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Outdoor Junkie

by Robin Huth

165 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0068; ISBN 1-55212-404-5; US$20.00, C$22.50, EUR16.50, £11.50

The lifestyles of such old-time bushmen as the fur trapper, the forest ranger, the timber cruiser--all portrayed in anecdotes and descriptions.

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about the book      about the author      excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book Robin Huth admits to having been pursued from a very young age by an addiction to the outdoors. A youthful craving for a life in the open drove him from his parents' comfortable home to the wilds of northern Manitoba to trap. Outdoor Junkie portrays the old-time trapline that took the trapper a week of mushing a dog team to get all the way around. The book describes the travels of the old-time forest ranger who used horses, canoes, snowshoes and rafts to patrol his district. The life of a young couple attempting to bring up small children on a remote ranger station without electricity, running water or even motorized transportation creates some amusing and heart-felt stories. The book ruminates on the life of the timber cruiser who followed his compass needle across muskegs and over hills, and moved his camp along with him as he progressed on his compass route. Part of Outdoor Junkie portrays winter camping, alpine hiking, rock and ice climbing, tour skiing and cave exploring. One chapter describes a three-week saddle-horse adventure tour into the bleak and treeless wilds of historic Spatsizi country where, years earlier, the accused murderers Peter Haimadan and Simon Gunanoot successfully evaded their pursuers. Finally, in their late fifties, Dorothy and Robin built a house in semi-wilderness country in British Columbia's West Kootenays where for the first year they had to travel by canoe for mail and groceries. Here they generated their own power and cooked by wood. The last chapter talks of the 15 years they lived in these primitive but beautiful surroundings. Now, in their late 70's they have settled in Salmon Arm, British Columbia. The stories in Outdoor Junkie brings back the lifestyles of the old-time trappers, rangers and cruisers.

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About the Author Robin Huth was born in Brandon, Manitoba in 1921. A youthful craving for an outdoor life drove him from his parents' comfortable middle-class home to the wilds of northern Manitoba to trap. After a stint as a soldier in the Second World War, he became a forest ranger/game warden, and later a timber cruiser. In their late fifties, Robin and his wife, Dorothy, sold their Edmonton house, and moved onto 30 acres of semi-wilderness in British Columbia where they lived until Robin turned 78 years of age. Outdoor Junkie is an account of his life-long addiction to the outdoors. Mr. Huth has been a magazine writer of outdoor non-fiction since 1953. He has completed two outdoor history books, on commission for the Government of Alberta. He and Dorothy now live in Salmon Arm, B.C.

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Excerpts

Somehow someone at the University in Edmonton had heard mistakenly that I was an intrepid and experienced mountaineer. As a result, I occasionally was approached by small groups of students asking to come to Hinton for me to take them on small rock climbs. I always obliged as I enjoyed climbing, and liked to have company along, if just for safety's sake.

One morning I took six or seven female students from the university in Edmonton up Mount Morrow, a small 5500-foot summit west of Hinton. When we reached the top, I decided to take them down the back side of the mountain via a deep canyon. We had to descend into the canyon by rappelling and once in, there was no way of climbing back out as the walls were polished smooth by water flow over the years. We walked down the canyon until we came to a 20-foot waterfall.

The last time I had been down the canyon, the waterfalls had held only a trickle of water, and descending them had meant no more than getting a little wet. But this time a torrent of water cascaded over the falls.

The girls wanted to go back, and I had to convince them that the only way they could get home was by going over the waterfall. The reason they didn't mutiny was that they needed me to get them out. I looped the climbing rope through a piton and tossed it over the rim of the waterfall in preparation for a rappel. Then I rappelled down to show them that it was possible. A heavy splurge of water hit me in the face and up my nose, leaving me gasping for air. I landed in a hollowed out basin of water, two feet deep, at the bottom.

Eventually, all the girls went over the falls, and I watched each one fighting for oxygen, her mouth opening and closing like a fish's as she descended. They didn't like it, but there was no other way. With drenched feet and clothes , we progressed down the canyon floor. The walls kept getting higher and higher as we came across more waterfalls. We eventually descended the last waterfall, and walked out the bottom of the canyon to our cars parked just off the highway. If I remember correctly, that was the last group of university students who asked me to take them out.

