow never came indoors. Do you snore in your sleep? So do bears. Ever
discipline your child? So do bears. Grizzlies, especially, seem to me
almost as human as humans themselves. When I see one of them walking upright,
I say to myself, I know that guy, but I just can't seem to remember his
name.
In fact, the bear I wanted to look for was an unusual white variation
of the grizzly that's found only in the West Kootenay Mountains.
Real bears don't do yoga
There's one big difference between bears and people: Bears do not willingly
force their bodies into pretzel-like contortions. My first morning at
Mountain Trek, I joined the 12 other guests for an hour of yoga and stretches.
Our instructor, a bionic woman named Sharon, exhorted us gently but firmly
to bend ourselves in ways I wouldn't have thought possible. I believe
I did reasonably well, given the adverse circumstances in which I was
being asked to perform: Mountain trek is caffine-free, and I can recall
very few mornings in my adult life when I've gone without a cup of java.
Which brings up another difference between bears and people: Bears hardly
ever need a cup of coffee to jump-start their day. Fortunately, there
was a coffee shop in the town of Kaslo some 20 miles away, and Mountain
Trek's three four-wheel-drive Suburbans stopped there on the way to our
hiking destination. I think Anne, a graphic artist from San Francisco,
was speaking for all of us when she took her first sip of "Seattle's
Finest," rolled her eyes, and said, well, nothing. The blissful look
on her face said it all.
We turned off the road at the ghost town
of Retallack, where my photographer, David, always looking for the pictorial
equivalent of le mot juste, posed me in front of a derelict building.
Then we drove along a logging road until we arrived at the Whitewater
Canyon trailhead. Here we divided into three groups: the "A"
team, the normal hikers, and the slowpokes. Mountain Trek does a cursory
fitness assessment, but you choose the group in which you think you belong.
There were no couch potatoes in our crowd (as you might expect of people
drawn to a place with the words "mountain" and "trek"
in its name), but some of the hikers preferred to take their time and
smell the flowers. David and I joined Sharon, who was guiding the "A"
team, and off we went. Initially, the trail was somewhat steep. One member
of our group, a New York commodities broker named Howie, noted perceptively
that it was vastly more challenging than his StairMaster.
On the trail, the leaders communicated frequently with one another over
their walkie-talkies: "Do you have everyone?" "Is everyone
okay?" "Any blisters?" I suppose this was necessary, although
the static and the disembodied voices seemed at odds with the other sounds
around us, especially the lyrical sound of silence. I somehow suppressed
an urge to grab Sharon's walkie-talkie and announce to one of the other
guides, "David's been eaten by a bear. Send up another photographer!"
Whitewater Canyon is, in fact, prime grizzly country. Bears come here
because there's a lot to eat-deer and elk, on which they prey, and lots
of forage in the meadows. The forage is especially good along the lower
canyon's lush northeast wall, so for safety's sake the Forest Service
had rerouted the trail to the southwest wall. Even so, Sharon let out
the occasional high-decible whoop to warn any straying bears of our presence.
(Bears do not like to be surprised.)
At noon we paused for a lunch of hummus-stuffed pitas, red-pepper-and-pine-nut
salad, and fruit. It was a delectable meal, but even a Spam-filled pita
would have been delectable in such a setting, with the spiky grandeur
of the Selkirk Range on the one side of us and Whitewater Mountain's snow
field on the other. Later David and I wandered a bit farther along the
trail, hoping to catch a glimpse of a bear. But the only animal we saw
was a hoary marmot sunning on a rock.
On the hike back, I found myself talking to Howie. This was, it turned
out, his first spa experience, and he was pleased, not to mention relieved,
that no one had yet tried to "mummify' him (as he put it) in some
species of seaweed. He was also relieved that dinner conversation did
not focus on moisturizers. If that had been the case, he said, he would
have talked about commodities. As it is not a typical spa, Mountain Trek
does not offer guests typical spa amenities such pedicures and wraps.
And although the lodge does have a Jacuzzi, a sauna, and a weight room,
most of mountain Trek's activities occur in what its brochure refers to
as "Mother Nature's Ultimate Fitness Studio."
Massage makes me a new man
But the spa's weeklong program does include massages. And that evening
a French-Canadian massage therapist named Chantal kneaded me into such
a state of submission that she could have asked me for my life savings
and I would have turned it over happily. Out went the knots, out went
the muscle strain, and out went the various stresses and anxieties of
the writer's life-all successfully exorcised by her magical hands. I went
to bed feeling, if not quite like a new man, certainly like one who was
totally relaxed. Indeed, I was so relaxed that I slept late the next morning
and missed the 6:30 a.m. yoga and stretches.
Since it was already quite warm, several of the spa's guests decided to
go kayaking. I could kayak at home, but I couldn't see white grizzlies
at home, and today's hike was in the Lyle Creek-Mount Brennan area, another
white grizzly habitat. Also, the Suburbans would be passing through Kaslo
again. The choice was clear.
With the indomitable Sharon again in the lead, our diverse group included
a couple who were both lawyers, a counselor for delinquent teens from
Oregon, a woman who ran a vegan cooking school in New York, and Howie.
The only member of the group who I wished had gone kayaking was a woman
from Los Angeles who insisted on singing "The hills are alive…"
whenever we came to a scenic vista. (If the hills were indeed alive, they
would have told her to cool it and just enjoy the view.)
As I mentioned, bears don't like surprises, and a hiker suddenly appearing
out of nowhere can make even the most good-natured bear a little uneasy-understandably.
