“Hooooo boy. We got ourselves a screamer!”
Has anyone told you that riding in a helicopter makes you feel badass? Because it does. Really, really James Bond like. I sat in the rear seat of the small helicopter, wedged between Nat and Seneida, facing all of our precious gear strapped into every empty space around us. The audio on my head set was almost impossible to interpret, but in between Seneidas’ squeals of pure childlike joy, our pilot Mike was gently teasing her.
Learning how to not get dead by helicopter
Just moments before, Jim and I took a big gulp and swiped our credit cards to the tune of $2300 ‘but it’s only Canadian’ each. It’s funny how something that can feel so pivotal to the dreamer is just another day to the regulars. The heli operation didn’t take deposits, or even reservations beyond post it note. It’s more of a you give them a heads up when you think you’ll fly, you pay when you show up, and then they load you in and drop you in the middle of the wildenerness – destination, your choice. When I asked if they needed our in reach contact in case anything weird happened for our exit, the front desk manager shrugged and said ‘Sure, that’s probably a good idea?’
When I went to the Bugs in 2022, we went on the Applebee side, which meant a grueling double haul hike with 60+ lbs of gear each lap – plus a resupply mid trip. I cannot emphasize enough the pure glee I felt flying over that hellacious trail, smirking at all the peasants below who had to – GASP – hike into the mountains. Been there, done that. My legs would have plenty of opportunity to turn to jelly in the next two weeks, and today my ass never felt so good as to be planted in that heli seat.
We flew over the familiar terrain from my last trip, then popped over a col into East Creek. Now, we were in the unknown. As the helicopter circled, I looked for the pooper, other tents, any signs of life – none. Just an endless field of glacier and snow.
‘You’re the first group I’ve brought in this season! Hm, I can’t…I usually find the basecamp area by spotting the toilet, but I don’t see it…’
Fantastic. The area had gotten a final blast of winter in the form of 4 feet of snow the week prior, wiping out all spring traces of life. He finally spotted a boulder that maybe looked familiar, and dropped in. He didn’t warn us that when landing on the snow he’d bounce up and down several times to give the skids a solid base to set on. I had already unbuckled when we went launching back into the air, landing me in Nat’s lap with a scream. Not that he could hear it over the thundering engine and his own shouts.
He gave us a thumbs up with a garbled message over the headsets. We jumped out, with the unloading lessons he gave us only a half hour before in the parking lot already mostly forgotten. Lots of ‘Don’t touch this, the door is sticky so pull it which way? Oh and definitely don’t go THERE or you’ll die.’ In just a few minutes we had unceremoniously tossed all 500 lbs of our gear onto the snow, heads still attached, and waved off the pilot.
You feel badass on the flight in, but when the bird takes off and the last thumps of the engine disappear into the distance, you suddenly feel very exposed and alone. What was only a 25 minute flight from town becomes an impassable distance of grizzly bear infested wilderness.
We found a ridge of rock that was mostly out of the snow that looked like it had some kind of flat spots for tents and a divot for a kitchen. Jim set to digging out his lower tent platform while the rest of us unloaded. My familiar nylon home went up quickly, so I set out to establish the most important part of camp – the bathroom.
Now, I knew there was a real toilet in East Creek. We spotted the rat tree, a metal structure from which to hang your food bags to keep rodents out, so the toilet had to be close. But where? Using binoculars, I could only spy the crumbling edges of glaciers, sheer drop offs into the abyss, and sharp ridges of stone and snow. Finally, about a quarter mile away from our tents, I see it: tucked onto an exposed ridge, half buried in snow, a metal composting toilet. And I mean toilet – there was no privacy enclosure of stone protecting your bare ass from prying eyes and biting wind like in Applebee. Just a toilet, on a metal box, with singing views of the wild mountains.
Nat came over to look at the fuss I was making. Something about yelling ‘Jesus Christ, that’s where I’m shitting for the next ten days?’ attracts attention. He laughed, and said ‘well, let’s go check this out.’
The toilet was perched on a rock ridge, with a crest of snow leading up the spine and a sheer drop off to the side. As in, if you lean too far to the left to wipe, you could go for a screamer of a few hundred feet, ending in a slide into a glacial pond. We carefully hiked over, with our axes and boots, and picked our way through the deep snow. Once we gained the elevation of the toilet, we couldn’t figure out how to get down to it. It was half under blown snow, so we started digging. Eventually we found a wooden rail that acted as a step down to the toilet platform, so we knew we were on the right track. Hacking at the cornice with our axes, Jim and Seneida responded to our shouts of ‘Bring the shovel!’ and added to the operation. After about thirty minutes of work, we had dug a 4’ deep channel from a safer, flatter spot on the ridge through to the step onto the toilet.
As we dug, I couldn’t help but stare around us. The initial rush of unloading, setting up tents, and digging is so process focused that it’s easy to miss what’s right in front of you – the granite spires of the Bugaboos. Directly over our tents loomed the Minaret spire, and not too far to the northwest was our own route – the stepped ridge of the Becky Chouinard up the South Howser Tower.
My house for the next ten days
Buckling our dry bag of TP to the heavy chains that lashed the toilet onto its precarious perch, my heart settled with the view of our new home and our challenge – just the four of us, a granite beast, and the world’s most incredible, improbable shitter.