Each year, when the snow came and we could climb no more, we took up our skis. The only lift in Jasper was at Whistler Mountain (not to be confused with the famous Whistler Mountain resort in British Columbia.) In addition to skiing downhill, Rocky and I put climbing 'skins' on our skis and climbed to the 8000 foot Marmot Peak. We usually got only one run down in a day - rarely two, at the most - but it was a good one. Sometimes we were the only skiers on the mountain; now there are lifts and thousands of skiers every weekend testing their mettle on Marmot.

1961 was a good year for our family. That winter saw us regularly making use of Jasper's ski slopes. Everyone in the family, but Dorothy, was eager to glide down snow-covered inclines. As soon as we arrived at the ski chalet, we could barely wait to change from our shoes to our ski boots. Dorothy was a good sport, and put in her time either attacking the bunny slopes on her skis or writing letters in the chalet.

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One day, after descending from the plateau, we crossed the Stikine River at the site of an old Indian village called Caribou Hide.

Its history dates back to before World War I when a group of Sikanni Indians, fed up with the effects of the white man's whiskey and his treatment of them, broke away from the others. Packing their dogs with all their belongings, men, women, and children walked 150 miles through the mountains to the Stikine River. There they built their village on twin knolls.

They had been honest, hard working people, their integrity putting to shame the cynicism and materialism of much of today's world. Larry related that the Indians, near starvation, visited a white trapper to borrow some flour. The trapper was away, and the Indians helped themselves to a small amount of flour and lard, leaving behind furs worth many times the cost of the food.

Tragically, the band knew little other than hardship. At times they almost starved, and their numbers were decimated by croup and pleurisy. Finally, in the mid-30's, Chief Alex Jack and his councillors decided to move back to the protection of the white man's administration and paternalism, leaving a deserted village. It was these empty cabins we arrived at.

The next morning while Larry changed shoes on some of the horses, Ed and I visited the abandoned village. Lying beside the cabins, slowly disintegrating, were snowshoes, children's sleds, sawbuck packsaddles and wooden beds, all homemade by the inhabitants. The roofs on almost all the buildings were still intact, although the floors were rotten.

As I walked up the trail between the village and a small school, I imagined the kids coming home to their one-room log cabins. In the 1920s, I also had been attending elementary school, and was the same age as many of the Indian children. How different was my life from theirs', walking home on city streets to a six-room house.

A quarter mile from the village was a graveyard. On the edge of a high point of land overlooking Netsantan, it was solitary testimonial to the hunger, cold and disease that beset the Indians. Each grave was lovingly enclosed in a wooden fence with the corner posts whittled into ornate designs.

The simple inscription on one cross at the head of a small mound of earth summarised the hardship:

Jennie died
May 18, 1933
2 year old

When we left Metsantan Lake, we spent the first two hours on the old Toodoggone Trail (pronounced Too d'gon, the accent on the first syllable.) Its history dates to the 1930's and 1940's when up to a hundred horses in a pack train hauled commercial freight for mining prospects and settlements that no longer exist. One was the Hyland Trading Post near the junction of the Spatsizi and Stikine Rivers, long abandoned, but with its old building still standing.

Two days later we reached Lawyers Creek. All day we rode on wide moors where tiny lakes with no banks lay on top of the ground like drops of water on a leaf. Flat and treeless, the moors had a wild and desolate quality that reminded me of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

That night we camped at Lawyer's Pass. It was named from the activities of Stuart Henderson, a Victoria lawyer who was involved in one of the most enduring legends of northern B.C. - that of Simon Gunannoot, a Sikanni Indian. In 1906, Simon and his brother-in-law, Peter Haimadan, were accused of murdering two white men. For 13 incredible years, in wilderness country north-west and north-east of Hazelton, Gunannoot eluded the best trackers in the B.C. Provincial Police. Even picked patrols, whose only duty was to find him, were unsuccessful. Finally he surrendered and was defended by Stuart Henderson, who won an acquittal for both Gunannoot and Haimadan.

While living in the wilderness, Gunannoot had found some gold. After the trial he interested Henderson in going back to his old haunts to look for a possible mother lode. The wild and lonely stream they searched without success is now Lawyers Creek, its meandering path taking it through the pass we travelled.

