The Waddington Hut trip

This past weekend, we went into the Waddington Hut in the Birkenhead area north of Pemberton.  

Ricky has the full report on rickyfederau.blogspot.com already.  

The hut was busy and another group wrote a trip report too.  They neglected to mention the incident and so I did.  They took it down, so here it is again.  

"You didn’t tell us about Sunday night, Louie.  Please, allow me.

To start, the Waddington Hut has a voluntary registration system.  There were 14 people registered to stay last weekend and around 30 at the hut.  If you plan to go, register here - http://www.ubc-voc.com/wiki/VOC_hut_registration.  You don’t have to, but you should.  It helps everyone to plan and know what to expect. 

On Sunday night, 29 of us listened to Kyle Miller drone on and on and on about himself as we tried to go to sleep.  Never before have I met such an obnoxious, self-absorbed jackass in the backcountry.  (Go to the hill!  You’ll fit right in.)  The quintessential FIGJAM (Fuck, I’m good.  Just ask me), a BIG DEAL.  He’s got a website:

“The “Where is Kyle Miller??” Project is a backcountry initiative dedicated to the exploration of new lines and dramatic descents in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.”

You call it a project, an initiative.  I call it a weekend.  Whatever.  I doubt this is the first time Kyle has referred to himself in the third person. 

Anyways, eventually even Kyle gets tired of listening to himself talk and we all go to sleep.   For an hour.

Then Louie gets sick.  He throws up.  On himself, on a few other people.  He looks like he’s going to do it again and he doesn’t move.  Someone says ‘Dude, you gotta get out of here’ and he wanders downstairs, leaving behind a loft packed tight with groggy skiers and a big mess.  It’s mostly box wine.

Most of Louie’s party disowns him, since they ‘all only met a few days ago’.  And they start making excuses - like ‘Well, he skied all day’.  Um, like we didn’t.  That’s kind of what people go to huts for.  We just didn’t get drunk on box wine.  Louie doesn’t come back upstairs.  Those puked on start cleaning themselves up, until KYLE TO THE RESCUE!  To be sure, Kyle helps, but he won’t stop fucking talking about how great he is for helping while he’s helping.  He also memorably says ‘Look, we’ve all been here before’.   We have?  Nope.  I guess that’s how the pros are different from the everyman.  Eventually, someone asks him to shut up and just go back to bed. 

Louie won’t talk to anyone the next morning.  No clean up.  No apology.  He just pretends it never happened.  Like in this trip report. 

Communal huts don’t work unless everyone acts as if they’re part of the community. 

Check your egos at the door."

For the record, Louie has since apologized.  It happens that huts can be busy and people get sick.  No one is pissed about that.  

I'm just bringing everyone back down to earth, where the mountains are big, the people are small, we forget about the rat race, and just have a good time.  You'll be a better skier for it, and (much more importantly) a better person.

Hey Snowshoes! Step off my track, bro.

Last weekend,  we climbed up Nak at the Coquihalla to ski it.  A few times.  There were also some snowshoers there.  They apparently didn't want to break a trail.  So they used ours, and wrecked it.  So we made another one on the second lap.  Then they came down, used our new one, and wrecked it too.

Besides for safety, there aren't a lot of 'rules' in the backcountry and that's for the better.  I don't like people telling me what to do either.  But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be any etiquette.

The quintessential nature of the backcountry is of self-reliance.  When you go into the backcountry, you should be prepared to take care of yourself, fend for yourself.  That means, be prepared to rescue yourself, get stuck out there by yourself, and to blaze trail for yourself.  Not prepared to do that?  Go somewhere else.  There are resorts, lodges, guides, and trails that cater to exactly those folks.

These were those folks - for all intents and purposes, lost without the skintrack and not going very far if they had to do it for themselves anyway.

Now, I realize that someone else's trail is often the path of least resistance and, if it's there, I use it too.  But skintracks and snowshoeing trails are two different animals - one is for skiing; one is for walking.  I'm not going to ski all over your trail, and you shouldn't walk all over my track.  I also won't cut any overhead slopes on you or spray you in the face with blower pow.  Deal?

There's plenty of room in the backcountry to go around.