Porcupines Like Melons

Short Version:
We climb a wee hill, and see rivers of ice from a cool hut in the company of cheery cherry orchardists.

Long Version:
The hike to the Conrad Kain Hut started steep, and got steeper. Several sections had chain handrails, and there was one ladder bolted to a sheer rock face which brought back more memories of the Devil's Staircase on Tuhua/Mayor Island. The ride up the road to the trailhead had provided some spectacular views of the peak called the Hound's Tooth bifurcating the Bugaboo Glacier, and the higher we hiked the more we could see, with additional peaks (Snowpatch and Son of a Snowpatch; Pigeon and Eastern and Bugaboo Spires) visible round every bend, and a glacier experience we were glad we got after the overly-commercial Columbia and Athabasca fiascoes on the Icefield Parkway.

Here we were seeing actual rivers of ice, with pressure ridges and crevasses, and not one tour bus driving around on them. There were several in our field of view: the Bugaboo itself, running down the western side of the Hound's Tooth; the Pigeon Spur of the Bugaboo, on the Tooth's eastern side; the Vowell Glacier and the Kain Icefield nearby; and several pocket glaciers; all uncontaminated by human presence, and all really, really cool.

Also very cool was the Hut. Perched on a rock outcrop, with incredible views out over the glaciers and the sub-glacial valley, with Mt Howser and the Sextet Ridge (where we'd perched the day before) on the far side. The Hut sleeps up to 40, is powered by a turbine in the nearby stream, and has a commercial-grade kitchen, fuelled by helicopter-delivered natural gas cylinders. The live-in Hut Manager was an old Austrian ski guide and mountaineer, and the place was decorated with maps and photographs of mountains and mountaineers throughout the ages, including many of and relating to Conrad Kain, who was a pivotal figure in mountaineering in both Canada and New Zealand around the time of the First World War, and is credited with a huge number fo First Ascents, including that of the Bugaboo Spire.

The weather closed in while we were at the Hut, so we forewent the trek up to the Applebee Dome and set off back down the trail, in the company of Dave and Laura, cherry orchardists from Central BC, who met in NZ a few years back, and who trap their tree-climbing, crop-munching porcupines using live-traps baited with melons. Apparently porcupines love melons more than they love cherries, which they love more than rubber.

We'd gobbled most of the easily-accessible raspberries on the way up, as well as seen more pika* and sung away a number of stinky bears. Except that we hadn't at all, as Dave and Laura were able to testify that the odour of bear to which we'd been singing for the past several weeks was actually the scent of a plant. Sigh.

We said our farewells at the trailhead, unwrapped the bikes**, and went home, to the wet Reaper.







* = Apparently they rarely show themselves - which surprised us a bit, as Nene in particular seems to have a talent for spotting the wee beasties

** = There were several large, wooden-railed corrals at the trailhead parking area, all full to the brim with chicken wire. Rocks and pieces of wood were piled all around the place, for use weighting the wire down. The three vehicles there were all wrapped, and having seen the diurnal porc the previous day we were taking no chances.