Even if I'm struggling, I still can
There's something about being in the mountains that demands endurance. The further you walk or ski in, the further you have to return. You don't have the option of lying on your back like a child in a tantrum and hoping your dad will carry your sore body. You have to carry yourself, all of the items you decided to bring and all of the lactic acid in your muscles. My partner has this very annoying but realistic saying he says when we reach the top of a mountain, “We’re only halfway!” However much it grinds my gears, stealing my feeling of victory, it’s true. We treat the mountain top as our triumph, but perhaps the real triumph is unlocking the car back at the parking lot. All that elevation gained has to be unwound and retraced, paths remembered and navigated.
On a recent backcountry ski trip, my friends and I were skinning up Mount Hector. After 2.5 hrs of on and off boot packing and 1000+ meters of elevation gain, the peak finally came into view. Squinting up at the wave of snow, topped with sprinkled boulders, we could see 2 ant-sized skiiers ascending the face kilometres away. I felt that familiar penny drop of “Shit, we are nowhere near finishing”. With less milage under my belt, I was struggling and became the focus of those meant well but telling questions that gather around the weak, “How are you feeling?” My partner prompted me, “Do you want to turn around?” “No.” I stubbornly replied wanting a decent ski reward for myself and our friends after busting our arses to get this far, but actually just wanting to go home and watch a movie.
However unmotivated and unergectic, my mind flashed back to our friend on the Wapta Traverse in Canada earlier in the season. He was visiting and wanted to try his first multiday ski tour. My partner scrambled to find him a split board setup, and the guys planned to do 44km in two days. Usually, people take 3-4 days to complete the Traverse and stay at the 3 built huts along the way, but with a short window and a plane to catch, the plan was to leg it and camp one night in the snow. After hearing the plan, I raised my concerns, couldn't we choose something less type 2 fun, considering the circumstances? But minds were set. With 4 out of 5 of us set up on skis, our poor friend was living the split board nightmare. Slipping and sliding, frustratingly picking himself up over and over, getting bogged in the deep powder and switching multiple times between board mode and skins on teasing undulating flats. With the challenge of an already huge objective topped like a big fat cherry on top of his own physical and mental challenge, it was clear he had to work 3 times harder than the rest of us. His frustration reverberated in the hills and was embraced by encouraging tips to try to ease his suffering, and then other times, silence. We knew and he knew the realistic fact that he didn't have a choice, we were in the middle of nowhere, and he had to keep going. When you don't have a choice, however difficult, it’s incredible what you can reach down and find inside of yourself. My admiration for him grew as he trudged on, exhausted. He wasn't short for grunts and curses, but I never heard him say, “I can't do this.” And heaven knows how difficult it would have been if he had. At the end of the second day, 13.5 hrs after we began, we arrived at the car under a starry sky. I sat next to him at the lodge as we waited for the car retrieval, alienated from chirpy hotel guests, feeling like we had just survived a war. He told me it was the hardest thing he had ever achieved. What impressed me more was his refrain from using the word “can’t”.
As our group marched on towards Mount Hector, though I was the slowest and weakest link in our ski group, his frustration encouraged me, even though I'm struggling, I still can. I wasn't as fast or strong or stoked as everybody else, I didn't even make it to the top; I was too slow in comparison to the effects of the spring sun. I panicked and cried and fell apart on the way back down. However weak I looked, and appeared, what felt like the real triumph was pushing past that feeling of can't.