NWOBS Course Director and Instructor Nick McEachern was the recipient of the 2022 Mike Armstrong Staff Expedition Award. This award was created to encourage and support staff to aspire to grow as individuals through outdoor expeditions, and to gain skills and experience that can be applied to their positions with NWOBS. This award will support one NWOBS staff member or one staff member group per year to do an expedition.
by Nick McEachern
The first time I visited the Canadian Rockies was in 2017, and it completely blew my mind. I spent a long weekend skiing couloirs in Roger’s Pass between Golden and Revelstoke, B.C., and I was hooked. The scale and grandeur of those mountains eclipsed anything else I’d seen. The vertical rise and exposure of some of the ski runs is enough to make me shake with stoke and fear at the same time. After that first trip, I started looking into the best way to get to know the mountain range. I stumbled across something called the Wapta Traverse and knew immediately that I would have to go try it.
“The Wapta” as it is known, starts at a trailhead 50 miles North of Lake Louise and ends about 30 miles south close to Golden, B.C. Along the way, it traverses nearly a dozen ice fields with the majority of the route being on glaciated terrain. There are steep peaks, hundreds of avalanche paths, and a few huts along the way. When I saw the Mike Armstrong Expedition Fund open up for 2022, I connected the dots and thought it would be a great trip to apply for funding. In a lot of ways, the Wapta allowed me to apply so many skills that NWOBS has taught me. Technical skills like expedition planning, mountaineering, glacier travel, and snow camping were all important to know. Even more important were my skills of resilience, patience, and enterprising curiosity.
I am lucky to be able to spend time with my partner, Alec, in the mountains. We climb, bike, raft, and ski together. He is my number one choice when I’m looking for somebody to get outside with. When I pitched the Wapta to him, I didn’t exactly explain the parts about snow camping, long days of walking, and overall tough route conditions. I mostly talked about the great snow, views, and unique route. It was a bit of a sandbag. Alec is one of the best skiers I know, but this trip was his first time on a trip like this. His level-headedness and analytical brain is well suited to ski mountaineering, and we make a good team on these type of endeavors.
After some prep days in Fernie and Golden, we waited for a four day weather window. While most people complete the Wapta by staying in warm huts along the way, we decided to be Covid safe and camp out. We lucked out with sunshine, but the clear skies made for some cold nights which led to slow mornings. Our second day was the most challenging. We pushed ourselves a little too hard and arrived at camp at sunset. We were hungry, sore, and a little bit checked out. On our final ski out to the car, things warmed up a bit faster than expected and we watched some loose wet avalanches take out the existing skin track. We decided to play it safe, but that only added time and distance to an already long day. Fortunately, in Canada, every good ski day ends with poutine. French fries, cheese curds, and gravy are enough to ground anybody back into reality.
Like most people passionate about outdoor recreation, I’ve spent a lot of time sitting with the question, “Why do I do this?” Why do I willingly go out into challenging winter environments, hours away from any definitive care, just to walk across avalanche paths, surrounded by open crevasses? It isn’t exactly “fun” and while the views are outstanding, I could probably see similar things from the side of the road. Everybody has a slightly different answer. The sense of accomplishment, the solitude, and the strengthening of relationships are all popular responses, and I agree with all of that. However, for me, it is something a bit bigger and more meaningful. I think spending time outdoors in such awe-inspiring settings makes me a better person. At the end of any trip, I return with more appreciation for the world and people around me as well as for myself. Feeling humbled and inspired feeds my internal fire to keep working and trying hard in all aspects of life.
As backcountry skiers, there are so many adventures to look forward to. There are routes similar to the Wapta all over the world. From the Alps to Norway, South America, and beyond, I learned so much from this traverse to be able go out and attempt longer, more remote ski expeditions. I am beyond grateful to NWOBS and the scholarship fund to have invested in me and trusted me to complete such a challenging trip. I look forward to sharing my skills and stories with our community and students in the future.
Photo credit: Nick McEachern