On the 18th day, our journey ended at beautiful Thutade Lake. From there we hitch-hiked a ride on a hunter's float plane to Smithers, leaving Larry and Sue to ride the horses the rest of the way back.

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This portage contained a muskeg. Step by step, jerking, tugging and wrenching, I overcame the pull of the bog while the load on my forehead forced my chin deeper into my Adam's apple. Each step in the mire released hordes of mosquitoes that regarded us as their personal filling stations. I was too busy getting myself across to notice how the others were handling the muskeg.

Part of the bog was so bad, we had to cut corduroy from nearby Black spruce that we laid down into the mud as a platform to walk on. Although this eventually sank out of sight, it still gave us some support.

At the end of the portage I lowered my load to the ground with great relief. As I slowly raised my head, then turned it from side to side, my neck creaked so loudly in my ears I wondered if the others heard it. Then, with no time to rest, back for another load and another and another. Finally, Howard and I carried the 180 pound canvas freighter while one of the Indians took the smaller canoe across himself.

I was more tired than I had ever been, and my muscles ached. The unexpected pain of my first portage took a little of the romance out of canoe travel. However, I had not a twinge of regret at giving up the soft life with the Hudson's Bay Company. I welcomed the promise of an experience that would toughen me physically and psychologically.

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I have pondered the ethics of trapping. I have come to believe that no one needs a mink coat more than the mink does. I'm not talking about the death of an animal by a hunter or in a slaughterhouse. In fact, I'm not talking about killing at all. I'm talking about suffering: the terror and unimaginable agony an animal goes through when it is caught in a steel trap or wire snare, and often starves or freezes to death.

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Here we camped for 13 months. Dot loved cooking in the little cabin, fixed up with a long counter for her to work on. The screened walls gave her the feeling of being outdoors, and her view from every side took in cedar, Douglas fir, birch and larch. To the west she could see the lake, and also watch the house going up. For the winter we tacked plastic over the screen for warmth.

As The Land had no vehicle access, travel to Fauquier for mail, shopping and church was by canoe. Until we put in a driveway, we floated our lumber in by towing it behind a borrowed boat, powered by an 18-horse outboard motor.

The next year we hired a bulldozer to carve a road out of the bush. At 1 1/3 miles in length, it might be the longest private driveway in British Columbia and precipitous enough to make a goat look twice before descending it. In comparison, on most government highways, an 8 percent grade is considered to be steep; on a logging road, a 15 percent grade is a steep one. Our driveway contained slopes with a 20 and a 25 percent grade. The driveway remained a 4WD access, particularly in the winter. With the east part of it 500 feet higher than the west, we have enjoyed spring at one end while experiencing winter at the other.

To refer to any part of the driveway, we named each of the seven switchbacks, some after family members, and some through incidences that occurred at those locations. Jacknife Hill is where our utility trailer jackknifed when I attempted to pull it up the hill. We named Bear Corner after an incident with a bear cub.

No vehicle, not even a 4WD, could climb those slopes in the winter unless we had a plough to take the snow off. We needed a tractor with a snow plough, and to get the rest of the lumber for the house down the hill as the lumber trucks were not about to risk the steepness of our new road.

A Kubota, 35 hp., 4WD with a snowplough and a front-end loader filled both needs. During the winter, I found it necessary to chain all four wheels. Each rear chain, with heavy lugs welded to it, weighed 90 pounds.

We had plenty of help to build our house. Taking control of the carpentry, our younger son, Jim, spent many days with me on construction. Our older son, Cam, became the electrician, and our daughter, Nancy, troweled the new concrete foundations. I was combination foreman, labourer and "go-fer." Dot was camp cook.

In May, we installed the septic field, hiring a backhoe to dig the trenches and hole for the tank.

That fall, we accepted an offer on our Edmonton house, and set out to drive back to Edmonton to make it available to the new owners. On our way there, we crossed the lake at Shelter Bay about 11 p.m., and decided to pull into the government campground there for the night. Dot slept in the cab of the truck while I lay crosswise in the cargo area next to the tailgate with the tailgate window open. In the wee hours of the morning I awoke to find a man standing over me with a bottle in his hand.

