Section B

Section B was a 7 day stretch from Coleman, AB to Boulton Creek Campground. 191km (118miles) and 7900m (26,000 feet) of elevation gain. Our heat wave was over and typical weather returned to the Rockies, including afternoon thunderstorms.

This section was a serious challenge, but not in the traditional way a hiking trip is.

While there were some really nice parts to that 191km stretch, a massive portion of it was very monotonous. Section B is entirely reservation free as it’s all part of public land, it seemed like nearly all of it was on ATV trails. It was nice not having to stick to a particular schedule, and just pushing through until we felt tired, but the lack of big alpine views put a bit of a dampener on the mood after the beautiful section A.

The first day out of Coleman I was feeling anxious to get hiking again. Going into town was a bit of a vortex that pulled me in and I was ready to get back out of it. Section B starts with a quick walk down the highway to hit the trailhead. In this case, the trailhead was basically a dirt road that went through a couple large campgrounds packed with RVs and side by sides. We were in gas-powered, offroad fun land. The walk down the dirt road lasted a few hours and we ran into 3 other GDT hikers. Eventually it split off onto the new High Rock Trail which will be the official GDT starting next year. We meandered through meadows with very wet feet, there was a lot of dew and the clouds were hanging pretty low.

The rest of our trail fam- Sarah, Heather and Stefan were going to hitch in the dirt road section, which was about 15km. It was a bummer not walking with them, after spending the previous week all walking together it made the walking a little less exciting, particularly paired with the slightly dreary weather. We never did meet up with the trail family that day, finding out later they had actually gotten a ride in past our first campsite. They would be a day ahead of us now and it was up to us to try and catch up.

Emotions were low, the family had already broken up.

We weren’t expecting to hike with others but it sure was hard to lose a trail family after starting the hike as a unit.

Our first night we arrived at Window Mountain Lake, apparently a very beautiful lake but it was foggy and hard to see what we were apparently missing. A few minutes after climbing into the tent, the storm came. The biggest thunderstorm I’ve ever camped in, and one of the biggest I’ve ever seen. I LOVE thunderstorms, Tanya is the antithesis to this… she hates them. We were in a safe spot, in the trees and away from the biggest ones but still not her jam.

The rain started and continued to accelerate. You could tell there was a lot more coming. You could hear thunder in the distance and it was getting louder. As the sky darkened the lightning brightened. We were in a bowl, with ridges on 3 sides of us which created quite the natural amphitheatre for the thunder. The storm grew closer over the next 15 or 20 minutes. Eventually it was right on top of it.

A blindingly bright flash, diffused a bit by the tent, then an ear shattering boom a split second later. It was incredible.

The storm was in the bowl with us, we were in the epicenter of the storm. The hail started and I couldn’t even hear myself speak. The sound of the hail falling in sheets on the tent was slightly concerning, would the tent get punctured? The trees were covering us a bit but we were still being pounded by this storm.

The lightning and thunder eventually moved past us, and as it did the rain returned. Heavy rain. We were pitched on pine needles, a decent spot, but there was so much precipitation that we were now surrounded by mud. Our tent was pitched super well but it simply wasn’t built for this amount of rain.

We were getting doused in splashback.

We pitched the fly as low as we could but it simply wasn’t low enough to block the rain and mud from splashing under the fly and into the tent. We did all we could, used rain gear to block some of it and move our quilts to the middle of the tent. The storm still won the battle. We did what we could to try and dry things but tomorrow morning was already looking grim.

The next morning we woke up to everything being wet. It was going to be a big day too. We were trying to catch up with the trail family so we would essentially have to hike double duty, the km they hiked plus the distance to catch up with where they started. It was a 14 hour day of moving. We woke up at 530 but didn’t end up hitting trail until 645. First thing that morning were 4 passes we had to go up and over.

Right away I could tell today was going to suck.

Packing up all our wet gear, putting on wet shoes, being soaking wet from an early morning bushwack where we got a bit off trail, all the things that make for a mentally challenging day seemed to happen by 8 am.

My knees hurt for the first time on the trip, when something hurts in the background I lose my patience and get even more frustrated. I had to pull out all the tricks to stay sane and keep moving: candy, drink powders, music, lots of breaks.

Eventually we rolled into camp just before 9pm, extremely late for us, and saw our trail fam.

