Into the Crystal Current

An Unusual Idea

Frozen fingers and stiff waterproof zips are never the best combination. But perhaps it is just this kind of combination that makes an adventure in both whitewater and snow so different.

It’s 7am on an unseasonally cold Tuesday in March. Just minutes ago, a friend dropped us off on the side of Canada’s iconic Sea-to-Sky highway, which connects the Pacific Ocean of Vancouver to the Coast Mountains of Whistler. With hoods up and gloves on we trudged through hip deep snow to the edge of the Cheakamus River. The dexterity of my digits was already limited when I started stuffing my sleeping bag, sleeping mat, boots and clothes into the tubes of my packraft.

After fumbling the packraft zips shut with hands that felt like clubs, I inflated my boat, creating a whitewater vessel that doubled as a kind of giant drybag. This is where things got unusual; I grabbed by skis and poles, and lashed them to the outside of my inflatable. And then I pushed off into the current, laughing at the strange view of a pair of ski tips crashing through whitewater.

The plan was simple enough. We would combine travel across water in both its liquid and solid states by paddling two rivers, on either side of the same mountain. In between, we would draw some lines in the snow with skis under us and packrafts on our backs. We would use a unique combination of skis and packrafts to get to know two rivers – and the frozen source of some of that water. Paddling the Cheakamus River was the first segment of this three-stage winter adventure, with some mellow class two whitewater leading to the base of Cloudburst Mountain. Here, we would roll up rafts, strap them to our backs and ski tour up the 1800m peak. Then, we’d ski down the other side to launch packrafts into the Squamish River and paddle the final 30 kilometres to the Pacific Ocean to complete our ski-packing, raft-skiing adventure.

Convincing my Slovenian boyfriend Rok and our photographer buddy Andrew that this trip was a good idea was easier than expected. Paddle. Ski. Paddle. Simple concept. But when Arctic outflow winds plummeted temperatures at home in Squamish, BC in early March, the dates we penciled in for the trip seemed a bit ambitious. Despite our trip’s close proximity to civilisation – we would be less than 30 kilometres as the crow flies from the mountain town of Squamish – the basics of mountain wilderness survival would apply just the same. Food, water, shelter, and warmth would be critical. Warmth, in particular, was on our minds. We knew we were going to need more than just whisky to keep us warm out there.

It was the kind of cold where a deep intake of breath causes the hairs in your nostrils to freeze together

Cheakamus River 

Pivoting through rapids scattered with ice-encrusted rocks, I tried to keep my hands dry as we passed psychedelic mushroom-like ice formations. We weaved around massive frozen cedar logs, huge relics from the British Columbia’s past and present logging industry. I caught myself picturing my sleeping bag inside my raft tube, literally bouncing off rocks in shallow spots, or breaking waves in rapids. I was still getting used to this inflatable raft concept.

Rok and I are whitewater kayakers. And kayakers typically don’t like carrying kayaks. Any expedition paddler will agree that carrying a boat through thick forest, across slippery rocks, or up steep riverbanks is the worst part of the sport. Packrafts, however, offer a lighter alternative. These inflatable, single-person mini rafts can’t run technical class V rapids or drop waterfalls. They are inflatable, floatable, lightweight facilitators of good times on the water. Ours were made of durable ultra-light nylon and had waterproof zips allowing the tubes to be filled with gear. They weigh less than eight pounds when deflated and can be rolled a packable bundle small enough to fit in or on a pack. Kind of perfect for exploration adventures, I thought, after I first paddled one. This trip would prove whether or not my hunch was accurate.

Navigating whitewater in the winter meant taking dry lines and triple-checking our spray decks were taught. But water found its way in, as it invariably does, and we were soon paddling with freezing puddles in our boats. Around midday, we swapped paddles for poles and attached our dripping, deflated rafts to our backpacks. We stepped out of the river sand, onto the snow and into our skis to start the long skin up Cloudburst Mountain.

Even as we were transitioning from one sport to another, calling this trip an ‘expedition’ felt like an exaggeration. Isn’t an expedition going somewhere no one has been? This trip, though, was certainly an adventure. We are conditioned to think that adventures like this require big budgets and that they must occur in very wild, far flung locations. But the three of us had our own idea of what adventure meant. We weren’t trying to go the fastest, the highest or to the extremes. We just looked at a map, gathered or borrowed gear, and got creative. The entire five-day route would occur within cell phone reception, yet with skis underfoot and packrafts strapped to our backs, we were somehow using my backyard to create a challenging adventure close to home.

Cloudburst Mountain

Cloudburst Mountain is a sprawling granite massif marking the southernmost point of the Squamish-Cheakamus divide, the two rivers which feed fresh snowmelt to the Pacific Ocean. As we skinned uphill, I contemplated the frozen and liquid water that made this trip possible. Skiing is a highly visible activity, where only intense wind, heavy snow or the warmth of the sun can erase the story of an ascent or descent. Paddling, conversely, is an almost invisible activity, where paddle strokes disappear as soon as the blade leaves the water. A few footprints in the riverside snow and sand were all we left after a morning spent paddling to the mountain’s base. Ahead of me, the stories of rapids and river ice drip off my friends’ backpacks as they toil uphill, hinting at the origins of this water in the Cheakamus River, by now some 800 metres below us.

As light dwindles, we stomp out a tent spot and inhale our dinner. Tonight, the temperature will drop to -15 degrees Celsius, and the wind will blow hard: very physical reminders that in the mountains, ‘surviving the night’ is not a cliché, it’s a reality. As we tucked into our sleeping bags, squirming and shifting to add some warmth, it was shocking to think that we were just 10 kilometres as the crow flies from the nearest road. On a map of BC, it looked more like we were camping in an extension of Squamish’s backyard than the backcountry. And yet, despite how close we were to the comforts of civilisation, the basics of mountain survival still applied up here. We went to sleep that night like bunch of nervously excited scouts squished together in a small tent, listening to snowflakes dancing lightly on the tent flysheet.