"What do you want?" I asked, looking up at him.

"I just want to talk about brotherly love." he said, obviously drunk.

"Not interested. Look for someone else." I replied.

He refused to move on even after my pleas turned to threats. I put on my shoes, got out of the truck and grabbed his arm that held the bottle. After a struggle, I gained possession of it, and threw the bottle as far as I could into the bush. From the cab, Dot, in amazement, watched her husband engage in a moonlight boxing match with a strange, unkempt looking man.

She quickly unlocked the door on the driver's side. I placed a well-aimed kick that stopped the intruder long enough for me to close the tailgate, jump into the cab and drive away.

As we were rolling along the road towards Revelstoke, I said, "If that guy and his buddies decide to overtake us on this lonely road, we're in trouble."

I had barely said this when I noticed lights in my rear-view mirror quickly overtaking us. As we had come across the lake on the last ferry before the ferrymen went on strike, we knew it couldn't be any fresh traffic from the other side of the water. It must be the frustrated midnight reveller and his buddies bent on revenge.

"If they pass us," I said, "they can easily stop us." Dot nodded, but said nothing.

I stepped up the speed as fast as I dared go on the winding, narrow road, but the car quickly caught up. Whenever the driver attempted to pass, I prevented him by swerving from side to side.

"If we can get to Revelstoke," I said, "I'll drive at a high rate of speed up and down the streets until a police prowl car intervenes."

When we reached Revelstoke and pulled onto a street, the car shot passed. Instead of a gang of thugs looking for revenge, the car contained a boy and a girl who had been parked somewhere on a side road. He was probably rushing to get her home by a certain hour.

In November, Dot and I moved out of our tent into the new house, despite no doors or windows. What we gained in comfort, we lost in the alienation from the sounds, smells and sights of God's creation. In the house we noticed an immediate separation from these sensuous pleasures.

The mornings saw us racing in our pyjamas, kimonos and gum boots through the snow to the cookhouse (the screens now covered with plastic) to light the little tin heater that quickly glowed red and warmed the inside.

The temperature, more moderate than what we were used to in Edmonton, hovered between -10c and -15c. Every morning I had to chop a hole in the ice of our water trough.

We ended 1983 by working. On the morning of New Year's Eve, we got up early by the alarm to get more work done. That night, we went to sleep with the radio on, and the midnight revelry over the air woke me. Turning to wake up Dot, I wished her a happy new year.

Eventually, we finished the house. The kitchen, dining room and living room were one big room, 40 feet long and separated by waist-high sideboards. With large windows on every outside wall, we could see natural beauty wherever we looked.

Dot cooked by wood on a large kitchen range, and we heated by wood with a small heater upstairs and one downstairs in my office. Fuel costs consisted of two or three cans of gasoline each year for the chainsaw.

For a few years, obtaining water was a problem. There was no use drilling a deep well as we had no electricity to pump up the water. All we could do was dig a shallow well to bedrock, and pipe the seep water to the house. During the latter part of the summers our well dried up completely, and we had to catch rain from the house roof into the water trough. In winter we brought snow into the house to melt. Eventually, using the help, expertise and talent of my neighbor, a cement aficionado, I built a ferro-cement "tower" 100 lineal feet and uphill from the house. Being at a higher elevation, the water from our well flowed into the tower. When that source dried up, I pumped from the lake with a gasoline pump. The water from the 3000-gallon tower flowed to our house by gravity.

At 2:30 one morning in January, I awoke to noises indicating someone in the front room was turning over in his sleeping bag. I listened to these sounds for a minute before surmising that some of our relatives or friends had surprised us with a visit. Arriving late at night, and not wanting to wake anyone, they probably had put their bedding on the floor. I got up, happily anticipating a guest, and was disappointed to find no one in the house but Dot and me. Continuing to listen to the sounds as they occurred intermittently, I learned they were caused by small areas of snow avalanching off our steep steel roof.

Since then we often heard either the soft swish of a small snowslide leaving the eaves, or the roar followed by a thud as a large, heavy chunk broke off and thundered down the roof with enough force to kill a cat.

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Catalogue Information

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