Ice Hiking in British Columbia 3

(I’m telling the story of how my husband and I, college seniors, went north on a small British Columbian steamship, headed for the biggest wilderness adventure of my life.)

The nearest we could get to our goal with steamer tickets was still almost 100 traveling miles from the place we wanted to be. Unable to afford a hired float plane, we planned to hitchhike by fishing boat up Knight Inlet to the mouth of the Franklin River. This was 20 years before the great flood of American hippies changed the friendly Canadian attitude about hitchhikers.

It was our bad luck that we got off the ship on a Friday, when all the small boats were coming into Alert Bay to observe a weekend closure of the fisheries. Everybody was getting drunk; no one was going out until Monday or Tuesday. With almost no money left, we had to camp at the top of the island.

We spent our time in the little town talking to the sweet natured people, and we waited, waited, worrying that the perfect weather would change before we could get close to the Coast Range mountains. From our campsite we could actually see them.. the great white mass of Mt. Silverthrone and, just barely visible to the south, the topmost ridges of Mt. Waddington, 90 miles away.

(Someone once pointed out that the photos of me are usually from the rear. I was surprised to observe that they were right. We used to show these slides occasionally in public, where Larry and I would be standing at a podium and our faces were not mysteries.

So here we are, folks. I’m really not that short; usually my husband could barely see over the top of my head. For some reason, in this photo, he sureptitiously stepped up on a rock.)

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