Two Days from the Car: The Most Royal Irrantionality

Adventures along the coast and in the South Coast Mountains of British Columbia.

It was after midnight on a moonless night. Mike and I were twenty-two hours into our summit day, downclimbing a jagged knife-edge ridge by headlamp, out of water and food, and still hours from the tent.

We had descended a hellish wall of mud and shattered rock, stopping at a tenuous perch where cliffs fell away on three sides. There was nowhere to go from there.

I peered into Mike's eyes through the weak amber glow from his failing headlamp. "Remind me," I said, "what Culbert wrote about this mountain?"

"He said Turner's a long two days from the car."

I waved a hand at the gaping black chasm at our feet. "I wonder what he'd do about that?"

"I doubt he'd stand here all night talking about it," said Mike, and then he took a single step and dropped like a stone into the terrible abyss.