They were sleeping but we made it. We made do with a lumpy, slanted campsite and passed out a few minutes after shovelling our faces with food that was still crunchy, we didn’t give it enough time to rehydrate. The day was hard, the hardest day on trail yet, but we had reunited with the family. What seemed like forever, 34km (22miles) and 1700m (1 mile) of gain, was over.

Our third day on Section B was also a rough start but going through it as a group was infinitely better. The morning started with us fording a stream several times, the possibility of dry feet went right out the window. Afterwards we climbed up and over a bunch of avalanche debris, huge trees that fell down into what looked like a pile of matchsticks strewn about the valley we were hiking up. We were on our way up to Tornado Pass, the hardest climb of the section.

Coming up and over the pass was a lot of sidehilling on scree. It was a big climb but I could tell the legs were already stronger than Section A. Tornado saddle, the final push to the top was definitely the most technical hiking we had done yet. With loose scree sitting on rock it required intentional steps for a while and a firm pole plant.

Several sections were no fall zones, if you did fall I’m not sure you would be walking out.

The risk of falling was low but the consequences were high.

We eventually hit the top and took our regularly scheduled break for a second breakfast. Near the top was also a spring with water gushing out of the ground on top of the mountain. It was super cool! Times like these the water filter definitely stays in the pack, with a magical water source like this there is no way I’m altering it in any way. We descended into a beautiful meadow. Eventually hitting another ATV trail and followed it through the woods until we hit camp.

Today was day 11 and hunger was truly setting in.

For breakfast I had 2 scoops of Vega and my Hornby Organic bar. Then 4 bars over the course of the day, a wrap with a ton of peanut butter and honey, then dinner and I was still hungry. My stomach became a giant black hole, everything that goes in it just disappears. It was nice actually having an appetite because I knew I needed to be eating more food.

At camp that evening it was warm and storm free. Laying in the tent I really had the feeling of being “in it”. It was nice reflecting on my current state. After so much preparation, planning and stressing out about the trip it was great to realize all that worry was behind me. Right now I was accomplishing something I had put so much hard work into. I was on a thru hike. Blissed out in the tent time kinda flew by. It suddenly ended when I could hear loud thunder approaching…shit! I hadn’t even made dinner yet. Quickly, I ran out and boiled water, eating dinner as fast as possible. The water still scorchingly hot and the food far from rehydrated. It would have to do, I wasn’t ready to put all my rain gear on and eat dinner in the storm. The storm came and went and we were all happy to be reunited for the storm after the first one when we were all separated.

The next morning we woke up to rain. Silently we all came to the conclusion that we were not going to be hitting the trail at our normal time of 6 or 7 am.

We only had about 20km to go and we all lazily spent the morning staying warm and dry in our tents. By 930 the rain had stopped and we hit trail. A cruisy day through beautiful meadows before we arrived at a super buggy campground surrounded by standing water. We had a short fire and donned our bug nets and rain gear (to avoid the bugs) before hitting the tents around 8.

Tanya and I were pretty over dealing with our tent. The fly was too high off the ground and we were still dealing with splashback during storms. The GDT is known for bad weather and with 38 more days we weren’t sure we wanted to keep having this problem. We texted our friend Lizz and asked her to mail out our other tent. We had backup supply of gear for instances like this. It weighed 3 times as much and would increase my base weight by over 30% but it quickly became a reality we were willing to accept. She would be shipping it to Lake Louise, where we would arrive in 12 days.

The next day was another relatively cruisy day. We had one big climb and I finally put in music. 13 days without music was the longest stretch I have probably gone in my entire life. It was magical. I powered up the hill! I was so pumped I ran up the hill.

When we arrived at the top there was a cool ridge walk but the mosquitos were heinous.

It reminded me of tree planting. From the ridge we could see storms moving in on us so we quickly descended. We all rendezvoud at a small creek for a snack, hearing thunder we setup Stefan’s tarp and all hung out under it. 3 more GDT hikers came through and we all chilled for over 2 hours. The storm never came but it was great all socializing with hikers passing by. A few more kms and we hit this beautiful meadow for us to camp in. About 8 of us all chatted and ate dinner together, section B was almost over and we all had so much to share.

The next day was the beginning of the end for section B. There was one last climb up Fording River Pass and then a long descent to a dirt road walk out. This morning was the coldest morning on trail yet. I woke up before sunrise freezing my ass off. My quilt doesn’t have a hood so I had to put on a hat for the first time, I also didn’t secure my quilt to my sleeping pad so drafts weren’t blowing through all night.

