Fairy Meadows in Canada

 

Tom Lehnt dropping over a wind cornice.

The group hiking across Granite Glacier.

The Heli dropping off supplies.

Climbing past the "Claw".

The Fairy Meadows hut on a moonlit night.

After many years of adventuring into the mountains of the Western United States, I had the feeling I knew about the grandeur of the Rockies. I wanted to get a different perspective and thought that seeing them from a Canadian viewpoint might give me a new appreciation. Oh how wrong I could be. The Canadians see the mountains differently because they are. The mass and sheer size of them breaks horizon like rows of jagged teeth that overlap endlessly for as far as the eye can see. The snow comes in layers and quantities that cover any roughness with pillows that sprout like mushrooms in folds of white.
   After spending a week in a remote winter ski hut in the Selkirks of British Columbia called Fairy Meadows and climbing for every turn I was able to make, I have a completely new appreciation of mountains and what they can mean to the soul. How humans connect with their environment and it changes them. Oh how it changes them.