How would you feel if a multicolored creature with a large stick and "www.hiking,com"
written across its chest suddenly marched into your living room? Thus,
every time we approached a switchback, Sharon would let out one of her
whoops. I tried to imitate her, but David told me I sounded like a ground
squirrel, which grizzlies consider haute cuisine. I tried again, and David
said I sounded like a marmot, which grizzlies also consider haute cuisine.
So I decided to shut up, trust in serendipity (and in Sharon's whoops),
and enjoy the moment.
Upon reaching the top of a 6,600-foot-high plateau, we followed a green
alpine meadow to three exquisite turquoise lakes. Just beyond them was
a waterfall and a group of mountains tightly pleated with avalanche marks.
As I ate my lunch, I thought about relocating to this place for the rest
of my days.
But there were no white bears. No black, cinnamon-colored, or mauve bears,
either. "I'm glad I didn't decide to specialize in wildlife photography,
" David commented.
Before venturing back, we climbed up to investigate a bit of local history.
A century ago, the Kootenays hosted a silver-mining boom. Now we were
standing beside some relics from those days-an old mine shaft, tailings,
and a pile of abandoned equipment. Time, which heals all wounds, had also
transformed the relics from eyesores into evocative mementos from a long-vanished
past.
After a hike like this, the body needs refueling, and one of Mountain
Trek's chefs, Mary Jo Fetterly, provided a low-calorie vegetarian (like
all the cuisine) dinner that could have made a convert of even the most
ardent carnivore. Me, for instance. She even succeeded in making tofu,
a food I prefer only marginally to starvation, flavorful. Her lasagna
inspired me to scrawl the following words in my notebook: "Find out
if there's a Nobel Prize for food and, if so, nominate Mary Jo."
There's no TV in the lodge. No computer. No Carnivores vs. Vegans volleyball.
And that's just as well. A day of hiking followed by a sumptuous dinner
and a Chantal-style massage would make most guests too pleasantly weary
to do anything but relax.
Is that a white grizzly?
I still wanted to see a white grizzly. David thought our chances might
be slightly better if we went off by ourselves. He proposed that we trek
into an area that was full of marmots-the rugged heights above the Dennis
Creek watershed. We followed the Dennis Creek trail for an hour or so,
then climbed up a steep slope pockmarked with marmot burrows. Several
had been excavated by foraging bears. Near one was a mound of bear scat
as large as a Volkswagen. (Okay, I exaggerate a bit.)
After much huffing and puffing, we reached a narrow alpine ridge. Here
we could scrutinize the surrounding slopes for possible ursine activity.
David set up his tripod while I walked along the ridge, binoculars at
the ready. All of a sudden, I saw a pale speck in the distance. My pulse
accelerated. Could it be one of the elusive white grizzlies? I quickly
raised the binoculars to my eyes. Focused. Focused some more. And I discovered
that I was gazing not at the animal called Pic-ha-kee-lowna by the local
Arrow Lake Indians, and held sacred by them, but, rather, at a perfectly
ordinary quartz boulder.
An hour later I saw another white speck. This one seemed to be moving,
an activity out of character for quartz boulders. Once again I lifted
the binoculars to my eyes. And this time I found myself peering intently
at a truck on a distant logging road. To make matters worse. The truck
was not even white; it was a soft robin's-egg blue, a color no self-respecting
bear would ever wear in public.
When I got back to the lodge, I didn't drown my disappointment by bingeing
on Red Zinger or chamomile tea. I'd already decided the West Kootenay
region was, in its own way, just as remarkable as a white grizzly, in
addition to being a whole lot easier to find.
Mountain Trek saved the best bit for the last. No, there wasn't a pot
of dark roast from the New Guinea Highlands waiting at the breakfast table
on my final day. But our group did hike to monica meadows, where the scenery
made the landscape in the Sound of Music look like an industrial-waste
site. (Again, I exaggerate, but only slightly.)
There we were, standing on a 7,800-foot-high ridge in the Upper Glacier
Creek. In all four directions, mountains anchored the corners of the earth.
There were big mountains and small mountains, mountains with patches of
snow and mountains with waterfalls, one mountain that looked like the
Pyramid of Cheops and another like the Cathedral of Chartres. Across the
valley, two large glaciers, the Macbeth Icefield and Horseshoe Glacier,
sparkled so brilliantly in the afternoon sun that they seemed to be made
of sequins. And if front of us, Monica Meadows was blanketed with wildflowers:
a symphony of lavenders and yellows, reds and blues.
"If you spin around on this spot and make a wish," Sharon told
us, "you can get rid of anything."
"Anything?" I inquired, thinking of a certain debt I had incurred
a while back.
"Anything within reason- for example, a negative emotion that may
be weighing you down."
At that moment, how could I have had any negative emotion or been weighed
down by anything? However, I was being plagued by horseflies, seemingly
endless relays of them, so I spun around and wished them away, and lo!
they were gone, or at least for as long as I kept spinning.
In the end, I never did get to see a white grizzly. Or any bear for that
matter. But I left Mountain Trek not at all disappointed. For more than
anything this trip confirmed what searchers of wisdom (and of bears) have
been saying almost since the beginning of time: The journey, not the destination,
is what matters most.
The height of the hiking season is June to
August. To get to Mountain Trek, you can fly into Spokane, Washington,
or Castlegar, British Columbia, via Vancouver; van service from the former
takes about four hours and from the latter slightly over an hour. The
guests (usually about a dozen, of whom about 70 percent are single travelers)
are all housed in the main lodge, and there's a separate fitness centre
where yoga classes are held. Accommodations are rustic and comfortable,
with en suite bathrooms. You may notice the absence of a coffeemaker. -L.M.
Super Natural Spa
Mountain Trek Fitness
Retreat & Health Spa,
Box 1352, Ainsworth Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada V0G 1A0
1-800-661-5161
www.hiking.com
info@hiking.com