MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Winter 2018

130 ML BLUE WINTER 2018 BACK PAGE words and photo :: Conor Mihell On a morning in late January, I launched my sea kayak on Lake Superior’s Old Woman Bay. Gunmetal water mirrored the low clouds of a sunless sky and rotting snow soaked the deserted sand beach. This was third day of a big thaw; above-freezing temperatures stretched clear across the long- range forecast. I tried to ignore the portents of this drab, dystopian scene as I set off on an overnight paddling trip, but deep down I was terrified this was the new normal. A week prior I was powder-skiing the treed slopes of Batchawana Mountain, one of Ontario’s highest peaks. The winter of 2017 got off to a good start: a week of persistent snowqualls shut down Sault Ste. Marie, burying my hometown and plastering the Algoma Highlands north of Lake Superior over a metre deep. But the winds lacked a wintery edge. I couldn’t help but observe that a degree or two warmer and the precipitation would’ve been rain. A pattern emerged, reflected in varying degrees across Ontario: temperatures hovered around the freezing point and the weather oscillated between puking snow and pouring rain. Glorious weekends of knee-deep telemark turns were interspersed with long periods of damp depression. Activity became an antidote to moping around the house. When skate-skiing in the rain lost its appeal, I spent two days kayak- camping on the rocky coastline of Lake Superior Provincial Park. The nights were impossibly dark under overcast skies; the campfires I coaxed from waterlogged wood radiated small circles of light. The mood was eerily post-apocalyptic; curiously, I enjoyed it. In February, my wife and I stuck to a plan to hand-haul toboggans across (mostly) frozen Temagami lakes. She was committed to the days off work, so we started off in T-shirts beneath a hot, spring-like sun. For seven nights we dampered down the woodstove in our canvas tent, and slept with our sleeping bags unzipped. Most memorable was a thunderstorm with heavy rain and intense lightning, which kept us tentbound for most of day six. Behind schedule, we pressed on the next day through knee- deep slush puddles. The timing for our March snow-camping trip was far better. It coincided with the season’s only legitimate deep-freeze, and we revelled in the freedom of hardpack snow, lengthening bluebird days and minus 30 nights—winter at last. One night, with the woodstove glowing, I reflected on the realities of our warming planet. Somewhere I’d read about a growing number of environmentalists who are paralyzed—psychologically tormented to the point of inactivity—by the fear of climate change. I’m frightened too, yet I had escaped that fate. I’d logged nearly a month of backcountry camping, over 500 kilometres of skate-skiing, and countless powder turns. Somehow, the lousy winter of 2017 was my best yet. SLUSH FUND MAKING THE MOST OF AWACKYWINTER A pattern emerged, reflected in varying degrees across Ontario: temperatures hovered around freezing and the weather oscillated between puking snow and pouring rain.