Journals from the Wild | Camping at Mount Assiniboine

Well, dear journal, I write to you now from this cotton fluff-filled haven, a secret paradise resting under the face of Mount Asiniboine, the grand all-encompassing presence that towers above everything else in sight. Currently, I'm spending six days camping here in the backcountry, along with my partner Chris and our 13-year-old dog Pepper. It's not lost on me how amazing it is that this is kind of our backyard on a grand scale. These mountains begin directly behind our home, and we only have to walk out the door and follow the forest trail for, well, many hours of walking and one big climb over a mountain pass before our first glimpse of Mount Asiniboine. From this pass, it takes another 10 hours or so of trekking to reach the base of this iconic mountain known as the Matterhorn of the Canadian Rockies. Naturally, we decided to divide our journey over several days, taking our time to really enjoy it, all the vast, awe-inducing landscapes and these more intimate, tucked-away places. This is autumn in the mountains. The days feel calmer, quieter. Colors of golds and reds begin to paint the valleys, and while the nights are kissed with early winter frosts, the aurora returns to the sky, dancing and painting the heavens with their own colors. This is amazing! The early morning temperatures have dropped below freezing again, making for some chilly nights in the tent, but the exciting counter-effect is that the summer bugs are now gone. The mosquitoes have been wiped out, granting us this very short window of camping perfection before proper winter returns. Pepper has this game now where he refuses to eat his food by himself, so we have to hand-feed him one piece of kibble at a time. It's the only way he eats while on camping trips. Yep, that's our pup. You're ridiculous, Pepper. Got your manservant with you. Uh-huh. Feeding him or you, one or the other. Thanks, babe. What would we do without you? There is still some warmth to the sun, yet the days are cool enough to keep our energy levels high while hiking. This is, honestly, my favorite time of year to be outside. When we finally reached Mount Assiniboine, we set up our new home base for the next few days, and I'm grateful to be able to leave all our heavy camping gear in one place for a while, so we can hike the surrounding landscapes with much lighter backpacks. Our bodies must have been more exhausted than I thought after the long hike in. Somehow, we slept in until 11 30 yesterday morning, the longest lie-in I've had in months, but it felt amazing to take the day slowly, wandering through the forests of large trees where I can't resist brushing my hands through their soft needles and resting and journaling under their branches. We went to sleep last night under a full moon, listening to the glaciers and rocks crack and crumble in the distance, both awe-inducing and eye-opening to realize the sheer scale of these mountains and the destruction their elements can cause. I've always held a healthy dose of weariness when in the backcountry, but despite my caution, I find myself equally balanced by the peace this wilderness brings to me. Being in these mountains always feels like I'm reuniting with something essential, a core part of my being that's somehow always been inextricably connected to these wild places. I find myself wishing these moments would last forever. I wish that there was a way I could freeze time, to make this season last more than just a few days before winter sets in again. I almost feel a little desperate anxiety in me, this need to just grasp the sun's warmth and the land's colors and hold them still with me just a little while longer. I want to soak in every second, to write it down, to record it, to paint it, to memorize it. But maybe that's why this time feels so special to me. It's so fleeting, there's no time to take it for granted. So I sit here, being present in it, taking this time to notice the deep quietness broken only by the calls of birds, a breeze through the trees, the crack of glacier ice across the valley. And in these moments, I think, how can anything be more beautiful? My heart feels like it will explode just trying to contain this feeling, this all-encompassing wonder and awe. Did you sleep good, buddy? Hello, darlings. All righty. Watch out, Pepper, I'm scooching in. As you may be able to guess, we are out of the backcountry now and just sitting here in the forest in the backyard right behind our house. I'm drinking tea out of my favorite pepper mug. I thought I would update you all on how that last little bit of our backcountry trip went. We ended up coming out a day earlier than intended and on our last night sleeping in the tent, this really late season thunderstorm came through the valley. As we were going to sleep, the loudest cracks of thunder happened overhead and the lightning was flashing across and lighting up the tent. It was so loud, it was kind of frightening, but also kind of cool. I do really love thunderstorms, but I was maybe a little scared. So I huddled really deep into my sleeping bag and just listened to the pouring rain pummeling the roof of the tent. And as the night went on, the temperature dropped and all that rain turned to snow. Like I mentioned earlier in my journaling, this season of autumn in the high alpine can sometimes be so short. Sometimes it's even non-existent. It'll go straight from summer weather to full-on winter and snow. And this year, we had maybe three or four days of beautiful autumn season before that first snow storm of the year hit. So when we woke up the next morning and looked outside, it was this beautiful winter wonderland. I love the first snowfall of the year just being so fresh and having that excitement of the early season changes. That being said, we were supposed to camp one more night in the country. Our plan for that day was to hike halfway out from Mount Assiniboine to our home. But as we started trekking, the blizzards came back along with a lot of strong wind and the snow was kind of wet and ended up soaking through all of our clothes and our backpack, which made it way extra heavy. And