Rookie mistake.

Stefan wasn’t feeling well and said he was going to sleep in a bit and would catch up with us. Slightly concerned Tanya and I continued on, Heather and Sarah left pretty early so we had some catching up to do.

That morning on our final ascent of Section B I heard a strange sound coming from about 20m away. It sounded like a coughing sound but also like nylon rubbing against itself. It happened in 3 repetitive cycles, I called out thinking it was Tanya putting on a jacket or something. Then a critter smaller than a black bear but bigger than a large dog ran through the woods. Slightly obscured by the brush, I didn’t get a good look at it but am fairly certain it was a cougar (same thing as a mountain lion), and it sounded like it was coughing up a hairball. I could feel adrenaline pumping through me, I had cold sweats and my hair was standing on end. Cats are way scarier than bears. Tanya and I finished hiking up together.

Hitting the pass was nice, Section B has so much walking below treeline it was nice to hit some views. The glory quickly ended when we descended down from the pass. Oh my god the bugs were next level. I’ve seen plenty of bugs in my day but the biting flies were intolerable. A cloud was following me. Tens of them landing at once, all biting about 2 seconds after landing. I started running. I was freaking out and losing my cool really quickly. Tanya was quite a bit behind but I couldn’t stop. Running was the only thing I could do to keep from having a breakdown.

Eventually we hit the valley bottom and hit the river. A river we forded between 8-12 times but only really needed to twice. We were kinda lost but knew we needed to follow the river. Previous renditions of the trail could be found but when the river was in flood it wiped out giant sections of it. Eventually we found the newest version and were flying! It was quicker than walking through the river rock and constantly fording the river.

We hit our camp for the night but the prospect of town the next day was too tempting.

We pushed on another 12 km, it would be our second day over 40km.

The 12km on the dirt road was easy but my feet were killing me. The road was hard and well travelled by pickups. A nice little surprise for the day was seeing over 20 horses all running down the road, apparently a local hunting outfitter let’s the horses run free all summer, and they thundered past us as we walked down the road. Eventually we rolled into our next camp, rejecting numerous offers for a ride. It felt like we really earned the 40km today.

Our final day on Section B was mostly a road walk. Waking up we knew it would be a short day, especially because we knocked out 12km of that day already. We got going and hit a small hut a couple hours later. There was a storm heading down the valley for us. Tanya said she wanted to wait it out for a couple minutes to make sure we weren’t caught in anything nasty, right in the middle of a clear cut. Good thing we did! A huge thunderstorm came through. It was nice sitting in the hut watching the rain, hail and lightning flex it’s power. There were high voltage lines running parallel with the road, several times we saw the lightning hit the lines directly above us with immediate thunder. For quite a while afterwards there were arcs coming off the power lines and you could hear the electricity in the air.

An hour later we continued, seeing a lady moose along the way. One last little hill in Elk Lakes Provincial Park and then we were in Peter Lougheed, at a massive car campground for our zero. We got to the site and sat down, meeting back up with Sarah and Heather.

With no word from Stefan in now close to 36 hours we were a little worried.

He hadn’t sent us a message on his inreach and he said he wasn’t feeling well. Of course we expected the worst. We sent him messages on his inreach and never heard back. We were going to give it 24 hours and then call search and rescue. Luckily, he appeared before we resorted to calling for help! A huge relief after worrying for several hours about his whereabouts.

That night we went pretty hard. Heather’s friend dropped off a ton of booze and we basically crushed it all that night. Being in a campground there weren’t the same amenities in town, we didn’t have cell service or electricity to distract us. We had our first fire since starting and stayed up late (for thru hikers).

The next day involved true dirt bagging.

Hungover we hung out in front of the little store in the campground for over 4 hours. We had so many devices to charge and our site didn’t have power. Sitting on the ground in front of a store was not a very relaxing way to spend a zero day. Afterwards we hit the showers, again finding ingenuitive ways to cleanse and dry, I stood under the hand dryer and did my best to dry myself. As far as cleaning our clothes, Tanya used a dry sack with some soap to create a makeshift washer. After keeping busy just trying to get chores done for nearly 6 hours I was beat. It was not a relaxing day and we were scrambling to get everything done, while hungover.

Happy that we had checked another section off, I was eager to hit section C the next day.