everything just got so wet and cold that every time we stopped for more than two minutes, we would freeze. And we started to think about how cozy it would be to be back home in our warm bed indoors. So about halfway through the day, when we originally were going to start looking for a campsite, we decided maybe we should push all the way out, which would be a big day. That's 35 kilometers to do in one day and up over a big mountain pass too, which gets even snowier the higher you go, of course. But we did the math and realized that if we kept going without many breaks, not that we could take many breaks anyway because it was too cold to stop, we realized that we would exit the trail before midnight still. So the last few hours might have to be by headlamp, but it was entirely possible. So we pushed ever onward. And the good thing about hiking when it's cold out is that I tend to retain my energy better when my body is cool enough to keep moving. I was a little worried about this guy and how he would handle a 35 kilometer day because he's 13 years old, but he did so amazing. He did better than me, honestly. The entire time he pulled on the leash out of excitement, like pulling me up the mountain pass. And he loves the snow so much that I think he might have a little bit of husky or something mixed into his mystery makings. But every chance he got, he was rolling in the snow and his energy was higher than both mine and Chris's for the entire day, which is amazing. The stamina on this guy, I don't know where he gets it from. You should give some to me. But yeah, once we hit the 20 kilometer mark of our trek and we still had 15k left to go and the blizzards finally started opening up and the sun was almost about to set and we looked up on the trail in front of us and there was this huge grizzly bear digging through the snow right there on the trail that we had to walk on. So we stopped and watched it from a distance for a while and we got out a bear banger and bear spray just in case we need to use it. And we started just yelling, hey bear, hey bear, just so it would know that we're there. And after a while it turned around and walked up into the trees behind the path. So we thought, okay, this is good. The path kind of winds this way and the bear just went up into the trees this way, so we should be safe. So we started walking on the path around and I realized after a few minutes that the path started gradually coming back around to the other side of the trees that the bear disappeared into. And just as I started to mention that to Chris, we looked up to our left and there it was 20 or 30 meters away staring right at us. And my heart just started racing and I was like, keep going, keep going, keep going. So we were walking fast, but not too fast because you're not supposed to run away from bears. But I still wanted to walk as fast as we could just to get a safer distance. And the bear was really chill. It was looking for its own food, but it was also really curious about us. And every time I looked back, it was taking a few steps toward us, kind of wondering who we were. Because the path was covered in so much snow, every time I looked back to make sure the bear wasn't chasing us, I would trip, which wasn't very ideal. So we hoofed it up the hill away from the bear, which the further we got, the less interested it was in us. So we stopped at the top of the hill a few hundred meters away and Chris grabbed the camera, took a little bit of video footage of it, and then we quickly packed everything away and kept going just in case the bear would get curious again. And I'll say, I was starting to get tired right around then, but after that adrenaline rush, I had enough energy to last the final four hour push out of there. We did finally make it out after dark and my feet were so sore. They were screaming with every step on those last few kilometers, but I also felt this sense of accomplishment that I could hike 35 kilometers up over a huge mountain pass all in one day through snow the entire day as well. It felt like a pretty good feat. Not that I want to do it again, mind you, but I'm glad to know that I can do it. This tea is glorious. So I was kind of thinking and wondering the last few days while in the backcountry, what direction I want these videos to kind of go in. Sometimes I feel torn between focusing more on documenting how I photograph and create myself portraits out in these landscapes, and then sometimes I want to document more about the process of these backpacking trips and documenting what that's like. And then I also enjoy creating these kind of video journals, which is a combination of kind of everything, even though it takes a lot of time. And I want to do more of all of these things, but I thought I would ask you all what you might want to see more of from me. I do love spending time in the backcountry trekking and camping, and I'm not sure if maybe any of you would be interested in me capturing more to do with that and sharing more about how we do that, like what kind of gear we bring, what to watch out for in the backcountry, more about the actual trails themselves, and best times a year to do them, and all of that cool stuff. I would love to share more of that if any of you are interested. But then I'm also thinking more about sharing how I take my self-portraits or these videos and sharing more the artsy side of these things as well. So yeah, I wish I had all the time in the world to make all the videos that I want to make, but I don't. So I thought I'd just put it out there to all of you and ask you what you are more interested in receiving from me these days. Or maybe you would just like to receive what you already are, just these kind of random video journals once in a while of my life playing out there in nature. All right, I think I've rattled off long enough for now, and the sun just set, so I think I'm gonna go back to the house and make some more tea and finish piecing this video together for you all. As always, thank you all so much for watching. It means the world to me that you're here, and I can't wait to share more of these moments with you soon. Much love to you, muah!